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I Just Want You To Know,' Said The Girl, Coldly, 'that Whoever You Are And Whatever You Intend With Me, I Shall Give You No Aid Of Any Kind, Nor Shall I Assist You, And I Shall Do Whatever Is In My Power To Frustrate Your Plans And Devices.' And Then She Added, With Feeling, 'idiot.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Just Want You

Neil Gaiman

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I Just Want You To Know,' Said The Girl, Coldly, 'that Whoever You Are And Whatever You Intend With Me, I Shall Give You No Aid Of Any Kind, Nor Shall I Assist You, And I Shall Do Whatever Is In My Power To Frustrate Your Plans And Devices.' And Then She Added, With Feeling, 'idiot.

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What Would Be The Fun In Doing Things You Know Are Going To Work?

Anywhere That I Can't Check My Email Is A Good Place To Write!

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I Am Amiable. Vague. Puzzled. Messy-haired.

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Does It Make You Feel Big To Make A Little Boy Cry?

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Go Get Your Heart Broken.

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There Was Nowhere They Could Have Gone And They Went There Anyway.

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

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

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You Know You Can Set Fire To The Capacity To Say.

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What’s Your Name, Lad?” “newton. Newton Pulsifer.” “lucifer? What’s That You Say? Are Ye Of The Spawn Of Darkness, A Tempting Beguiling Creature From The Pit, Wanton Limbs Steaming From The Fleshpots Of Hades, In Tortured And Lubricious Thrall To Your Stygian And Hellish Masters?” “that’s Pulsifer,” Explained Newton. “with A P. I Don’t Know About The Other Stuff, But We Come From Surrey.” The Voice On The Phone Sounded Vaguely Disappointed.

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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.

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For Me, Closing Libraries Is The Equivalent Of Eating Your Seed Corn To Save A Little Money.

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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.

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Unanswered Questions

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.

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.

It Won't Hurt, Said Her Other Father. Coraline Knew That When Grown-ups Told You Something Wouldn't Hurt It Almost Always Did. She Shook Her Head.

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.

There Are Four Simple Ways For The Observant To Tell Mr. Croup And Mr. Vandemar Apart: First, Mr. Vandemar Is Two And A Half Heads Taller Than Mr. Croup; Second, Mr. Croup Has Eyes Of A Faded China Blue, While Mr. Vandemar's Eyes Are Brown; Third, While Mr. Vandemar Fashioned The Rings He Wears On His Right Hand Out Of The Skulls Of Four Ravens, Mr. Croup Has No Obvious Jewelery; Fourth, Mr. Croup Likes Words, While Mr. Vandemar Is Always Hungry. Also, They Look Nothing At All Alike.

To Be Despair. It Is A Portrait. Only Close Your Eyes And Feel.

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It's Just I Might Get Distracted, And I Get Lost Kind Of Easily, And Sometimes I Have Really Bad Days...when, You Know, I Just Want To Hide Or Scream Or Bleed Or Something, And...all That...

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

Science Fiction

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The Lovely Thing About Writing Comics For So Many Years Is That Comics Is A Medium That Is Mistaken For A Genre. It's Not That There Are Not Genres Within Comics, But Because Comics Tend To Be Regarded As A Genre In Itself, Content Becomes Secondary; As Long As I Was Doing A Comic, People Would Pick It Up.

This Is A Book For Every Fiddler Who Has Realized Halfway Through Playing An Ancient Scottish Air That The Ramones "i Wanna Be Sedated" Is What Folk Music Is Really All About, And Gone Straight Into It.

You Play Your Cards So Close To Your Chest," Said Shadow, "that I'm Not Even Sure They're Really Cards At All.

It Has Always Been The Prerogative Of Children And Half-wits To Point Out That The Emperor Has No Clothes. But The Half-wit Remains A Half-wit, And The Emperor Remains An Emperor.

Not Knowing Everything Is All That Makes It Ok, Sometimes.

Knowing Everything

We Look About In Puzzlement At Our World, With A Sense Of Unease And Disquiet. We Think Of Ourselves As Scholars In Arcane Liturgies, Single Men Trapped In Worlds Beyond Our Devising. The Truth Is Far Simpler: There Are Things In The Darkness Beneath Us That Wish Us Harm.

