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I Had Started To Feel That Somewhere In The Second Half Of The 20th Century, The Idea Of Page-turning As A Good Thing Had Been Lost. You Were Getting Books That Were The Equivalent Of Absolutely Beautifully Prepared Dishes Of Food That Didn't Taste Like Anything Much.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Had Started To

Neil Gaiman

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I Had Started To Feel That Somewhere In The Second Half Of The 20th Century, The Idea Of Page-turning As A Good Thing Had Been Lost. You Were Getting Books That Were The Equivalent Of Absolutely Beautifully Prepared Dishes Of Food That Didn't Taste Like Anything Much.

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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.

The Only Ones Who Ever Come Here From Your Lands Are The Minstrels, And The Lovers, And The Mad. And You Don't Look Like Much Of A Minstrel, And You're— Pardon Me For Saying So Lad, But It's True— Ordinary As Cheese Crumbs. So It's Love If You Ask Me.

The Search For The Word Gets No Easier But Nobody Else Is Going To Write Your Novel For You.

Nearly' Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand-grenades.

Writers Are Liars My Dear, Surely You Know That By Now?

If You Cared Enough About Your Characters, What Happened To Them Was Interesting... It's Important To Care About Them, About Who They Are And What They Do...i Don't Really Care Whose Side They Are On, And They Can Be Monstrous On The Outside Or, Worse, On The Inside, But You Still Have To Want To Spend Time With Them.

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

A Piratical Ghost Story In Thirteen Ingenious But Potentially Disturbing Rhyming Couplets, Originally Conceived As A Confection Both To Amuse And To Entertain By Mr. Neil Gaiman, Scrivener, And Then Doodled, Elaborated Upon, Illustrated, And Beaten Soundly By Mr. Cris Grimly, Etcher And Illuminator, Featuring Two Brave Children, Their Diminutive But No Less Courageous Gazelle, And A Large Number Of Extremely Dangerous Trolls, Monsters, Bugbears, Creatures, And Other Such Nastiness, Many Of Which Have Perfectly Disgusting Eating Habits And Ought Not, Under Any Circumstances, To Be Encouraged.

Why Are We Talking About This Good And Evil? They're Just Names For Sides. We Know That.

There Were Faces At The Windows And Words Written In Blood; Deep In The Crypt A Lonely Ghoul Crunched On Something That Might Once Have Been Alive; Forked Lightnings Slashed The Ebony Night; The Faceless Were Walking; All Was Right With The World

You've A Good Heart. Sometimes That's Enough To See You Safe Wherever You Go. But Mostly, It's Not.

Some Of The Things Are The Same No Matter Which World You're In, Kid. One Of 'em Is This: The Quickest Way Out Of Something Is Usually Straight Through It.

And If There's A Moral There, I Don't Know What It Is, Save Maybe That We Should Take Our Goodbyes Whenever We Can.

An Angel Who Did Not So Much Fall As Saunter Vaguely Downwards.

With American Gods I Was Trying Very, Very Consciously - There Was A Level At Which It Was A Little Like Trying To Write A Novel In French - You Know, "this Novel Is To Be Written In American."

With 'stardust', I Hope What I Was Doing Is Giving 30-year-olds And 40-year-olds And 25-year-olds And 60-year-olds A Chance To Get The Same Sense Of Wonder, The Same Feeling, The Same Magic, That They Got In Reading The Classic Fairy Tales As Children.

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.

The Great Thing About Batman And Superman, In Truth, Is That They Are Literally Transcendent. They Are Better Than Most Of The Stories They Are In.

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

There's A Tale In The Caballa That Suggests That The Angel Of Death Is So Beautiful That Upon Seeing It (or Him, Or Her) You Fall In Love So Hard, So Fast, That Your Soul Is Pulled Out Through Your Eyes. I Like That Story.

Falling In Love

There's A Glorious Sense Of Freedom In Comedy, Just Allowing Myself To Tell Jokes, Allowing Myself To Interrupt Myself And Tell Old African Folk Stories That I Made Up - Or Didn't - And Jamaican Stories.

