Background Image

...

Hasn't There Always Been A Moon?" "bless You. Not In The Slightest. I Remember The Day The Moon Came. We Looked Up In The Sky - It Was All Dirty Brown And Sooty Gray Here Then, Not Green And Blue.

-Neil Gaiman

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Hasn't There Always Been

Neil Gaiman

...

Hasn't There Always Been A Moon?" "bless You. Not In The Slightest. I Remember The Day The Moon Came. We Looked Up In The Sky - It Was All Dirty Brown And Sooty Gray Here Then, Not Green And Blue.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Neil Gaiman

Because There Are Mysteries. Because There Are Things That People Are Forbidden To Speak About. Because There Are Things They Do Not Remember.

I Used To Get My Best Ideas From Being Bored, And Now, If I Even Think I'm Being Faintly Bored, I Have Two Million Twitter Followers I Can Engage With. It's Great, But I Also Think It's Important To Be Able To Let Your Thoughts Flow And Percolate.

If The Same Object From Two Different Times Touches Itself, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either The Universe Will Cease To Exist. Or Three Remarkable Dwarfs Will Dance Through The Streets With Flowerpots On Their Heads.

I've Been Inspired By Dreams - I've Even Stolen Scenes Or Images Or Characters From Them.

In The Case Of 'ocean At The End Of The Lane,' It's A Book About Helplessness. It's A Book About Family, It's A Book About Being 7 In A World Of People Who Are Bigger Than You, And More Dangerous, And Stepping Into Territory That You Don't Entirely Understand.

For Love Is No Part Of The Dreamworld. Love Belongs To Desire, And Desire Is Always Cruel.

A Nice, Easy Place For Freedom Of Speech To Be Eroded Is Comics, Because Comics Are A Natural Target Whenever An Election Comes Up.

Freedom Of Speech

He Would Go Somewhere No One Knew Him, And He Would Sit In A Library All Day And Read Books And Listen To People Breathing.

You Got To Understand The God Thing. It’s Not Magic. It’s About Being You, But The You That People Believe In. It’s About Being The Concentrated, Magnified, Essence Of You. It’s About Becoming Thunder, Or The Power Of A Running Horse, Or Wisdom. You Take All The Belief And Become Bigger, Cooler, More Than Human. You Crystallize.” He Paused. “and Then One Day They Forget About You, And They Don’t Believe In You, And They Don’t Sacrifice, And They Don’t Care, And The Next Thing You Know You’re Running A Three-card Monte Game On The Corner Of Broadway And Forty-third.

We Have The Right, And The Obligation, To Tell Old Stories In Our Own Ways, Because They Are Our Stories.

As Far As I'm Concerned, The Entire Reason For Becoming A Writer Is Not Having To Get Up In The Morning.

Every Ending Is A New Beginning. Your Lucky Number Is None. Your Lucky Colour Is Dead. Motto: Like Father, Like Son.

I Was The Kind Of Kid Whose Parents Would Drop Him Off At The Local Town Library On Their Way To Work, And I'd Go And Work My Way Through The Children's Area.

Just Go With It. It Won't Hurt.' I Stared At Him. Adults Only Ever Said That When It, Whatever It Happened To Be, Was Going To Hurt So Much.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic. There's Whoever's Writing It And Whoever's Drawing It. And Then There's Whoever's Reading It Because They Are Creating The Movement. They Are Creating The Illusion Of Time Passing.

The Names Are The First Things To Go, After The Breath Has Gone, And The Beating Of The Heart. We Keep Our Memories Longer Than Our Names.

I Noticed A Long Time Ago That The Universe Rewards Belief Systems. It Doesn't Really Matter What You Believe - It'll Be There And Waiting For You If You Go And Look For It. Decide The Universe Is, Say, Run By Secret Enormous Teddy Bears, And I Can Guarantee You'll Immediately Start Running Across Evidence That This Is True.

Every Now And Then I'll Do Little Things, A Short Story Or Something, That Doesn't Have Any Fantastical Elements, But Mostly I Like The Power Of Playing God And I Like To Imagine Things.

The Main Rule Of Writing Is That If You Do It With Enough Assurance And Confidence, You’re Allowed To Do Whatever You Like. (that May Be A Rule For Life As Well As For Writing. But It’s Definitely True For Writing.) So Write Your Story As It Needs To Be Written. Write It Honestly, And Tell It As Best You Can. I’m Not Sure That There Are Any Other Rules. Not Ones That Matter.

You Know That I Love You." And Despite Herself, Coraline Nodded. It Was True. The Other Mother Loved Her. But She Loved Coraline As A Miser Loves Money, Or A Dragon Loves Its Gold. In The Other Mother's Button Eyes, Coraline Knew That She Was A Possession, Nothing More. A Tolerated Pet, Whose Behavior Was No Longer Amusing.

