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I Only Have Two Kinds Of Dreams: The Bad And The Terrible. Bad Dreams I Can Cope With. They're Just Nightmares, And The End Eventually. I Wake Up. The Terrible Dreams Are The Good Dreams. In My Terrible Dreams, Everything Is Fine. I Am Still With The Company. I Still Look Like Me. None Of The Last Five Years Ever Happened. Sometimes I'm Married. Once I Even Had Kids. I Even Knew Their Names. Everything's Wonderful And Normal And Fine. And Then I Wake Up, And I'm Still Me. And I'm Still Here. And That Is Truly Terrible.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Only Have Two

Neil Gaiman

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I Only Have Two Kinds Of Dreams: The Bad And The Terrible. Bad Dreams I Can Cope With. They're Just Nightmares, And The End Eventually. I Wake Up. The Terrible Dreams Are The Good Dreams. In My Terrible Dreams, Everything Is Fine. I Am Still With The Company. I Still Look Like Me. None Of The Last Five Years Ever Happened. Sometimes I'm Married. Once I Even Had Kids. I Even Knew Their Names. Everything's Wonderful And Normal And Fine. And Then I Wake Up, And I'm Still Me. And I'm Still Here. And That Is Truly Terrible.

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Grown-ups Don't Look Like Grown-ups On The Inside Either. Outside, They're Big And Thoughtless And They Always Know What They're Doing. Inside, They Look Just Like They Always Have. Like They Did When They Were Your Age. Truth Is, There Aren't Any Grown-ups. Not One, In The Whole Wide World.

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What's Your Name,' Coraline Asked The Cat. 'look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'cats Don't Have Names,' It Said. 'no?' Said Coraline. 'no,' Said The Cat. 'now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

I Do Not Threaten, I Merely Advise Caution.

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.

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

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

Fiction Is The Lie That Tells The Truth, After All.

Telling The Truth

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Falling In Love

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

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

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

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

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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

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.

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.

You Are Young, And In Love. Every Young Man In Your Position Is The Most Miserable Young Man Who Ever Lived.

Miserable Person

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

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.

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

It May Help To Understand Human Affairs To Be Clear That Most Of The Great Triumphs And Tragedies Of History Are Caused, Not By People Being Fundamentally Good Or Fundamentally Bad, But By People Being Fundamentally People.

There Are Some As Are What They Are. And There Are Some As Aren't What They Seem To Be. And There Are Some As Only Seem To Be What They Seem To Be.

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But There Was A Kitten On My Pillow, And It Was Purring In My Face And Vibrating Gently With Every Purr, And, Very Soon, I Slept.

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I Have Heard The Languages Of Apocalypse, And Now I Shall Embrace The Silence.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Knowing Everything

I Had To Persuade A Dog To Swallow A Pill. I Twittered For Advice And I Got Suggestion After Suggestion. Most Of Them Didn't Work. 'put The Pill In The Sausage.' No - That Doesn't Work. 'cheese.' No. Then Someone Said: 'you Wrap It In Butter And It Will Slide Down.' I Tried It And It Worked! And I'd Learnt How To Give A Pill To A Dog Through The Magic Of Twitter.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

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.

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.

Now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

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.

I Believe In Absolute Honesty And Sensible Social Lies.

Writers May Be Solitary But They Also Tend To Flock Together: They Like Being Solitary Together.

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

Dahling, When God Put Teeth In Your Mouth, He Ruined A Perfectly Good Arsehole.

What Should I Believe? Thought Shadow, And The Voice Came Back To Him From Somewhere Deep Beneath The World, In A Bass Rumble: Believe Everything.

I Believe That Anyone Who Says That Sex Is Overrated Just Hasn't Done It Properly.

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

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

England And America

I Was Not Happy As A Child, Although From Time To Time I Was Content. I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

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

Just Remember, What The French Say. No, Probably Not The French, They've Got A President Or Something. The Brits, Maybe, Or The Swedes. You Know What I Mean?" "no, Matthew. What Do They Say?" "the King Is Dead, That's What They Say. The King Is Dead. Long Live The King.

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

As A Journalist, I Would Talk To Writers, Directors, Creative People, And Discover That For An Awful Lot Of Them, The Moment They Became Successful, That Was All They Were Allowed To Do. So You End Up Talking To The Bestselling Science-fiction Author Who Wrote A Historical-fiction Novel That Everybody Loved, But No One Would Publish.

When I Was Very Young, I Would Occasionally Stick 'f****' Where I Knew Something Contentious Might Happen So That The Editor Could Remove The Word 'f***' Very Proudly And Leave Whatever Else Was Around It.

Well Meaning Adults Can Easily Destroy A Child's Love Of Reading - Do Not Discourage Children From Reading Because You Feel They're Reading The Wrong Thing. There Is No Such Thing As The Wrong Thing To Be Reading And No Bad Fiction For Kids.

I Have A Really High Tolerance Level For Twits. I Really Do.

Watch Out For That Pedestrian!" "it's On The Street, It Knows The Risks It's Taking!

I Love Cgi If It's Invisible. I Don't Like It When It's There And Obvious.

Why Do I Have This Imagination? It's The Only One I've Got!

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.

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

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.

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.

He Wondered How It Could Have Taken Him So Long To Realize He Cared For Her, And He Told Her So, And She Called Him An Idiot, And He Declared That It Was The Finest Thing That Ever A Man Had Been Called.

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

I Really Don't Know What "i Love You" Means. I Think It Means "don't Leave Me Here Alone.

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