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

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

Let Us Begin This Letter, This Prelude To An Encounter, Formally, As A Declaration, In The Old-fashioned Way: I Love You. You Do Not Know Me (although You Have Seen Me, Smiled At Me). I Know You (although Not So Well As I Would Like. I Want To Be There When Your Eyes Flutter Open In The Morning, And You See Me, And You Smile. Surely This Would Be Paradise Enough?). So I Do Declare Myself To You Now, With Pen Set To Paper. I Declare It Again: I Love You.

Going Off The Grid Is Always Good For Me. It's The Way That I've Started Books And Finished Books And Gotten Myself Out Of Deadline Dooms And Things.

I Think Most Things Are Pretty Magical, And That It's Less A Matter Of Belief Than It Is One Of Just Stopping To Notice.

As I Wouldn't Wear A Costume, I Couldn't Imagine Him Wanting To Wear One. And Seeing That The Greater Part Of My Wardrobe Is Black (it's A Sensible Colour. It Goes With Anything. Well, Anything Black)[...].

Be Boring, Knowing Everything. You Have To Give All That Stuff Up If You're Going To Muck About Here.

Knowing Everything

I Suppose The Point You Grow Up Is The Point You Let The Dreams Go.

Most Of What I Want To Try To Do Is Continue To Go Places With Fiction That I've Never Gone Before, And Tell Stories I've Never Told Before, And One Of The Problems You Rapidly Discover About Fans Is What Fans Want Is The Last Thing They Liked. They Want More Of That.

I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

He Had Gone Beyond The World Of Metaphor And Simile Into The Place Of Things That Are, And It Was Changing Him.

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.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

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.

Everything He Had Ever Done That Had Been Better Left Undone. Every Lie He Had Told — Told To Himself, Or Told To Others. Every Little Hurt, And All The Great Hurts. Each One Was Pulled Out Of Him, Detail By Detail, Inch By Inch. The Demon Stripped Away The Cover Of Forgetfulness, Stripped Everything Down To Truth, And It Hurt More Than Anything.

It’s A New Year And With It Comes A Fresh Opportunity To Shape Our World. So This Is My Wish, A Wish For Me As Much As It Is A Wish For You: In The World To Come, Let Us Be Brave – Let Us Walk Into The Dark Without Fear, And Step Into The Unknown With Smiles On Our Faces, Even If We’re Faking Them. And Whatever Happens To Us, Whatever We Make, Whatever We Learn, Let Us Take Joy In It. We Can Find Joy In The World If It’s Joy We’re Looking For, We Can Take Joy In The Act Of Creation. So That Is My Wish For You, And For Me. Bravery And Joy.

So, If A City Has A Personality, Maybe It Also Has A Soul. Maybe It Dreams.

I'm Bored," She Said. "learn How To Tap-dance," He Suggested, Without Turning Around.

Suppose We Pick A Name For Him, Eh?" Caius Pompeius Stepped Over And Eyed The Child. "he Looks A Little Like My Proconsul, Marcus. We Could Call Him Marcus." Josiah Worthington Said, "he Looks More Like My Head Gardener, Stebbins. Not That I'm Suggesting Stebbins As A Name. The Man Drank Like A Fish." "he Looks Like My Nephew Harry," Said Mother Slaughter... "he Looks Like Nobody But Himself," Said Mrs.owens, Firmly. "he Looks Like Nobody." "then Nobody It Is," Said Silas. "nobody Owens.

You Must Have A Bladder Like Lake Erie. I Think Empires Rose And Fell In The Time It Took You To Pee. I Could Hear It The Whole Time." Thank You. Do You Want Something?

There Is Something About Riding A Unicorn, For Those People Who Still Can, Which Is Unlike Any Other Experience: Exhilarating, And Intoxicating, And Fine.

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.

Human Beings Do Not Relate To Written Words In The Same Way That They Will Relate To Spoken Words. They Do Not Relate To Music In The Same Way That They Do To Pictures. It's All Different Parts Of Our Head, Different Parts Of Our Minds Processing This.

You Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

If You Only Write When Inspired, You May Be A Fairly Decent Poet, But You'll Never Be A Novelist.