I Took Delight In Hurling Books Across The Room If I Knew I Would Not Be Reading The Second Chapter. Then I’d Go And Pick Them Up Again, Because They Are Books, After All, And We Are Not Savages.

I Want To Write A Play. I'd Like To Do An Original Musical. I Should Probably Put Together A Poetry Collection.

Sometimes The Best Way To Learn Something Is By Doing It Wrong And Looking At What You Did.

A World In Which There Are Monsters, And Ghosts, And Things That Want To Steal Your Heart Is A World In Which There Are Angels, And Dreams And A World In Which There Is Hope.

Write. Finish Things. Get Them Published. Write Something Else While You're Waiting For Someone To Publish The First Thing.

The Trouble With Everything, These Days, For Me, Is Time. There Is Only One Me. There Are A Ridiculous Number Of Demands On My Time. There Are So Many Things I'm Trying To Do. It's So Much More About When I'm Going To Get Time To Do It, If I Get Time.

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Days When Something Just Seems To Be Trying To Tell You Somebody?

One Of Those Days

Dreams Are Composed Of Many Things, My Son. Of Images And Hopes, Of Fears And Memories. Memories Of The Past, And Memories Of The Future.

Books Are Special, Books Are The Way We Talk To Generations That Have Not Turned Up Yet. The Fact That We Can Actually, Essentially Communicate With The People In Ancient Egypt, People In Rome And Greece, People In Ancient Britain, People In New York In The 1920s Who Can Communicate To Us And Change The Way We Think, And Change The Things That We Believe. I Think That Books Are Special. Books Are Sacred. And I Think That When You Are Selling Books, You Have To Remember That In All The Profits And Loss, In All Of That, You Are Treading On Sacred Ground.

Once, I Was A Poet, And, Like All Poets, I Spent Too Long In The Kingdom Of Dreams.

My Stuff Gets Published In Some Countries As Fiction And In Some Countries As Fantasy. It's Just Where They Think It Will Do Best In The Bookshops.

Gods, Religions And National Boundaries Are Absolutely Imaginary. They Don't Tend To Exist. As Soon As You Pull Back Half A Mile And Look Down At The Earth There Are No National Boundaries. There Aren't Even National Boundaries When You Get Down And Walk Around. They're Just Imaginary Lines We Draw On Maps. I Just Get Fascinated By People Who Assume That Things That Are Imaginary Have No Relevance To Their Lives.

I Think You're Doing Better Than You Were The Last Time We Saw You. You're Growing A New Heart, For A Start.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

It Goes Without Saying That All Of The People, Living, Dead, And Otherwise, In This Story Are Fictional Or Used In A Fictional Context. Only The Gods Are Real.

Do Not Lose Hope — What You Seek Will Be Found. Trust Ghosts. Trust Those That You Have Helped To Help You In Their Turn. Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story. (from 'instructions')

Let Her Tell Stories And Dance In The Rain, Somersault, Tumble And Run, Her Joys Must Be High As Her Sorrows Are Deep, Let Her Grow Like A Weed In The Sun.

I’m An Author. We Don’t Want To Lead. We Don’t Need To Follow. We Stay Home And Make Stuff Up And Write It Down And Send It Out Into The World, And Get Inside People’s Heads. Perhaps We Change The World And Perhaps We Don’t. We Never Know. We Just Make Stuff Up.

He Stared Down At The Golden Curls Of The Adversary, Destroyer Of Kings, Angel Of The Bottomless Pit, Great Beast That Is Called Dragon, Prince Of This World, Father Of Lies, Spawn Of Satan, And Lord Of Darkness. "you Know," He Concluded, After A While, "i Think He Actually Looks Like An Adam.

I Like The Stars. It's The Illusion Of Permanence, I Think. I Mean, They're Always Flaring Up And Caving In And Going Out. But From Here, I Can Pretend...i Can Pretend That Things Last. I Can Pretend That Lives Last Longer Than Moments. Gods Come, And Gods Go. Mortals Flicker And Flash And Fade. Worlds Don't Last; And Stars And Galaxies Are Transient, Fleeting Things That Twinkle Like Fireflies And Vanish Into Cold And Dust. But I Can Pretend.

The Ideas Aren't That Important. Really They Aren't. Everyone's Got An Idea For A Book, A Movie, A Story, A Tv Series.

He Shivered. His Coat Was Thin, And It Was Obvious He Would Not Get His Kiss, Which He Found Puzzling. The Manly Heroes Of The Penny Dreadfuls And Shilling Novels Never Had These Problems Getting Kissed.

I'm Going To Go Home. Everything Is Going To Be Normal Again. Boring Again. Wonderful Again.

