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I Think That Pretty Much Every Form Of Fiction (i’d Include Fantasy, Obviously) Can Actually Be A Real Escape From Places Where You Feel Bad, And From Bad Places. It Can Be A Safe Place You Go, Like Going On Holiday, And It Can Be Somewhere That, While You’ve Escaped, Actually Teaches You Things You Need To Know When You Go Back, That Gives You Knowledge And Armour And Tools To Change The Bad Place You Were In. So No, They’re Not Escapist. They’re Escape.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Think That Pretty

Neil Gaiman

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I Think That Pretty Much Every Form Of Fiction (i’d Include Fantasy, Obviously) Can Actually Be A Real Escape From Places Where You Feel Bad, And From Bad Places. It Can Be A Safe Place You Go, Like Going On Holiday, And It Can Be Somewhere That, While You’ve Escaped, Actually Teaches You Things You Need To Know When You Go Back, That Gives You Knowledge And Armour And Tools To Change The Bad Place You Were In. So No, They’re Not Escapist. They’re Escape.

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So The Day Became One Of Waiting, Which Was, He Knew, A Sin: Moments Were To Be Experienced; Waiting Was A Sin Against Both The Time That Was Still To Come And The Moments One Was Currently Disregarding.

Life And Death Are Different Sides Of The Same Coin.

To Absent Friends, Lost Loves, Old Gods, And The Season Of Mists; And May Each And Every One Of Us Always Give The Devil His Due.

You Need More Than A Beginning If You're Going To Start A Book. If All You Have Is A Beginning, Then Once You've Written That Beginning, You Have Nowhere To Go.

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

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

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

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.

All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

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I Know That This Is The Internet, And We're All Anonymous And All That, But Really. It Doesn't Hurt To Try To Be Nice.

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.

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

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

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

But Surely "argh" Is The Sound Of A Sort Of Strangulated Scream. "aargh" Is The Sound Of A Stabbing, Or A Falling Off A Cliff. "arr" Is, I Think, The Noise You're Looking For. It's The Noise Pirates Make When They Don't Have Anything Better To Do. "arr, Jim Lad" = Pirate Noise. "aargh, Jim Lad" = Sound Of Pirate Falling Off A Cliff.

I Think Hell Is Something You Carry Around With You, Not Somewhere You Go.

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

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

Parameters Are The Things You Bounce Off To Create Art.

I Remembered That, And, Remembering That, I Remembered Everything.

According To My Daughters, My Most Irritating Habit Is Asking For Cups Of Tea.

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

Set Your Fantasies In The Here And Now And Then, If Challenged, Claim To Be Writing Magical Realism.

There's A But, Isn't There?" Said Coraline. "i Can Feel It. Like A Rain Cloud.

There Was Something About Being In The Vicinity Of Grahame Coats That Always Made Fat Charlie (a) Speak In Cliches And (b) Begin To Daydream About Huge Black Helicopters First Opening Fire Upon, Then Dropping Buckets Of Flaming Napalm Onto The Offices Of The Grahame Coats Agency. Fat Charlie Would Not Be In The Office In Those Daydreams. He Would Be Sitting In A Chair Outside A Little Cafe On The Other Side Of Aldwych, Sipping A Frothy Coffee And Occasionally Cheering At An Exceptionally Well-flung Bucket Of Napalm.

Read The Books You Love, Tell People About Authors You Like, And Don’t Worry About It.

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.

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.

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

"only Write What You Know" Is Very Good Advice. I Do My Best To Stick To It. I Wrote About Gods And Dreams And America Because I Knew About Them. And I Wrote About What It's Like To Wander Into Faerie Because I Knew About That. I Wrote About Living Underneath London Because I Knew About That Too. And I Put People Into The Stories Because I Knew Them: The Ones With Pumpkins For Heads, And The Serial Killers With Eyes For Teeth, And The Little Chocolate People Filled With Raspberry Cream And The Rest Of Them.

You Don't Get Heaven Or Hell. Do You Know The Only Reward You Get For Being Batman? You Get To Be Batman.

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

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

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

Even Nothing Cannot Last Forever.

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.

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You Know What Killed Off The Dinosaurs, Whateley? We Did. In One Barbecue.

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Well," He Said, "f’r Example, If They Ask Where You’ve Come From, You Could Say ‘behind Me,’and If They Asked Where You’re Going, You’d Say ‘in Front Of Me.