For The Record, I Don't Expect You To Believe Any Of This. Not Really. I'm A Liar By Trade, After All; Albeit, I Like To Think, An Honest Liar.

I Toyed Briefly With An Image Someone Once Mentioned To Me, Of A Village In The Shadow Of A Twin-peaked Mountain. In The Morning The Sun Rises. At Lunch It Sets Behind The Mountain. In The Early Afternoon It Rises Once More. The Cocks Crow For The Second Time, And Later The Sun Sets Again. No. One Peak. Metaphors Should Not Be Belaboured.

When We Hold Each Other, In The Darkness, It Doesn't Make The Darkness Go Away. The Bad Things Are Still Out There. The Nightmares Still Walking. When We Hold Each Other We Feel Not Safe, But Better. "it's All Right" We Whisper, "i'm Here, I Love You." And We Lie: "i'll Never Leave You." For Just A Moment Or Two The Darkness Doesn't Seem So Bad.

The Doctor: Sorry, Do You Have A Name? Idris: Seven Hundred Years And Finally He Asks. The Doctor: But What Do I Call You? Idris: I Think You Call Me... Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only When We're Alone. Idris: We Are Alone. The Doctor: Oh. Come On Then, Sexy.

Sometimes You Wake Up. Sometimes The Fall Kills You. And Sometimes, When You Fall, You Fly.

I Couldn't Get You To The Ocean, But There Was Nothing Stopping Me Bringing The Ocean To You.

I Thought, I'm Going To Die. And, Thinking That, I Was Determined To Live.

Sometimes Big Things Happen, And They Echo. Those Echoes Crash Across Worlds. They Are The Ripples In The Fabric Of Things. Often They Manifest As Storms. Reality Is A Fragile Thing, After All.

When I Started Out, There Were A Lot Of Things I Knew I Couldn't Do, And A Lot Of Things I Only Found Out I Couldn't Do By Going And Doing It. And No-one Was Watching, And Nobody Cared.

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.

Different People Remember Things Differently, And You'll Not Get Any Two People To Remember Anything The Same, Whether They Were There Or Not.

Some People Have Great Ideas Maybe Once Or Twice In Their Life, And Then They Discover Electricity Or Fire Or Outer Space Or Something. I Mean, The Kind Of Brilliant Ideas That Change The Whole World. Some People Never Have Them At All... I Get Them Two Or Three Times A Week.

I Don't Know If Proud Is The Right Word, But I Am Somebody Who Does Not, On The Whole, Have The Highest Regard For My Own Stuff In That When I Look All I Get To See Are The Flaws.

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.

Style Is Made Up Of Whatever An Author Can't Avoid Doing.

You Get On With Your Own Life. Lettie Gave It To You. You Just Have To Grow Up And Try And Be Worth It.

It's Not Sipping Wine. It's A Mourning Wine. You Drain It. Like This.

Adventures Are All Very Well In Their Place, But There's A Lot To Be Said For Regular Meals And Freedom From Pain.

Sometimes The Way To Do What You Hope To Do Will Be Clear Cut, And Sometimes It Will Be Almost Impossible To Decide Whether Or Not You Are Doing The Correct Thing, Because You'll Have To Balance Your Goals And Hopes With Feeding Yourself, Paying Debts, Finding Work, Settling For What You Can Get.

I Was Not Scared Of Anything, When I Read My Book.

Behind The Curtain's Mystic Fold The Glowing Future Lies Unrolled.

The Really Important Thing To Be Was Yourself, Just As Hard As You Could.

Important Things

When I Was 7, My Proudest Possession Would Have Been My Bookshelf - 'cause I'd Alphabetized All Of The Books On My Bookshelf.

I Thought I Was Your Destination. Looks Like I Was Just Another Stop On The Line.

I Am Frightened Of Nothing." "nothing?" "nothing." "are You Extremely Frightened Of Nothing?" "absolutely Terrified Of It." "i Have Nothing In My Pockets. Would You Like To See It?" "no, I Most Definitely Would Not.

You Made Peace,” Said The Buffalo Man. “you Took Our Words And Made Them Your Own. They Never Understood That They Were Here—and The People Who Worshiped Them Were Here—because It Suits Us That They Are Here. But We Can Change Our Minds. And Perhaps We Will.

