Background Image

...

I Love Writing In Longhand. Writing In Longhand, I Think, Is A Marvelous Thing To Do For A Writer These Days. If You Have A Notebook And A Nice Pen You Can Go Off Somewhere, You Can Write That's Solar Powered. You Can Drop It Or Get It Wet And Pretty Much All Of Your Work Will Continue To Be There. If You Suddenly Decide To Look Up A Word Or Check A Reference You Will Not Look Up Four Hours Later, Blinking, Finding Yourself Somehow In The Middle Of An Ebay Auction You Never Had Any Plans To Be Part Of.

-Neil Gaiman

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Love Writing In

Neil Gaiman

...

I Love Writing In Longhand. Writing In Longhand, I Think, Is A Marvelous Thing To Do For A Writer These Days. If You Have A Notebook And A Nice Pen You Can Go Off Somewhere, You Can Write That's Solar Powered. You Can Drop It Or Get It Wet And Pretty Much All Of Your Work Will Continue To Be There. If You Suddenly Decide To Look Up A Word Or Check A Reference You Will Not Look Up Four Hours Later, Blinking, Finding Yourself Somehow In The Middle Of An Ebay Auction You Never Had Any Plans To Be Part Of.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Neil Gaiman

From Meetings And Partings None Can Ever Escape. Nor From Magic.

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

I Started Blogging A Decade Ago Because I Like Blogging. Writing's A Kind Of Lonely Thing To Do And I Liked The Idea Of Demystifying The Process Because I Loved It As A Kid And Teenager And As Somebody Who Wanted Desperately To Write.

The Moonlight Was Enough. It Would Do.

They Were Not My Friends, After All. They Were Just The People I Went To School With.

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

What About Volcanoes?" "what About Them?" "all That Lava Comes Up From Center Of The Earth Where It Is All Hot. I Saw A Program, It Had David Attenborough, So It's True.

I Am Not By Nature The Kind Of Creator Who Is Transgressive In Order To Be Transgressive.

The Future Came And Went In The Mildly Discouraging Way That Futures Do.

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.

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.

Picking Five Favorite Books Is Like Picking The Five Body Parts You'd Most Like Not To Lose.

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.

I See Libraries And Librarians As Frontline Soldiers In The War Against Illiteracy And The Lack Of Imagination.

I Always Wanted To Be A Writer, But Alan Moore's Work And Help Inspired Me To Write Comics. In Some Ways The Biggest Influence On Me Writing Was Punk. There Was The Idea That You Could Do Something By Simply Doing It.

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

How Would You Feel About Life If Death Was Your Older Sister?

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.

There Are New Gods Growing In America, Clinging To Growing Knots Of Belief: Gods Of Credit Card And Freeway, Of Internet And Telephone, Of Radio And Hospital And Television, Gods Of Plastic And Of Beeper And Of Neon. Proud Gods, Fat And Foolish Creatures, Puffed Up With Their Own Newness And Importance. "they Are Aware Of Us, They Fear Us, And They Hate Us," Said Odin. "you Are Fooling Yourselves If You Believe Otherwise.

This Little Piggy Went To Hades This Little Piggy Stayed Home This Little Piggy Ate Raw And Steaming Human Flesh This Little Piggy Violated Virgins And This Little Piggy Clambered Over A Heap Of Dead Bodies To Get To The Top

Some Of Us Claim That He Was A Messiah, And Some Think That He Was Just A Man With Very Special Powers. But That Misses The Point. Whatever He Was, He Changed The World.

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.

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 Don't Want Whatever I Want. Nobody Does. Not Really. What Kind Of Fun Would It Be If I Just Got Everything I Ever Wanted Just Like That, And It Didn't Mean Anything? What Then?

The Short Story Is Still Like The Novel's Wayward Younger Brother, We Know That It's Not Respectable - But I Think That Can Also Add To The Glory Of It.

Work. Home. The Pub. Meeting Girls. Living In The City. Life. Is That All There Is?

Remember Your Name. Do Not Lose Hope ---what You Seek Will Be Found.

Following Instructions

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.

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.

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.

People Believe, Thought Shadow. It's What People Do. They Believe, And Then They Do Not Take Responsibility For Their Beliefs; They Conjure Things, And Do Not Trust The Conjuration. People Populate The Darkness; With Ghost, With Gods, With Electrons, With Tales. People Imagine, And People Believe; And It Is That Rock Solid Belief, That Makes Things Happen.