You Get Work However You Get Work. People Keep Working, In A Freelance World, And More And More Of Today's World Is Freelance, Because Their Work Is Good, And Because They Are Easy To Get Along With, And Because They Deliver The Work On Time. And You Don't Even Need All Three. Two Out Of Three Is Fine. People Will Tolerate How Unpleasant You Are If Your Work Is Good And You Deliver It On Time. They'll Forgive The Lateness Of The Work If It's Good, And If They Like You. And You Don't Have To Be As Good As The Others If You're On Time And It's Always A Pleasure To Hear From You.

If You Are Protected From Dark Things Then You Have No Protection Of, Knowledge Of, Or Understanding Of Dark Things When They Show Up.

Have Been Unavoidably Detained By The World. Expect Us When You See Us.

It's Harder To Pick And Choose When You're Dead. It's Like A Photograph, You Know. It Doesn't Matter As Much.

The Future Had Suddenly Become Unknowable: Anything Could Happen: The Train Of My Life Had Jumped The Rails And Headed Off Across The Fields And Coming Down The Lane With Me, Then.

Most People Can Start A Short Story Or A Novel. If You're A Writer, You Can Finish Them. Finish Enough Of Them, And You May Be Good Enough To Be Publishable.

Trees There Were, Old As Trees Can Be, Huge And Grasping With Hearts Black As Sin. Strange Trees That Some Said Walked In The Night.

When I Was A Child, Adults Would Tell Me Not To Make Things Up, Warning Me Of What Would Happen If I Did. As Far As I Can Tell So Far, It Seems To Involve Lots Of Foreign Travel And Not Having To Get Up Too Early In The Morning.

May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness. I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful, And Don't Forget To Make Some Art -- Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

I Can Get Away Before The Storm Hits. Away From A World In Which Opiates Have Become The Religion Of The Masses.

They Could Not Truly Look Dead, Because They Did Not Ever Look Alive.

Now Me,” Said Mr. Vandemar. “what Number Am I Thinking Of?” “i Beg Your Pardon?” “what Number Am I Thinking Of?” Repeated Mr. Vandemar. “it’s Between One And A Lot,” He Added, Helpfully.

Amy: This Time Can We... Lose The Bunk Beds? The Doctor: No Bunk Beds Are Cool, A Bed With A Ladder, You Can't Beat That!

I Came To The Conclusion That In Comedy, Everybody Gets What They Need, Whereas In Horror, Everybody Gets What They Deserve. I Decided That At The End Of The Day, I Was Going To Give Everybody What They Needed.

The End Of The Day

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled. I Could Not Control The World I Was In, Could Not Walk Away From Things Or People Or Moments That Hurt, But I Took Joy In The Things That Made Me Happy.

Television And Cinema Were All Very Well, But These Stories Happened To Other People. The Stories I Found In Books Happened Inside My Head. I Was, In Some Way, There. It's The Magic Of Fiction: You Take The Words And You Build Them Into Worlds.

This Is The Only Country In The World, That Worries About What It Is. The Rest Of Them Know What They Are. No One Ever Needs To Go Searching For The Heart Of Norway. Or Looks For The Soul Of Mozambique. They Know What They Are.

Sleep My Little Baby-oh Sleep Until You Waken When You Wake You'll See The World If I'm Not Mistaken... Kiss A Lover Dance A Measure, Find Your Name And Buried Treasure... Face Your Life Its Pain, Its Pleasure, Leave No Path Untaken.

Is The Chemical Aftertaste The Reason Why People Eat Hot Dogs, Or Is It Some Kind Of Bonus?

I Already Killed You Once Today, What Does It Take To Teach Some People?

My Ideal Reader Is Me. And Yes, My Ideal Reader Comes With Me And Is Forgiving.

There's An Expression, Deja Vu, That Means That You Feel Like You've Been Somewhere Before, That You've Somehow Already Dreamed It Or Experienced It In Your Mind.

It Begins, As Most Things Begin, With A Song.

On The First Day Coraline's Family Moved In, Miss Spink And Miss Forcible Made A Point Of Telling Coraline How Dangerous The Well Was, And They Warned Her To Be Sure She Kept Away From It. So Coraline Set Off To Explore For It, So That She Knew Where It Was, To Keep Away From It Properly.

It's Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Into, If One Works At It. And Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Out Of, If One Assumes That Everything Will, Somehow Or Other, Work Out For The Best.

The Magic And The Danger Of Fiction Is This: It Allows Us To See Through Other Eyes. It Takes Us To Places We Have Never Been, Allows Us To Care About, Worry About, Laugh With, And Cry For People Who Do Not, Outside Of The Story, Exist. There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

I Love Learning. I Tend To Stop Doing Things Once I Get Good At Them, And To Try Something Else I'm Not As Good At, Leaving A Bunch Of Fans Going, "but He Was Really Good At That. Why Isn't He Still Doing It?"