When I Was Young, I Was Reading Anything And Anything I Could Lay My Hands On. I Was A Veracious-to-the-point-of-insane Reader.

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.

There Are Lots Of Artists In The World. But There's Only One You. And The Only Person Who Has Your Point Of View Is You. If You Decide Not To Make Things, All You've Done Is Deprive The World Of All The Stuff That Only You Could Have Brought To It.

Memory Is The Great Deceiver. Perhaps There Are Some Individuals Whose Memories Act Like Tape Recordings, Daily Records Of Their Lives Complete In Every Detail, But I Am Not One Of Them. My Memory Is A Patchwork Of Occurrences, Of Discontinuous Events Roughly Sewn Together: The Parts I Remember, I Remember Precisely, Whilst Other Sections Seemed To Have Vanished Completely.

Really, He Thought, If You Couldn't Trust A Poet To Offer Sensible Advice, Who Could You Trust?

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called.

That's The Trouble With Living Things. Don't Last Very Long. Kittens One Day, Old Cats The Next. And Then Just Memories. And The Memories Fade And Blend And Smudge Together.

I Enjoy Writing Scripts. I Can Find Out What Happens. With An Outline, I Feel Like I'm Doing An Architectural Diagram Of Something.

It's Only A World, After All, And They're Just Sand Grains In The Desert, Worlds.

Fiction Allows Us To Slide Into These Other Heads, These Other Places, And Look Out Through Other Eyes. And Then In The Tale We Stop Before We Die, Or We Die Vicariously And Unharmed, And In The World Beyond The Tale We Turn The Page Or Close The Book, And We Resume Our Lives.

Friday's A Free Day. A Woman's Day.

America Was, To Them, The Place That Good People Went To When They Died. They Were Prepared To Believe Just About Anything Could Happen In America.

He Goes His Way. We Travel A Spiral. The Quickest Way Is Sometimes The Longest.

It Stared At Them, And It Paused For A Hundred Years, Which Transpired In A Dozen Heart Beats.

Life Is A Rock, But The Radio Rolled Me Over.

I Have A Feeling,’ He Said, ‘i Have A Feeling That We Were Meant To Be Together. That We Have Fought The Good Fight, Side By Side, In The Past Or In The Future, I Do Not Know. I Am A Rational Man, But I Have Learned The Value Of A Good Companion, And From The Moment I Clapped Eyes On You, I Knew I Trusted You As Well As I Do Myself. Yes, I Want You With Me.

He Had Noticed That Events Were Cowards: They Didn't Occur Singly, But Instead They Would Run In Packs And Leap Out At Him All At Once.

I Was Kidnapped By Aliens, They Came Down From Outer Space With Ray Guns, But I Fooled Them By Wearing A Wig And Laughing In A Foreign Accent, And I Escaped.

Sometimes Life Is Hard. Things Go Wrong—in Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All The Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do: Make Good Art. . . . Someone On The Internet Thinks What You’re Doing Is Stupid Or Evil Or It’s All Been Done Before: Make Good Art. Probably Things Will Work Out Somehow, Eventually Time Will Take The Sting Away, And It Doesn’t Even Matter. Do What Only You Can Do Best: Make Good Art.

The Past Is Always Knocking At The Door, Trying To Break Through Into Today.

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.

Soon,” Said The Crackling Voice Of The Flame, Coming From Behind Him, “they Will Fall. Soon They Will Fall And The Star People Will Meet The Earth People. There Will Be Heroes Among Them, And Men Who Will Slay Monsters And Bring Knowledge, But None Of Them Will Be Gods. This Is A Poor Place For Gods.

And Sometimes When You Fall... You Fly...

In Many Ways, It Was Much, Much Harder To Get The First Book Contract. The Hardest Thing Probably Overall Has Been Learning Not To Trust People, Publicists And So Forth, Implicitly.

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.

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.

What's It Like Then?" Asked Old Bailey. "being Dead?" The Marquis Sighed. And Then He Twisted His Lips Up Into A Smile, And With A Glitter Of His Old Self, He Replied, "live Long Enough, Old Bailey, And You Can Find Out For Yourself.