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.

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

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.

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What Do I Do Now?” “i Don’t Know. Fade Away, Perhaps. Or Find Another Role.

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China Was The Most Optimistic Place I'd Ever Been. Everybody I Met Was Pretty Much Convinced That Their Children Would Have It Better Than Their Parents Had Had It. It Was Like Being In America In The 1950's, With This Deep Optimism About The Future Because Everything Was Getting Better, And That Fascinated Me.

Not Only Are There No Happy Endings,' She Told Him, 'there Aren't Even Any Endings.

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.

My Guiltiest Pleasure Is Harry Stephen Keeler. He May Have Been The Greatest Bad Writer America Has Ever Produced. Or Perhaps The Worst Great Writer. I Do Not Know. There Are Few Faults You Can Accuse Him Of That He Is Not Guilty Of. But I Love Him.

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Joy And Sorrow Are Like Milk And Cookies. That's How Well They Go Together.

All Bookshelves Are Magical.

There's None So Blind As Those Who Will Not Listen.

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

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine.

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

I Wanted To Write Something That Would Be A Comedy In The Sense Of Making People Feel Happier When They Finish It Than They Did When Began It.

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.

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

No, Look, There's A Blue Box. It's Bigger On The Inside Than It Is On The Outside. It Can Go Anywhere In Time And Space And Sometimes Even Where It's Meant To Go. And When It Turns Up, There's A Bloke In It Called The Doctor And There Will Be Stuff Wrong And He Will Do His Best To Sort It Out And He Will Probably Succeed Cos He's Awesome. Now Sit Down, Shut Up, And Watch 'blink'.

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.

It's Not Hard To Own Something. Or Everything. You Just Have To Know That It's Yours, And Then Be Willing To Let It Go.

And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

The House Smelled Musty And Damp, And A Little Sweet, As If It Were Haunted By The Ghosts Of Long-dead Cookies.

People Talk About Books That Write Themselves, And It's A Lie. Books Don't Write Themselves. It Takes Thought And Research And Backache And Notes And More Time And More Work Than You'd Believe.

Oh- My Twitchy Witchy Girl I Think You Are So Nice, I Give You Bowls Of Porridge And I Give You Bowls Of Ice Cream. I Give You Lots Of Kisses, And I Give Lots Of Hugs, But I Never Give You Sandwiches With Bugs In.

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.

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.

London Grew Into Something Huge And Contradictory. It Was A Good Place, And A Fine City, But There Is A Price To Be Paid For All Good Places, And A Price That All Good Places Have To Pay.

I Don't Think You Get Perfect Couples. At Best You Get Two People Building Something, And Working At It, And Loving Each Other, And Doing Their Best To Communicate.

Las Vegas Has Become A Child's Picture-book Dream Of A City -- Here A Storybook Castle, There A Sphinx-flanked Black Pyramid Beaming White Light Into The Darkness As A Landing Beam For Ufos, And Everywhere Neon Oracles And Twisting Screens Predict Happiness And Good Fortune, Announce Singers And Comedians And Magicians In Residence Or On Their Way, And The Lights Always Flash And Beckon And Call.

She Was The Storm, She Was The Lightning, She Was The Adult World With All Its Power And All Its Secrets And All Its Foolish Casual Cruelty.

I Must Confess, I Have Always Wondered What Lay Beyond Life, My Dear. Yeah, Everybody Wonders. And Sooner Or Later Everybody Gets To Find Out.

We Make Choices. No One Else Can Live Our Lives For Us. And We Must Confront And Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

When Things Go Wrong, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

The Important Thing To Understand About American History, Wrote Mr. Ibis, In His Leather-bound Journal, Is That It Is Fictional, A Charcoal-sketched Simplicity For The Children, Or The Easily Bored.

Being A Writer Is A Very Peculiar Sort Of A Job: It's Always You Versus A Blank Sheet Of Paper (or A Blank Screen) And Quite Often The Blank Piece Of Paper Wins.

You Are Obvious, Boy. You Are Difficult To Miss. If You Came To Me In Company With A Purple Lion, A Green Elephant, And A Scarlet Unicorn Astride Which Was The King Of England In His Royal Robes, I Do Believe That It Is You And You Alone That People Would Stare At, Dismissing The Others As Minor Irrelevancies.