People Want To Forget The Impossible. It Makes Their World Safer.

Coraline Opened The Box Of Chocolates. The Dog Looked At Them Longingly. "would You Like One?" She Asked The Little Dog. "yes, Please," Whispered The Dog. "only Not Toffee Ones. They Make Me Drool." "i Thought Chocolates Weren't Very Good For Dogs," She Said, Remembering Something Miss Forcible Had Once Told Her. "maybe Where You Come From," Whispered The Little Dog. "here, It's All We Eat.

Even If Your Goose Habitually Lays Golden Eggs, It Will Still Be Cooked.

There Are Three Things, And Three Things Only, That Can Lift The Pain Of Mortality And Ease The Ravages Of Life. These Are Wine, Women And Song.

I Feel Like I Am Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell Me The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

All Fiction Is A Process Of Imagining: Whatever You Write, In Whatever Genre Or Medium, Your Task Is To Make Things Up Convincingly And Interestingly And New.

There Was No Moon But The Night Sky Was A Riot Of Crisp And Glittering Autumn Stars. There Were Streetlights Too And Lights On Buildings And On Bridges Which Looked Like Earthbound Stars And They Glimmered Repeated As They Were Reflected With The City In The Night Water Of The Thames. It’s Fairyland Thought Richard.

We Have To Get The... The Thing I Got... To The Angel. And Then He'll Tell Door About Her Family, And He'll Tell Me How To Get Home." Lamia Looked At Hunter With Delight. "and He Can Give You Brains," She Said, Cheerfully, "and Me A Heart.

I Suspect That Most Authors Don't Really Want Criticism, Not Even Constructive Criticism. They Want Straight-out, Unabashed, Unashamed, Fulsome, Informed, Naked Praise, Arriving By The Shipload Every Fifteen Minutes Or So.

I've Learned Over The Years That Everything Is More Or Less The Same Amount Of Work, So You May As Well Set Your Sights High And Try And Do Something Really Cool.

The Lower You Start, The More Opportunities You Have.

You Don’t Want To Ask After The Health Of Anyone, If You’re A Funeral Director. They Think Maybe You’re Scouting For Business.

He Had Kissed Her Good Night That Night, And She Had Tasted Like Strawberry Daiquiris, And He Had Never Wanted To Kiss Anyone Else Again.

Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

I Move From Dreamer To Dreamer, From Dream To Dream, Hunting For What I Need. Slipping And Sliding And Flickering Through The Dreams; And The Dreamer Will Wake, And Wonder Why This Dream Seemed Different, Wonder How Real Their Lives Can Truly Be.

Some Hats Can Only Be Worn If You're Willing To Be Jaunty, To Set Them At An Angle And To Walk Beneath Them With A Spring In Your Stride As If You're Only A Step Away From Dancing. They Demand A Lot Of You.

I Love Religion. I Could Make Up Religions All Day. I Sort Of Think That In An Ideal World I'd Like To Be A Religion Designer. I'd Like People Come Up To Me And Say, I Need A Religion. I'd Go Talk To Them For A While, And I'd Design A Religion For Them. That Would Be A Great Job. There's A Need For People Like That. Fortunately, Seeing That One Can't Actually Do It, I Get Paid For Sort Of Making Them Up Anyway.

I'm Never Quite Sure If I'm Me When I'm Dressed Up.

Reading Is Important. Books Are Important. Librarians Are Important. (also, Libraries Are Not Child-care Facilities, But Sometimes Feral Children Raise Themselves Among The Stacks.)

I'm Sure There's An Alternate Universe Where I Got To Become A Pulpy Science Fiction Writer.

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

You Don't Have To Test Everything To Destruction Just To See If You Made It Right.

It Doesn't Matter That You Didn't Believe In Us," Said Mr. Ibis. "we Believed In You.

He Tried To Listen To The Conversations Going On At The Table And He Found That He Could No Longer Concentrate On What Anyone Was Saying And Which Was Worse That He Was Not Interested In Any Of What He Was Able To Hear.

Adults Follow Paths. Children Explore. Adults Are Content To Walk The Same Way, Hundreds Of Times, Or Thousands; Perhaps It Never Occurs To Adults To Step Off The Paths, To Creep Beneath Rhododendrons, To Find The Spaces Between Fences. I Was A Child, Which Meant That I Knew A Dozen Different Ways Of Getting Out Of Our Property And Into The Lane, Ways That Would Not Involve Walking Down Our Drive.