We Are Small But We Are Many We Are Many We Are Small We Were Here Before You Rose We Will Be Here When You Fall

It’s Part Of Growing Up, I Suppose…you Always Have To Leave Something Behind You.

It's Like One Of Those Dreams That Changes You. You Keep Some Of The Dream Forever, And You Know Things Down Deep Inside Yourself, Because It Happened To You, But When You Go Looking For Details They Kind Of Just Slip Out Of Your Head.

Partly Because I Get Such Astonishingly Nice Fans.

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

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

If You Go To Space, You'll Look Down And See No National Boundaries. You'll Never See The Gods People Are Killing Each Other Over, But They're Incredibly Real.

He Couldn’t See Why People Made Such A Fuss About People Eating Their Silly Old Fruit Anyway, But Life Would Be A Lot Less Fun If They Didn’t. And There Was Never An Apple, In Adam’s Opinion, That Wasn’t Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes.

Never Mind. There. For Good Or Bad. It's Done.

When The First Living Thing Existed, I Was There Waiting. When The Last Living Thing Dies, My Job Will Be Finished. I'll Put The Chairs On The Tables, Turn Out The Lights And Lock The Universe Behind Me When I Leave.

You Hurt. It's Okay. I Hurt Too. Hold My Hand.

You Shone Like A Star. The Funniest, Wisest Writer & The Finest Friend

Writing Fiction Is Not A Profession That Leaves One Well-disposed Toward Reading Fiction. One Starts Out Loving Books And Stories, And Then One Becomes Jaded And Increasingly Hard To Please. I Read Less And Less Fiction These Days, Finding The Buzz And The Joy I Used To Get From Fiction In Ever Stranger Works Of Non-fiction, Or Poetry.

Anyone Who Calls You "little Lady" Has Already Excluded You From The Set Of People Worth Listening To.

When You Start Out On A Career In The Arts You Have No Idea What You Are Doing. This Is Great. People Who Know What They Are Doing Know The Rules, And Know What Is Possible And Impossible. You Do Not. And You Should Not. The Rules On What Is Possible And Impossible In The Arts Were Made By People Who Had Not Tested The Bounds Of The Possible By Going Beyond Them. And You Can. If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do. And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Possible And Impossible

He..." Richard Began. "the Marquis. Well, You Know, To Be Honest, He Seems A Little Bit Dodgy To Me." Door Stopped. The Steps Dead-ended In A Rough Brick Wall. "mm," She Agreed. "he's A Little Bit Dodgy In The Same Way That Rats Are A Little Bit Covered In Fur.

There's Nothing For Getting You Good Fast Like Having To Be Good Fast, If That Makes Any Sense.

You See, The Outcome Of The Battle Is Unimportant. What Matters Is The Chaos, And The Slaughter.

I'm Willing To Make A Fool Out Of Myself In Public. I'm Also Willing To Make Those Mistakes That You're Going To Make The First Time You Go Out, So Hopefully The Next Time It Will Be Better.

You're Always You, And That Don't Change, And You're Always Changing, And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

I Was A Stranger And You Took Me In. -joji G. Shoji, D. 1921

The End Of The Story Of Batman Is He's Dead. Because, In The End, The Batman Dies. What Else Am I Going To Do? Retire And Play Golf? It Doesn't Work That Way. It Can't. I Fight Until I Drop. And One Day, I Will Drop.

Classic Authors Should Be Older Than I Am, And Wiser, And On-top Of All Their Deadlines.

He Felt Her Heart Beating Against His Chest. The Moment Began To Transmute, And He Wondered If There Was Something He Should Do. He Wondered If He Should Kiss Her. He Wondered If He Wanted To Kiss Her, And He Realized That He Truly Didn't Know.

I've Known Ambitious People With No Aptitude For The Thing They Did. Most Of Whom, Rather Terrifyingly, Tended To Succeed.

Life Is Always Going To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Because Fiction Has To Be Convincing, And Life Doesn't.

Idris: Are All People Like This? The Doctor: Like What? Idris: So Much Bigger On The Inside.