This Was The Void. Not Blackness, Not Nothingness. This Was What Lay Beneath The Thinly Painted Scrim Of Reality.

Love Me When I Least Deserve It, Because That’s When I Really Need It.

You're A Big One,[...] A Tall Drink Of Water, But I Got To Tell You, You Don't Look Too Bright. I Got A Son, Stupid As A Man Who Bought His Stupid At A Two-for-one Sale, And You Remind Me Of Him.

Suggestions? Put It Aside For A Few Days, Or Longer, Do Other Things, Try Not To Think About It. Then Sit Down And Read It (printouts Are Best I Find, But That's Just Me) As If You've Never Seen It Before. Start At The Beginning. Scribble On The Manuscript As You Go If You See Anything You Want To Change. And Often, When You Get To The End You'll Be Both Enthusiastic About It And Know What The Next Few Words Are. And You Do It All One Word At A Time.

Read. Read Anything. Read The Things They Say Are Good For You, And The Things They Claim Are Junk. You'll Find What You Need To Find. Just Read.

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.

I Like Horror, But I Tend To Like It As Seasoning. I'd Get Very Bored If I Was Told I Had To Write A Horror Novel. I'd Love To Write A Novel With Horror Elements, But Too Much, And It Doesn't Taste Of Anything Else.

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

Some Things Are Too Big To Be Seen; Some Emotions Are Too Huge To Be Felt.

The Lord Of Dreams Learns That One Must Change Or Die, And Makes His Decision

You Have To Believe. Otherwise, It Will Never Happen.

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.

I Kept Starting 'anansi Boys' As A Movie And Stopping, And Eventually Wrote The Novel And Was Happy.

I Suppose I Could Claim That I Had Suspected That The World Was A Cheap And Shoddy Sham, A Bad Cover For Something Deeper And Weirder And Infinitely More Strange, And That, In Some Way, I Already Know The Truth. But I Think That's Just How The World Has Always Been. And Even Now I Know The Truth, The World Still Seems Cheap And Shoddy. Different World, Different Shoddy, But That's How It Feels.

The Cartoon Me Writes The Books Cartoon People Read In The Cartoon World, Because They Need Things To Read There Too.

Information And Knowledge: Two Currencies That Have Never Gone Out Of Style.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

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.

If It's True That Every Seven Years Each Cell In Your Body Dies And Is Replaced, Then I Have Truly Inherited My Life From A Dead Man; And The Misdeeds Of Those Times Have Been Forgiven, And Are Buried With His Bones.

I Went Away In My Head, Into A Book. That Was Where I Went Whenever Real Life Was Too Hard Or Too Inflexible.

People Tend To Find Books When They Are Ready For Them.

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

The Only People I Ever Get Irritated With Are The Ones Who Announce, Using My Twitter Handle, That They Are No Longer Following Me And Why.

Everybody Going To Be Dead One Day, Just Give Them Time.

Delirium: 'what's The Name Of The Word For The Precise Moment When You Realize That You've Actually Forgotten How It Felt To Make Love To Somebody You Really Liked A Long Time Ago?' Dream: 'there Isn't One.' Delirium: 'oh. I Thought Maybe There Was.'

Anyone Who Believes What A Cat Tells Him Deserves All He Gets.

A Life That Is, Like Any Other, Unlike Any Other.

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.

Crowley Had Been Extremely Impressed With The Warranties Offered By The Computer Industry, And Had In Fact Sent A Bundle Below To The Department That Drew Up The Immortal Soul Agreements, With A Yellow Memo Form Attached Just Saying: "learn, Guys..."

There Are A Lot Of Artists Who've Said They'd Like To Work With Me. To Be Honest, I'm Not Sure There Is Such A Thing As An Inappropriate Artist. The Trick Is Matching The Artist With A Story.

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.

Don't Start Anything You're Not Prepared To Finish.

You Could Fire A Machine Gun Randomly Through The Pages Of Lord Of The Rings And Never Hit Any Women.

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine. First They Were Driving Through Countryside, Then, Imperceptibly, The Occasional Town Became A Low Suburban Sprawl, And The Sprawl Became The City.

Fiction Takes Us To Places That We Would Never Otherwise Go, And Puts Us Behind Eyes That Are Not Our Own.

Where Magic Is Concerned, There Is Always An Initial Decision, An Initial Willingness To Let It Enter Your Life. If That Is Not There Neither Is Magic.

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.