There Are Only Two Worlds - Your World, Which Is The Real World, And Other Worlds, The Fantasy. Worlds Like This Are Worlds Of The Human Imagination: Their Reality, Or Lack Of Reality, Is Not Important. What Is Important Is That They Are There. These Worlds Provide An Alternative. Provide An Escape. Provide A Threat. Provide A Dream, And Power; Provide Refuge, And Pain. They Give Your World Meaning. They Do Not Exist; And Thus They Are All That Matters.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

I've Been Making A List Of The Things They Don't Teach You At School. They Don't Teach You How To Love Somebody. They Don't Teach You How To Be Famous. They Don't Teach You How To Be Rich Or How To Be Poor. They Don't Teach You How To Walk Away From Someone You Don't Love Any Longer. They Don't Teach You How To Know What's Going On In Someone Else's Mind. They Don't Teach You What To Say To Someone Who's Dying. They Don't Teach You Anything Worth Knowing.

You Must Never Imagine, That Just Because Something Is Funny, It Is Not Also Dangerous.

I Loved All Books That I Could Read, And I Never Knew If I Was Ready For It Until I Tried To Read It, So I Tried To Read Everything.

Everybody Has A Secret World Inside Of Them. I Mean Everybody. All Of The People In The Whole World, I Mean Everybody — No Matter How Dull And Boring They Are On The Outside. Inside Them They've All Got Unimaginable, Magnificent, Wonderful, Stupid, Amazing Worlds... Not Just One World. Hundreds Of Them. Thousands, Maybe.

Is There Any Person In The World Who Does Not Dream? Who Does Not Contain Within Them Worlds Unimagined?

For Some Folks Death Is Release, And For Others Death Is An Abomination, A Terrible Thing. But In The End, I'm There For All Of Them.

Nothing’s Changed. You’ll Go Home. You’ll Be Bored. You’ll Be Ignored. No One Will Listen To You, Really Listen To You. You’re Too Clever And Too Quiet For Them To Understand. They Don’t Even Get Your Name Right.

And So There Is Magic.

It Seems To Me That One Of The Most Interesting Things About God As A Concept, If You Decide To Believe In God, Is That God's Ways Are Unknowable. And God Obviously, Look At The World Around You, Does Or Is Responsible For Some Terrible, Terrible, Awful Things. A Young Girl Kidnapped And Kept In The Darkness And Sexually Abused. The Deaths Of Six Million Jews. A Mudslide That Buries A Village. All Of These Things. If God Is Doing The Good Stuff, He's Got To Be Doing That Stuff Too.

And I Thought, Eight Years Ago, When I Began Carefully Charting The Progress Of American Gods, Nervously Dipping My Toes Into The Waters Of Blogging, Would I Have Imagined A Future In Which, Instead Of Recording The Vicissitudes Of Bringing A Book Into The World, I Would Be Writing About Not-even-interestingly Missing Cups Of Cold Camomile Tea? And I Thought, Yup. Sounds About Right. Happy Eighth Birthday, Blog.

Bod Quite Liked Crows. He Thought They Were Funny And He Liked The Way They Helped To Keep The Graveyard Tidy.

There Was A Table Laid With Jellies And Trifles, With A Party Hat Beside Each Place, And A Birthday Cake With Seven Candles On It In The Center Of The Table. The Cake Had A Book Drawn On It, In Icing. My Mother, Who Had Organized The Party, Told Me That The Lady At The Bakery Said That They Had Never Put A Book On A Birthday Cake Before, And That Mostly For Boys It Was Footballs Or Spaceships. I Was Their First Book.

The Problems With Success, Frankly, Are Infinitely Preferable To The Problems Of Failure.

On The Whole, Anything That Gets You Writing And Keeps You Writing Is A Good Thing. Anything That Stops You Writing Is A Bad Thing.

Richard Did Not Believe In Angels, He Never Had. He Was Damned If He Was Going To Start Now. Still, It Was Much Easier Not To Believe In Something When It Was Not Actually Looking Directly At You And Saying Your Name.

Love Isn't Quite Desire... Love Is Probably A Little Bit In The Sandman's Domain. Love Is Partly A Dream, It's Partly To Do With Desire, And Sometimes It's Partly To Do With Death, As Well. It's Also Very Often Something To Do With Delirium.

I Started Writing When I Was About 20, 21 Maybe.

I Lay On The Bed And Lost Myself In Stories. I Liked That. Books Were Safer Than Other People Anyways.

After A While It Sort Of Began To Rain, Which Is To Say That It Was The Kind Of Rain That Never Comes To A Decision About Whether It's Actually Raining Or Not. Driving In It, You Would Never Have Been Certain Whether Or Not To Turn On Your Wipers.

The Real Problem With Stories - If You Keep Them Going Long Enough, They Always End In Death.

One Thing That I Get From A Lot Of People With American Gods Is People Saying That They Would Love Some Kind Of Glossary With A List Of All The Gods And Who They Are, So That They Can Look Them Up.