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

England And America

I Will Be A Wise And Tolerant Monarch, Dispencing Justice Fairly, And Only Setting Nightmares To Rip Out The Winds Of The Evil And The Wicked. Or Just Anybody That I Don't Like.

When Most People Said "i'm Psychic, You See," They Meant "i Have An Overactive But Unoriginal Imagination/wear Black Nail Varnish/talk To My Budgie;" When Anathema Said It, It Sounded As Though She Was Admitting To A Hereditary Disease Which She'd Much Prefer Not To Have.

Empathy Is A Tool For Building People Into Groups, For Allowing Us To Function As More Than Self-obsessed Individuals.

What I Say Is, A Town Isn't A Town Without A Bookstore. It May Call Itself A Town, But Unless It's Got A Bookstore It Knows It's Not Fooling A Soul.

I Think There Should Be An Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% Of The People Have 99.99999% Of The Time.

Rain In The Graveyard, And The World Puddled Into Blurred Reflections.

I Don't Think I'm Mainstream. I Think What I Am Is Lots And Lots Of Different Cults. And When You Get Lots And Lots Of Small Groups Who Like You A Lot, They Add Up To A Big Group Without Ever Actually Becoming Mainstream.

Do You Know Why I Stopped Being Delight, My Brother? I Do. There Are Things Not In Your Book. There Are Paths Outside This Garden.

She Smiled Again. "do You Like Cat?" She Said. "yes," Said Richard. "i Quite Like Cats." Anaesthesia Looked Relieved. "thigh?" She Asked, "or Breast?

There Are Stories You Build And There Are Stories You Construct; Then There Are The Stories That You Hack Out Of Rock Removing All The Things That Are Not The Story.

I Love Mythic Stuff. I Love Playing With Gods, I Love Playing With Myths. A Lot Of It Has To Do With That They're The Basic Places Stories Come From. They're The Clay That You Make The Bricks Out Of.

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Man-made Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf. These Dogs Advance Deliberately, Purposefully, The Wilderness Made Flesh, Their Teeth Yellow, Their Breath A-stink, While In The Distance Their Owners Witter, "he's An Old Soppy Really, Just Poke Him If He's A Nuisance," And In The Green Of Their Eyes The Red Campfires Of The Pleistocene Gleam And Flicker.

That Doesn't Happen," She Explained. "stars Fall. They Don't Go Back Up Again." "you Could Be The First," He Told Her.

In Hollywood, Lying Is Something That People Do Like Breathing.

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

There Was A Hand In The Darkness, And It Held A Knife.

Lucifer Protests He Was Never To Blame For Inducing Anyone To Sin, And That He’s Never Had An Interest In Owning Souls: 'they Die, And They Come Here – Having Transgressed Against What They Believed To Be Right – And Expect Us To Fulfill Their Desire For Pain And Retribution. I Don’t Make Them Come Here… I Need No Souls. And How Can Anyone Own A Soul? No, They Belong To Themselves. They Just Hate To Have To Face Up To It.

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

Making Fiction For Children, Making Books For Children, Isn't Something You Do For Money. It's Something You Do Because What Children Read And Learn And See And Take In Changes Them And Forms Them, And They Make The Future. They Make The World We're Going To Wind Up In, The World That Will Be Here When We're Gone. Which Sounds Preachy (and Is More Than You Need For A Quotebyte) But It's True. I Want To Tell Kids Important Things, And I Want Them To Love Stories And Love Reading And Love Finding Things Out. I Want Them To Be Brave And Wise. So I Write For Them.

I Am Remarkably Likeable. Few People Have Ever Been As Likeable As I Am. There Is, Frankly, No End To My Likeability. People Gather Together In Public Assemblies To Discuss How Much They Like Me. I Have Several Awards, And A Small Medal From A Small Country In South America Which Pays Tribute Both To How Much I Am Liked And My General All Around Wonderfulness. I Don't Have It On Me, Of Course. I Keep My Medals In My Sock Drawer.

Leave No Stone Unturned. Deeply Explore The Beauty Of Your Life.