Shadow Had Heard Too Many People Telling Each Other Not To Repress Their Feelings, To Let Their Emotions Out, Let The Pain Go. Shadow Thought There Was A Lot To Be Said For Bottling Up Emotions. If You Did It Long Enough And Deep Enough, He Suspected, Pretty Soon You Wouldn't Feel Anything At All.

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.

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.

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubbles In Amber,” She Explained. “there’s A Lot Of Time In London, And It Has To Go Somewhere—it Doesn’t All Get Used Up At Once.” “i May Still Be Hung Over,” Sighed Richard. “that Almost Made Sense.

We Who Make Stories Know That We Tell Lies For A Living. But They Are Good Lies That Say True Things, And We Owe It To Our Readers To Build Them As Best We Can. Because Somewhere Out There Is Someone Who Needs That Story. Someone Who Will Grow Up With A Different Landscape, Who Without That Story Will Be A Different Person. And Who With That Story May Have Hope, Or Wisdom, Or Kindness, Or Comfort. And That Is Why We Write.

Doing Fine, Thank You, I Would Say, Never Knowing How To Talk About What I Do. If I Could Talk About It, I Would Not Have To Do It. I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Heart. Some Of Them. Not All.

The Lower You Start, The More Opportunities You Have.

There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

Because If You Don't Stand Up For The Stuff You Don't Like, When They Come For The Stuff You Do Like, You've Already Lost.

Freedom Of Speech

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

None Of Us Exist In A World That Is The Same World That Any Of The Rest Of Us Live In. The World That's Important Is The World Behind Each Of Our Eyes, Which Is Something That None Of The Rest Of Us Can Access.

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.

Parameters Are The Things You Bounce Off To Create Art.

None Of This Is Truly Happening," He Said To Shadow. He Sounded Miserable. "it's All In Your Head. Best Not To Think Of It.

I'll Find You. Don't Worry. Just Be On Your Own And I'll Find You.

I Will Write In Words Of Fire. I Will Write Them On Your Skin. I Will Write About Desire. Write Beginnings, Write Of Sin. You’re The Book I Love The Best, Your Skin Only Holds My Truth, You Will Be A Palimpsest Lines Of Age Rewriting Youth. You Will Not Burn Upon The Pyre. Or Be Buried On The Shelf. You’re My Letter To Desire: And You’ll Never Read Yourself. I Will Trace Each Word And Comma As The Final Dusk Descends, You’re My Tale Of Dreams And Drama, Let Us Find Out How It Ends.

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic: There Is Whoever Is Writing It, And Whoever Is Drawing It, And Then There's Whoever Is Reading It, Because The Really Important Things In Comics Are Occurring In The Panel Gutters, They're Occurring Between Panels As The Person Reading The Comics Is Moving You Through, Is Creating A Film In Their Heads.

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

You Were Her Way Here, And It's A Dangerous Thing To Be A Door.

What Makes You Think I'm Giving You A Ride?” “because I'm A Damsel In Distress,” She Said. “and You Are A Knight In Whatever. A Really Dirty Car.

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

You Have A Very Open Relationship With Your Fans." "yes. We Have An Open Relationship. Obviously They Can See Other Authors If They Want, And I Can See Other Readers.

Open Relationship

Sister Mary Chose That Moment To Come In With The Tea. Satanist Or Not, She'd Also Found A Plate And Arranged Some Iced Biscuits On It.

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.

Many Phenomena - Wars, Plagues, Sudden Audits - Have Been Advanced As Evidence For The Hidden Hand Of Satan In The Affairs Of Man, But Whenever Students Of Demonology Get Together The M25 London Orbital Motorway Is Generally Agreed To Be Among The Top Contenders For Exhibit A.

You Attend The Funeral, You Bid The Dead Farewell. You Grieve. Then You Continue With Your Life. And At Times The Fact Of Her Absence Will Hit You Like A Blow To The Chest, And You Will Weep. But This Will Happen Less And Less As Time Goes On. She Is Dead. You Are Alive. So Live.

Google Can Bring You Back 100,000 Answers. A Librarian Can Bring You Back The Right One.

Thought Provoking

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

The First Author I Remember Being Obsessed By, Actually Realizing 'i Like The Way He Writes And I Like The Way He Tells Stories,' Was C.s. Lewis And The 'narnia' Books.