I Was A Scholarship Minor Public School Day Boy At Ardingly College And Later Whitgift School. Then, Straight Into Work As A Journalist - A Wonderful Thing For A Writer.

I Am An Academic," Said Professor Mandalay, "and Thus Have No Finely Developed Senses That Would Be Comprehensible To Anyone Who Has Not Ever Needed To Grade Papers Without Actually Reading The Blessed Things.

I Know Not Whether You Came To Me Or I To You. Not Whether It Was A Dream, Asleep Or Awake. I Am Lost In The Darkness Of A Downcast Heart. Dream Or Reality. Let It Be Decided Tonight.

There Is A Proverbial Saying Chiefly Concerned With Warning Against Too Closely Calculating The Numerical Value Of Un-hatched Chicks.

Any Way, Death Is So Final, Isn't It? "is It?" Asked Richard. "sometimes," Said The Marquis De Carabas. And They Went Down.

I Loved Writing A Book In Which, In Some Ways, It's Very, Very Classical, And In Some Ways I'm Breaking Lots Of Rules About What You Can Do And What You Can't Do.

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

And I Would Try And Walk Far Enough Away That People Would Not Assume I Was With Him.

I Was A Reader. I Loved Reading. Reading Things Gave Me Pleasure. I Was Very Good At Most Subjects In School, Not Because I Had Any Particular Aptitude In Them, But Because Normally On The First Day Of School They'd Hand Out Schoolbooks, And I'd Read Them--which Would Mean That I'd Know What Was Coming Up, Because I'd Read It.

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them.

Sexton: I Think The Whole World's Gone Mad. Death: Uh-uh. It's Always Like This. You Probably Just Don't Get Out Enough.

I'm Intrigued With Figuring Out The Places [where] The Horrible And The Beautiful Meet - That Aesthetic Fascinates Me.

But I Have Always Thought That These Tulips Must Have Had Names. They Were Red, And Orange And Red, And Red And Orange And Yellow, Like The Ember In A Nursery Fire Of A Winter's Evening. I Remember Them.

Oh, Monsters Are Scared. That's Why They're Monsters.

You People Always Hold Onto Old Identities, Old Faces And Masks, Long After They've Served Their Purpose. But You've Got To Learn To Throw Things Away Eventually.

You’re Alive. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything.

We Writers – And Especially Writers For Children, But All Writers – Have An Obligation To Our Readers: It's The Obligation To Write True Things, Especially Important When We Are Creating Tales Of People Who Do Not Exist In Places That Never Were – To Understand That Truth Is Not In What Happens But What It Tells Us About Who We Are. Fiction Is The Lie That Tells The Truth, After All.

Nobody Died. How Can You Kill An Idea? How Can You Kill The Personification Of An Action?" "then What Died? Who Are You Mourning?" "a Point Of View.

I've Never Known Anyone Who Was What He Or She Seemed; Or At Least, Was Only What He Or She Seemed. People Carry Worlds Within Them.

It Has Occasionally Been Remarked Upon That It Is As Easy To Overlook Something Large And Obvious As It Is To Overlook Something Small And Niggling, And That The Large Things One Overlooks Often Cause Problems.

My Parents Would Frisk Me Before Family Events. Before Weddings, Funerals, Bar Mitzvahs, And What Have You. Because If They Didn't, Then The Book Would Be Hidden Inside Some Pocket Or Other And As Soon As Whatever It Was Got Under Way I'd Be Found In A Corner. That Was Who I Was...that Was What I Did. I Was The Kid With The Book.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

He Had Read Books, Newspapers And Magazines. He Knew That If You Ran Away You Sometimes Met Bad People Who Did Bad Things To You; But He Had Also Read Fairy Tales, So He Knew That There Were Kind People Out There, Side By Side With The Monsters.

There Was A Smile Dancing On His Lips, Although It Was A Wary Smile, For The World Is A Bigger Place Than A Little Graveyard On A Hill; And There Would Be Dangers In It And Mysteries, New Friends To Make, Old Friends To Rediscover, Mistakes To Be Made And Many Paths To Be Walked Before He Would, Finally, Return To The Graveyard Or Ride With The Lady On The Broad Back Of Her Great Grey Stallion.

All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

There Will Always Be People Who Are Much Better At Doing This Or Doing That, But You Are The Only You.

Write Your Story As It Needs To Be Written. Write It Honestly, And Tell It As Best You Can. I'm Not Sure That There Are Any Other Rules. Not Ones That Matter.

I Lost Some Time Once. It's Always In The Last Place You Look For It.

Everybody Who Has Ever Read Sandman Knows Exactly What The Sandman Looks Like, Which Is More Than Anybody Who Has Ever Read The Catcher In The Rye Can Say About Holden Caufield.