There Are A Number Of Paths That Lead To This Place. I Have Been Avoiding Them For Some Small Time, Now.

He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring Because Yesterday Has Brought It.

I Really Like Being Able To Laugh At My Own Jokes.

So You Used To Know Everything?" She Wrinkled Her Nose. "everybody Did. I Told You. It's Nothing Special, Knowing How Things Work. And You Really Do Have To Give It All Up If You Want To Play." "to Play What?" "this," She Said. She Waved At The House And The Sky And The Impossible Full Moon And The Skeins And The Shawls And Clusters Of Bright Stars.

We'll Win, Of Course," He Said. "you Don't Want That," Said The Demon. "why Not, Pray?“ “listen," Said Crowley Desperately, "how Many Musicians Do You Think Your Side Have Got, Eh? First Grade, I Mean." Aziraphale Looked Taken Aback. "well, I Should Think-" He Began. "two," Said Crowley. "elgar And Liszt. That's All. We've Got The Rest. Beethoven, Brahms, All The Bachs, Mozart, The Lot. Can You Imagine Eternity With Elgar?

And He Waited. It Was Only For A Few Seconds, But It Felt Like A Small Forever.

I Knew Enough About Adults To Know That If Did Tell Them What Had Happened, I Would Not Be Believed. Adults Rarely Seemed To Believe Me When I Told The Truth Anyway.

And Did I Pass?" The Face Of The Old Woman On My Right Was Unreadable In The Gathering Dusk. On My Left The Younger Woman Said, "you Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

Because,' She Said, 'when You're Scared But You Still Do It Anyway, That's Brave.

Like Some Kind Of Particularly Tenacious Vampire The Short Story Refuses To Die, And Seems At This Point In Time To Be A Wonderful Length For Our Generation.

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.

There Was Only One Guy In The Whole Bible Jesus Ever Personally Promised A Place With Him In Paradise. Not Peter, Not Paul, Not Any Of Those Guys. He Was A Convicted Thief, Being Executed. So Don't Knock The Guys On Death Row. Maybe They Know Something You Don't.

Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

All Good Technology Should Be Used To Piss Off People's Parents.

Writing May Or May Not Be Your Salvation; It Might Or Might Not Be Your Destiny. But That Does Not Matter. What Matters Right Now Are The Words, One After Another. Find The Next Word. Write It Down.

It Is Sometimes A Mistake To Climb. It Is Always A Mistake To Never Make The Attempt.

I Don't Think About Age Groups When I Write, Although I Think If I Know I'm Writing For Children I'll Be A Bit More Ambitious, And Think More About Every Word, Because I Know That They Pay Closer Attention When They Read Than Adults Do.

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.

I Hope You Will Have A Wonderful Year, That You'll Dream Dangerously And Outrageously, That You'll Make Something That Didn't Exist Before You Made It, That You Will Be Loved And That You Will Be Liked, And That You Will Have People To Love And To Like In Return. And, Most Importantly (because I Think There Should Be More Kindness And More Wisdom In The World Right Now), That You Will, When You Need To Be, Be Wise, And That You Will Always Be Kind.

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 Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled.

Too Much Talking These Days. Talk Talk Talk. This Country Would Get Along Much Better If People Learned How To Suffer In Silence.

Note For Americans And Other Aliens: Milton Keynes Is A New City Approximately Halfway Between London And Birmingham. It Was Built To Be Modern, Efficient, Healthy, And, All In All, A Pleasant Place To Live. Many Britons Find This Amusing.

People Think Dreams Aren't Real Just Because They Aren't Made Of Matter, Of Particles. Dreams Are Real. But They Are Made Of Viewpoints, Of Images, Of Memories And Puns And Lost Hopes.

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.

People Can Get Involved In Wonderfully Creative Ways That Have Nothing To Do With You, But Spark Off Things You Begin With.

But He Did Not Understand The Price. Mortals Never Do. They Only See The Prize, Their Heart's Desire, Their Dream... But The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What You Once Wanted.