To Journalists My Move From Comics To Films To Best-selling Novels Was Resembling Those Little Evolutionary Maps Too Much, Where You See The Fish, And Then It Can Walk, And Then It's An Ape And Then It Gets Up On Its Hind Legs And Finally It Is A Man. I Didn't Like That. I Didn't Like The Fact That There Was Something Rather Amphibious About Me - At Least In Their Heads - Back When I Was Writing Comics. So I Like Continuing To Write Comics, If Only Because It Points Out That I Haven't Just Started To Walk Upright Or Left The Water.

To Be A Good Writer... Read A Lot And Write Every Day.

I Learned To Write By Writing. I Tended To Do Anything As Long As It Felt Like An Adventure, And To Stop When It Felt Like Work, Which Meant That Life Did Not Feel Like Work.

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.

I Wish I Could Buy Time - Just Write A Cheque, And A Few Days Later A Brown Cardboard Box Would Arrive At The Door Containing Three Months (along With An Extra Bonus Sunny Weekend For Being A Good Customer).

All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

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

Traveling Through The Dragon's Den, It Has Just Been Explained That Haroun, The Ifrit, Has Been Caught In A Mirror Trap. Here Is The Passage That Follows: "so," Said Silas. "now There Are Only Three Of Us." "and A Pig," Said Kandar [the Mummy] "why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, With A Wolf-tongue, Through Wolf Teeth. "why The Pig?" "it's Lucky," Said Kandar. Miss Lupescu Growled, Unconvinced. "did Haroun Have A Pig?" Asked Kandar, Simply.

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

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.

I Personally Have A Great Deal Of Respect For Readers. I Have A Great Deal Of Respect For The Human Race. I Think Most People Can Tell The Difference Between Fiction And Fact. I Think That The Action Of Writing About Something Does Not Condone It. The Best Thing I Can Ever Hope To Do Is Provide Good Questions, And I Think I Do That. I Hope I Do.

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.

We Get To Experience The Same Thing In Very Different Ways With Different Parts Of Ourselves.

If Not For Death, They’d Be Content To Simply Exist, But With Death, Well, Their Lives Will Have Meaning — A Boundary Beyond Which The Living Cannot Cross.

Writing's A Lot Like Cooking. Sometimes The Cake Won't Rise, No Matter What You Do, And Every Now And Again The Cake Tastes Better Than You Ever Could Have Dreamed It Would.

For Me, The Glory Of My First 25 Years As A Writer Was I Could Put Things Off As Long As I Wanted.

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.

You're A Poem?' I Repeated. She Chewed Her Lower Lip. 'if You Want. I Am A Poem, Or I Am A Pattern, Or A Race Of People Whose Whose World Was Swallowed By The Sea.' 'isn't It Hard To Be Three Things At The Same Time?' 'what's Your Name?' 'enn.' 'so You Are Enn,' She Said. 'and You Are A Male. And You Are A Biped. Is It Hard To Be Three Things At The Same Time?

He Left The Drapes Open, Watched The Lights Of The Cars And Of The Fast Food Joints Through The Window Glass, Comforted To Know There Was Another World Out There, One He Could Walk To Anytime He Wanted.

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?

We Do What We Do, Because Of Who We Are. If We Did Otherwise, We Would Not Be Ourselves.

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 Like 'pencil-necked Weasel'. It Has 'pencil' In It. Pencils Are Good Things. You Can Draw Or Write Things With Pencils. I Think It's What You Call Someone When You're Worried That Using A Long Word Like 'intellectual' May Have Too Many Syllables. It's Not Something That People Who Have Serious, Important Things To Say Call Other People.

I Don't Think It Would Be Fun To Write After Inhaling Art Fumes. (what Are Art Fumes?) No, I Just Make Stuff Up. It's Easier That Way.

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

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

Libraries Are Our Friends.

Thought Provoking

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.

And There Are Always People Who Find Their Lives Have Become So Unsupportable They Believe The Best Thing They Could Do Would Be To Hasten Their Transition To Another Plane Of Existence.' 'they Kill Themselves, You Mean?' Said Bod. [...] 'indeed.' 'does It Work? Are They Happier Dead?' 'sometimes. Mostly, No. It's Like The People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, But Who Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

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.

I Loved The Fact That I Was Suddenly No Longer Dependent On Whether A Store Took Out An Ad In The Right Place, Or On The Word On The Street.

You're Brave. You Are The Bravest Person I Know, And You Are My Friend. I Don't Care If You Are Imaginary.

Sometimes I Suspect That We Build Our Traps Ourselves, Then We Back Into Them, Pretending Amazement The While.