I Started Out Writing Much More Science Fictiony Stuff And Writing About Science Fiction.

Diana Used To Tell Me She Had A Travel Jinx, Something I Only Really Started To Believe When The Plane Door Fell Off.

Biting's Excellent. It's Like Kissing - Only There Is A Winner.

Talk Is Free But The Wise Man Chooses When To Spend His Words.

I Believe That All Men Are Just Overgrown Boys With Deep Problems Communicating.

I Mean, Maybe I Am Crazy. I Mean, Maybe. But If This Is All There Is, Then I Don't Want To Be Sane.

If You Want To Call It That. But It Is A Very Specific Sort Of Magic. There's A Magic You Take From Death. Something Leaves The World, Something Else Comes Into It.

The Squirrel Has Not Yet Found The Acorn That Will Grow To The Oak That Will Be Cut To Form The Cradle Of The Babe That Will Grow To Slay Me.

She Had Such Unusual Eyes. They Made Me Think Of The Seaside, And So I Called Her Ocean, And Could Not Have Told You Why.

Hey, That's Life, Flick It Off If You Can't Take A Joke.

Going To Comic-con For Me Is Always Hard And Weird, So It Just Makes Me Feel Guilty. There's Always A Hundre Thousand People Out There Who Have Copies Of Things That I've Written And They Really Want Signed And They're Not Going To Get Them Signed.

If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do.

He Was Having More Fun Than A Barrelful Of Monkeys.* *several Years Earlier Spider Had Actually Been Tremendously Disappointed By A Barrelful Of Monkeys. It Had Done Nothing He Had Considered Particularly Entertaining, Apart From Emit Interesting Noises, And Eventually, Once The Noises Had Stopped And The Monkeys Were No Longer Doing Anything At All—except Possibly On An Organic Level—had Needed To Be Disposed Of In The Dead Of Night.

Often The Adult Book Is Not For You, Not Yet, Or Will Only Be For You When You're Ready. But Sometimes You Will Read It Anyway, And You Will Take From It Whatever You Can. Then, Perhaps, You Will Come Back To It When You're Older, And You Will Find The Book Has Changed Because You Have Changed As Well, And The Book Is Wiser, Or More Foolish, Because You Are Wiser Or More Foolish Than You Were As A Child.

And Life Is A Good Thing For A Writer. It's Where We Get Our Raw Material, For A Start. We Quite Like To Stop And Watch It.

There Are So Many Fragile Things, After All. People Break So Easily, And So Do Dreams And Hearts.

There Are Stories That Are True, In Which Each Individual's Tale Is Unique And Tragic, And The Worst Of The Tragedy Is That We Have Heard It Before, And We Cannot Allow Ourselves To Feel It To Deeply. We Build A Shell Around It Like An Oyster Dealing With A Painful Particle Of Grit, Coating It With Smooth Pearl Layers In Order To Cope. This Is How We Walk And Talk And Function, Day In, Day Out, Immune To Others' Pain And Loss. If It Were To Touch Us It Would Cripple Us Or Make Saints Of Us; But, For The Most Part, It Does Not Touch Us. We Cannot Allow It To.

I Am Selfish, Private And Easily Bored. Will This Be A Problem?

When You Say Words A Lot They Don't Mean Anything. Or Maybe They Don't Mean Anything Anyway, And We Just Think They Do.

Look. I Brought You Here To Give You A Choice-" "you Didn't Bring Us Here," Said Nick. "you're Here," Said Bod. "i Wanted You Here. I Came Here. You Followed Me. Same Thing.

So I Went Out And Bought Myself A Copy Of The Writer And Artist Yearbook, Bought Lots Of Magazines And Got On The Phone And Talked To Editors About Ideas For Stories. Pretty Soon I Found Myself Hired To Do Interviews And Articles And Went Off And Did Them.

Well-meaning Adults Can Easily Destroy A Child’s Love Of Reading: Stop Them Reading What They Enjoy, Or Give Them Worthy-but-dull Books That You Like, The 21st-century Equivalents Of Victorian “improving” Literature. You’ll Wind Up With A Generation Convinced That Reading Is Uncool And Worse, Unpleasant.

I Found English To Be A Sort Of Thomas Hardy Aversion Therapy.

So That's My Wish For You, And All Of Us, And My Wish For Myself. Make New Mistakes. Make Glorious, Amazing Mistakes. Make Mistakes Nobody's Ever Made Before. Don't Freeze, Don't Stop, Don't Worry That It Isn't Good Enough, Or It Isn't Perfect, Whatever It Is: Art, Or Love, Or Work Or Family Or Life.