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

The Secret To Writing Is Just To Write. Write Every Day. Never Stop Writing. Write On Every Surface You See; Write On People On The Street. When The Cops Come To Arrest You, Write On The Cops. Write On The Police Car. Write On The Judge. I'm In Jail Forever Now, And The Prison Cell Walls Are Completely Covered With My Writing, And I Keep Writing On The Writing I Wrote. That's My Method.

There Was A Tale He Had Read Once, Long Ago, As A Small Boy: The Story Of A Traveler Who Had Slipped Down A Cliff, With Man-eating Tigers Above Him And A Lethal Fall Below Him, Who Managed To Stop His Fall Halfway Down The Side Of The Cliff, Holding On For Dear Life. There Was A Clump Of Strawberries Beside Him, And Certain Death Above Him And Below. What Should He Do? Went The Question. And The Reply Was, Eat The Strawberries. The Story Had Never Made Sense To Him As A Boy. It Did Now.

Coming Over From England, I Was Awe-struck By What Americans Do At Halloween. I Find It Magnificent. In England, You Get The Occasional Fancy Dress Party.

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.

Imagine A Mosaic Picture Of A House In The Country: Lots Of Red And Blue And Yellow And Black And Brown And White And A Dozen Different Shades Of Green Tiles Which Make A Beautiful Picture If You Stand Back Far Enough. All The Little Red Squares Are True - True Things, True Places, True Feelings. But The Red Squares Aren't The Picture. All The Rest Of It Is Lies And Stories, Often Within The Same Sentence.

The World Is Always Ending, And The End Is Always Being Averted, By Love Or Foolishness Or Just Plain Old Dumb Luck.

I Looked At The World Of Books And Just Went, Oh My Gosh, If I'm Writing Novels, I'm On The Same Shelves As Jane Austen And Charles Dickens And Petronius - Whereas With Comics, They've Only Been Doing Them For A Hundred Years, And There's Stuff That Nobody's Done Before. I Think I'll Go Off And Do Some Of The Stuff No One's Ever Done Before.

First Rule Of Magic: Don't Let Anyone Know Your Real Name. Names Have Power.

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.

I Was Bright, And I Could Use That As A Weapon: Words Can Wound, Whatever Those Sticks And Stones Sayings Claim About Them Never Hurting, And I Could Use Them If I Had To.

One Word After Another. That's The Only Way That Novels Get Written And, Short Of Elves Coming In The Night And Turning Your Jumbled Notes Into Chapter Nine, It's The Only Way To Do It. So Keep On Keeping On. Write Another Word And Then Another.

If You Were To Try And Pick Him Out Of A Group Of Boys, You’d Be Wrong. He’d Be The Other One. Over At The Side. The One Your Eye Slipped Over.

When I Was Young, You Know, The First Foreign Editions That Would Come In Of Anything Of Mine, I'd Sit There And Look At Them As These Strange And Wonderful Artifacts.

The Marquis Sighed. "i Thought It Was Just A Legend," He Said. "like The Alligators In The Sewers Of New York City." Old Bailey Nodded, Sagely: "what, The Big White Buggers? They're Down There. I Had A Friend Lost A Head To One Of Them." A Moment Of Silence. Old Naeiley Handed The Statue Back To The Marquis. Then He Raised His Hand, And Snapped It, Like A Crocodile Hand, At The Carabas. "it Was Ok," Gurned Old Bailey With A Grin That Was Most Terrible To Behold. "he Had Another.

While Clothes Do Not, As The Saying Would Sometimes Have It, Make The Man, And Fine Feathers Do Not Make Fine Birds, Sometimes They Can Add A Certain Spice To A Recipe.

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

Never Use Five Words If You Can Get Away With One, Eh? I've Known Dead Men Talk More Than You Do.

I Walk Across The Dreaming Sands Under The Pale Moon: Through The Dreams Of Countries And Cities, Past Dreams Of Places Long Gone And Times Beyond Recall.

Recounting The Strange Is Like Telling One's Dreams: One Can Communicate The Events Of A Dream, But Not The Emotional Content, The Way That A Dream Can Colour One's Entire Day.

It’s An Artist’s Job To Show People The World They Live In. We Hold Up Mirrors.

It's Easy, There's A Trick To It, You Do It Or You Die.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

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.

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