A Library Is A Place That Is A Repository Of Information And Gives Every Citizen Equal Access To It.

Life And Death Are Different Sides Of The Same Coin.

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.

Librarians Are The Coolest People Out There Doing The Hardest Job Out There On The Frontlines. And Every Time I Get To Encounter Or Work With Librarians, I'm Always Impressed By Their Sheer Awesomeness.

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

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.

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.

25 And The Lord Spake Unto The Angel That Guarded The Eastern Gate, Saying 'where Is The Flaming Sword That Was Given Unto Thee?' 26 And The Angel Said, 'i Had It Here Only A Moment Ago, I Must Have Put It Down Some Where, Forget My Own Head Next.' 27 And The Lord Did Not Ask Him Again.

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.

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.

I Wondered How I Looked To Her, In That Place, And Knew That Even In A Place That Was Nothing But Knowledge That Was The One Thing I Could Not Know. That If I Look Inward I Would See Only Infinite Mirrors Staring Into Myself For Eternity.

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.

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

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

If You Read Enough Lionel Fanthorpe, Your Brain Starts To Turn To Jelly And Just Dribbles Out Of Your Ears.

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

I Believe In Absolute Honesty And Sensible Social Lies.

Sometimes I Think That Ideas Float Through The Atmosphere Like Huge Squishy Pumpkins, Waiting For Heads To Drop On.

We All Not Only Could Know Everything. We Do. We Just Tell Ourselves We Don't To Make It All Bearable.

Finish What You're Writing. Whatever You Have To Do To Finish It, Finish It.

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

Have You Thought About What It Means To Be A God?" Asked The Man. He Had A Beard And A Baseball Cap. "it Means You Give Up Your Mortal Existence To Become A Meme: Something That Lives Forever In People's Minds, Like The Tune Of A Nursery Rhyme. It Means That Everyone Gets To Re-create You In Their Own Minds. You Barely Have Your Own Identity Any More. Instead, You're A Thousand Aspects Of What People Need You To Be. And Everyone Wants Something Different From You. Nothing Is Fixed, Nothing Is Stable.

I Still Love The Book-ness Of Books, The Smell Of Books: I Am A Book Fetishist—books To Me Are The Coolest And Sexiest And Most Wonderful Things There Are.

A God's Relationship To The World, Even A World In Which He Was Walking, Was About As Emotionally Connected As That Of A Computer Gamer Playing With Knowledge Of The Overall Shape Of The Game And Armed With A Complete Set Of Cheat Codes.

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

You Know What My Mum Once Said?’ Said Rosie… ‘she Said That If A Just-married Couple Put A Coin In A Jar Every Time They Make Love In Their First Year, And Take A Coin Out For Every Time That They Make Love In The Years That Follow, The Jar Will Never Be Emptied.’ And This Means…?’ Well’, She Said. ‘it’s Interesting, Isn’t It?

Loyalty Was A Great Thing, But No Lieutenants Should Be Forced To Choose Between Their Leader And A Circus With Elephants.

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.

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

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

Give Me Boredom. At Least I Know Where I'm Going To Eat And Sleep Tonight.

The Current Total Of Countries In The World With First Amendments Is One. You Have Guaranteed Freedom Of Speech. Other Countries Don't Have That.

Freedom Of Speech

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

The Time Lords Really Didn't Like Genocide. I'm Not Too Keen On It Myself. It's The Potential You're Killing Off. What If, One Day, There Was A Good Dalek? What If...

She Had The Feeling That The Door Was Looking At Her, Which She Knew Was Silly, And Knew On A Deeper Level Was Somehow True.

I Think That The Biggest, Quickest And Hardest Thing To Learn For A Writer Is That What We Think Of As The Unchanging Verities Of Story Are A Load Of Bollocks. Absolute Rubbish. There Are No Unchanging Verities.

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.

Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

I've Been Blogging Since February Of 2001. When I Started Blogging, It Was A Dinosaur Blog. It Was Me And A Handful Of Tyrannosaurs. We'd Be Writing Blog Entries Like, 'the Tyrannosaurus Is Getting Grumpy.'

The Things That Really Change The World, According To Chaos Theory, Are The Tiny Things. A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings In The Amazonian Jungle, And Subsequently A Storm Ravages Half Of Europe.

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.