Normally, In Anything I Do, I'm Fairly Miserable. I Do It, And I Get Grumpy Because There Is A Huge, Vast Gulf, This Aching Disparity, Between The Platonic Ideal Of The Project That Was Living In My Head, And The Small, Sad, Wizened, Shaking, Squeaking Thing That I Actually Produce.

There Were People You Could Hug, And Then There Was Silas.

Potentially Evil. Potentially Good, Too, I Suppose. Just This Huge Powerful Potentiality Waiting To Be Shaped.

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.

People Talk About Escapism As If It's A Bad Thing... Once You've Escaped, Once You Come Back, The World Is Not The Same As When You Left It. You Come Back To It With Skills, Weapons, Knowledge You Didn't Have Before. Then You Are Better Equipped To Deal With Your Current Reality.

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

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

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.

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.

Any View Of Things That Is Not Strange, Is False.

She Was Also An Adult, And When Adults Fight Children, Adults Always Win.

I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No, I Am Brave.

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.

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

[d]on't Ever Apologize To An Author For Buying Something In Paperback, Or Taking It Out From A Library (that's What They're There For. Use Your Library). Don't Apologize To This Author For Buying Books Second Hand, Or Getting Them From Bookcrossing Or Borrowing A Friend's Copy. What's Important To Me Is That People Read The Books And Enjoy Them, And That, At Some Point In There, The Book Was Bought By Someone. And That People Who Like Things, Tell Other People. The Most Important Thing Is That People Read.

As Far As I'm Concerned, The World Is Composed Of Stories. For Architects, The World Is Composed Of Buildings, For Actors The World Is Composed Of Theatres, Or Whatever... For Me, The World Is Simply Composed Of Stories, When I Look, That's What I See.

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?

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

One Of Those Days

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.

Being A Writer Of Fiction Isn't Like Being A Compulsive Liar, Honestly.

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 Was Writing The Kind Of Comic That Would Make Me, At Age 26 Or 27, Go Down To A Comic Book Store Every Month And Spend My $2. That Was My Starting Point. I Wanted To Write A Comic That I Would Read. And That's Still My Agenda.

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.

The Moment That You Feel That Just Possibly You Are Walking Down The Street Naked...that's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

I Believe We Have An Obligation To Read For Pleasure, In Private And In Public Places. If We Read For Pleasure, If Others See Us Reading, Then We Learn, We Exercise Our Imaginations. We Show Others That Reading Is A Good Thing.

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

If I Were Only Allowed To Read Or Enjoy Art Or Listen To Music Made By People Whose Opinions And Beliefs Were The Same As Mine, I Think The World Would Be A Pretty Dismal Sort Of A Place.

The Simplest Way To Make Sure That We Raise Literate Children Is To Teach Them To Read, And To Show Them That Reading Is A Pleasurable Activity.

People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

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

Why Do They Blame Me For All Their Little Failings? They Use My Name As If I Spent My Entire Days Sitting On Their Shoulders, Forcing Them To Commits Acts They Would Otherwise Find Repulsive. 'the Devil Made Me Do It.' I Have Never Made One Of Them Do Anything. Never. They Live Their Own Tiny Lives. I Do Not Live Their Lives For Them.

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

Night Was Spreading Slowly Around The Spinning Earth. It Should Have Been Full Of Pinpricks Of Light. It Was Not. There Were Five Billion People Down There. What Was Going To Happen Soon Would Make Barbarism Look Like A Picnic - Hot, Nasty, And Eventually Given Over To The Ants.

Even Nothing Cannot Last Forever.

I Know That The Way To Be A Really Successful Writer Is To Write The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again. Find The Kind Of Thing That People Like And Just Write One Of Those Over And Over Again. I Don't Do That. I Just Keep Doing Different Things.

None Of Us Know Where Our Stories Come From. That's Why Writers Make Fun Of People Who Ask Us Where We Get Our Ideas... Because We Don't Know.

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.

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Juan Manuel Santos

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