She Had Forgotten Them All; Forgotten Richard Down In The Mud, And The Marquis And His Foolish Crossbow, And The World. She Was Delighted And Transported, In A Perfect Place, The World She Lived For. Her World Contained Two Things: Hunter, And The Beast. The Beast Knew That Too. It Was The Perfect Match, The Hunter And The Hunted. And Who Was Who, And Which Was Which, Only Time Would Reveal; Time And The Dance.

I Imagine The World Dividing Into The People Who Want To Feed Their Children, And The Ones Shooting At Them.

Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled But Halved. No Man Is An Island

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

You Shine Like A Beacon In A Dark World.

In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.

She Seems So Cool, So Focused, So Quiet, Yet Her Eyes Remain Fixed Upon The Horizon. You Think You Know All There Is To Know About Her Immediately Upon Meeting Her, But Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. Passion Flows Through Her Like A River Of Blood. She Only Looked Away For A Moment, And The Mask Slipped, And You Fell. All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

The Biggest Difference Between England And America Is That England Has History, While America Has Geography.

England And America

It's Easier To Lie To Yourself When You Say Things Out Loud.

I'm Just Going To Stay Here, In The Darkness Under The Arch. I Can Hear You All Out There, Trip-trapping, Trip-trapping Over My Bridge. Oh Yes, I Can Hear You. But I'm Not Coming Out.

We Have An Obligation To Read Aloud To Our Children. To Read Them Things They Enjoy. To Read To Them Stories We Are Already Tired Of. To Do The Voices, To Make It Interesting, And Not To Stop Reading To Them Just Because They Learn To Read To Themselves. Use Reading-aloud Time As Bonding Time, As Time When No Phones Are Being Checked, When The Distractions Of The World Are Put Aside.

When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

Great, Big, Serious Novels Always Get Awards. If It's A Battle Between A Great, Big, Serious Novel And A Funny Novel, The Funny Novel Is Doomed.

It Doesn't Matter That I Can't Remember The Details Any Longer: Death Happened To Her. Death Happens To All Of Us.

It Is Astonishing Just How Much Of What We Are Can Be Tied To The Beds We Wake Up In In The Morning, And It Is Astonishing How Fragile That Can Be.

When You Love Something You Just Don't Want To Stop Talking About It.

It's Always Too Late For Sorries, But I Appreciate The Sentiment.

I Don't Think You Should Ever Insult People Unintentionally: If You're Doing It, You Ought To Mean It.

Twitter Is Great And It's Glorious And It's Easy, But If Somebody Comes Up With Something Kind Of Like Twitter Tomorrow, That's Better Or Smarter Or More Useful, In Three Weeks Time, Twitter Could More Or Less Be History Because That's How Fast Things Go.

I Think...that I Would Rather Recollect A Life Mis-spent On Fragile Things Than Spent Avoiding Moral Debt.

Monsters Come In All Shapes And Sizes, Some Of Them Are Things People Are Scared Of. Some Of Them Are Things That Look Like Things People Used To Be Scared Of A Long Time Ago. Sometimes Monsters Are Things People Should Be Scared Of, But They Aren't.

Here Are Your Instructions, Crowley. And Suddenly He Knew. He Hated That. They Could Just As Easily Have Told Him, They Didn't Suddenly Have To Drop Chilly Knowledge Straight Into His Brain.

But Standing In That Hallway, It Was All Coming Back To Me. Memories Were Waiting At The Edges Of Things, Beckoning To Me.

Lives Are Snowflakes - Unique In Detail, Forming Patterns We Have Seen Before, But As Like One Another As Peas In A Pod (and Have You Ever Looked At Peas In A Pod? I Mean, Really Looked At Them? There's Not A Chance You'd Mistake One For Another, After A Minute's Close Inspection.)

You're Alive, Bod. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything. If You Can Change The World, The World Will Change. Potential. Once You're Dead, It's Gone. Over. You've Made What You've Made, Dreamed Your Dream, Written Your Name. You May Be Buried Here, You May Even Walk. But That Potential Is Finished.

Sometimes We Can Choose The Paths We Follow. Sometimes Our Choices Are Made For Us. And Sometimes We Have No Choice At All.

I Didn't Like People Rewriting My Dialogue. I Didn't Like The Fact That We'd Start A Comic With The Joker, And By The Time We Inked It, He Would Have Turned Into The Scarecrow.

I Don't Know. I Had To Be Something, Didn't I?

I Wonder If I Shall Ever See Her Again, And I Realize That I Scarcely Care. I Can Feel The Sheets Beneath Me, And The Cold Air On My Chest. I Feel Fine. I Feel Absolutely Fine. I Feel Nothing At All.

I Always Say That If You're A Novelist, The Challenge Is Not Writing What You Think Ought To Happen, But Trying In Some Way To Write What Did Happen In A World That Doesn't Necessarily Exist.

Trending Author

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Claude Levi-Strauss

Category