I Told You I Would Tell You My Names. This Is What They Call Me. I'm Called Glad-of-war, Grim, Raider, And Third. I Am One-eyed. I Am Called Highest, And True-guesser. I Am Grimnir, And I Am The Hooded One. I Am All-father, And I Am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I Have As Many Names As There Are Winds, As Many Titles As There Are Ways To Die. My Ravens Are Huginn And Muninn, Thought And Memory; My Wolves Are Freki And Geri; My Horse Is The Gallows.

I Always Figure There Are Novels And Short Stories, And In Those, I'm God. No One Tells Me What To Do. I Don't Have To Lose A Page, Or Cut Anything, It's Just Mine. Then There Are Other Things Where You're Up Against Realities.

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

What A Refreshing Mind You Have, Young Man. There Really Is Nothing Quite Like Total Ignorance, Is There?

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

I Would Not Wish To Marry Someone Who Had Already Been Married. It Would Be,' She Opined, 'like Having Someone Else Break In One's Own Pony.

There's This Thing, They Have In French: L'espirit D'escalier. The Spirit Of The Stairway. I Don't Think We Have A Word For It In English. It Means, Well, The Clever Things To Say That You Only Think To Yourself When You're On The Way Out.

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 Believe That Life Is A Game, That Life Is A Cruel Joke, And That Life Is What Happens When You're Alive And That You Might As Well Lie Back And Enjoy It.

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.

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

I Thought About Moving South, About Continuing To Run, Continuing To Pretend I Was Alive. But It Was, I Knew Now, Much Too Late For That. There Are Doors, After All, Between The Living And The Dead, And They Swing In Both Directions.

Each Person Who Ever Was Or Is Or Will Be Has A Song. It Isn't A Song That Anybody Else Wrote. It Has Its Own Melody, It Has Its Own Words. Very Few People Get To Sing Their Song. Most Of Us Fear That We Cannot Do It Justice With Our Voices, Or That Our Words Are Too Foolish Or Too Honest, Or Too Odd. So People Live Their Song Instead.

I Don't Believe In "writer's Block". I Try And Deal With Getting Stuck By Having More Than One Thing To Work On At A Time. And By Knowing That Even A Hundred Bad Words That Didn't Exist Before Is Forward Progress.

Stories Are Webs, Interconnected Strand To Strand, And You Follow Each Story To The Center, Because The Center Is The End. Each Person Is A Strand Of The Story.

If You Dare Nothing, Then When The Day Is Over, Nothing Is All You Will Have Gained.

I Was Always Aware, Reading Chesterton, That There Was Someone Writing This Who Rejoiced In Words, Who Deployed Them On The Page As An Artist Deploys His Paints Upon His Palette. Behind Every Chesterton Sentence There Was Someone Painting With Words, And It Seemed To Me That At The End Of Any Particularly Good Sentence Or Any Perfectly-put Paradox, You Could Hear The Author, Somewhere Behind The Scenes, Giggling With Delight.

The Boy Had The Towering Arrogance Only Seen In The Greatest Of Artists And All Nine-year-old Boys.

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.

He Stared Up At The Stars, And It Seemed To Him Then That They Were Dancers, Stately And Graceful, Performing A Dance Almost Infinite In Its Complexity. He Imagined He Could See The Very Faces Of The Stars; Pale, They Were, And Smiling Gently, As If They Had Spent So Much Time Above The World, Watching The Scrambling And The Joy And The Pain Of The People Below Them, That They Could Not Help Being Amused Every Time Another Little Human Believed Itself The Center Of Its World, As Each Of Us Does.

I Don't Necessarily Think Stories Have Functions Any More Than Diamonds Have Functions, Or The Sky Has A Function... Stories Exist. They Keep Us Sane, I Think. We Tell Each Other Stories, We Believe Stories. I Love Watching The Slow Rise Of The Urban Legend. They're The Stories That We Use To Explain Ourselves To Ourselves.

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

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

We Wrapped Our Dreams In Words And Patterned The Words So That They Would Live Forever, Unforgettable.

Lies And Half-truths Fall Like Snow, Covering The Things That I Remember, The Things I Saw. A Landscape, Unrecognizable After A Snowfall; That Is That She Has Made Of My Life.

As We Age, We Become Our Parents; Live Long Enough And We See Faces Repeat In Time.

In Comics, Collaboration Saves Your Life. How Well You Can Work With An Artist, A Colorist, A Letterer, Is How Good Your Comic Is.

Trending Author

Luciano Pavarotti

Salmon P. Chase

Category