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

If You Do Not Value Libraries Then You Do Not Value Information Or Culture Or Wisdom. You Are Silencing The Voices Of The Past And You Are Damaging The Future.

Never Trust A Demon. He Has A Hundred Motives For Anything He Does... Ninety-nine Of Them, At Least, Are Malevolent.

There's Definitely A Feeling With A Short Story That It's Pure Story Telling. You're Not Really Worried About Theme. You're Not Going To Stay With The Characters Long Enough To Live Your Life With Them. And You Have Different Kinds Of Relationships With Them.

Never A Possession, Always The Possessor, With Skin As Pale As Smoke, And Eyes Tawny And Sharp As Yellow Wine: Desire Is Everything You Have Ever Wanted. Whoever You Are. Whatever You Are. Everything.

A Flash Of Resentment. It's Hard Enough Being Alive, Trying To Survive In The World And Find Your Place In It, To Do The Things You Need To Do To Get By, Without Wondering If The Thing You Just Did, Whatever It Was, Was Worth Someone Having...if Not Died, Then Having Given Up Her Life. It Wasn't Fair. "life's Not Fair," Said Ginnie, As If I Had Spoken Aloud.

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It's Still National Library Week. You Should Be Especially Nice To A Librarian Today, Or Tomorrow. Sometime This Week, Anyway. Probably The Librarians Would Like Tea. Or Chocolates. Or A Reliable Source Of Funding.

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

I Think . . . I Said Things To Silas. He'll Be Angry.' 'if He Didn't Care About You, You Couldn't Upset Him,' Was All She Said.

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Tends To Be Really Good At Making Outlines And Sticking To Them. I'm Very Good At Doing That, But I Don't Like It. It Sort Of Takes A Lot Of The Fun Out.

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.

Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

Freedom Of Speech

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

Human Beings Do Not Like Being Pushed About By Gods. They May Seem To, On The Surface, But Somewhere On The Inside, Underneath It All, They Sense It, And They Resent It.

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

Agnes Was The Worst Prophet That's Ever Existed. Because She Was Always Right. That's Why The Book Never Sold.

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.

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.

Eyes As Black And As Shiny As Chips Of Obsidian Stared Back Into His. They Were Eyes Like Black Holes, Letting Nothing Out, Not Even Information.

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

We Owe It To Each Other To Tell Stories.

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

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.

[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.

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You Know, It's Weird Being Interviewed! Because The Weird Thing About Being Interviewed Is You Get Asked These Questions That You've Never Thought About, And You Find Out What You Think As You Answer.

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

The End Of The Day

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

The Best Thing—in Shadow's Opinion, Perhaps The Only Good Thing—about Being In Prison Was A Feeling Of Relief. The Feeling That He'd Plunged As Low As He Could Plunge And He'd Hit Bottom. He Didn't Worry That The Man Was Going To Get Him, Because The Man Had Got Him. He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring, Because Yesterday Had Brought It.

Truly Life Is Wasted On The Living.

You Think You're Being Given All Of These Things: Phones That Can Communicate With Other Devices, Car Service That's Better Than A Taxi, All Of These Amazing Things That Are Available To You At Any Time. It Isn't Until You've Swum Across The River That You Can Start To See The Negative Aspects Of It All.

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.

I Don't Know Much More Than I Did When I Was Alive. Most Of The Stuff I Know Now That I Didn't Know Then I Can't Put Into Words.

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?

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

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

Notoriety Wasn't As Good As Fame, But Was Heaps Better Than Obscurity.

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

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It's An America With Strange Mythic Depths. I See It As A Distorting Mirror; A Book Of Danger And Secrets, Of Romance And Magic. It's About The Soul Of America, Really. What People Brought To America; What Found Them When They Came; And The Things That Lie Sleeping Beneath It All.

Everything In Journalism Is About The Detail That Makes The Whole, The Attempts To Reproduce Speech Patterns While Not Actually Quoting The Whole Thing The Person Said.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Remember That, Sooner Or Later, Before It Ever Reaches Perfection, You Will Have To Let It Go And Move On And Start To Write The Next Thing. Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

Nothing [the Demon] Could Think Up Was Half As Bad As The Stuff [people] Thought Up Themselves. They Seemed To Have A Talent For It. It Was Built Into Their Design Somehow. They Were Born Into A World That Was Against Them In A Thousand Little Ways, And Then Devoted Most Of Their Energies To Making It Worse.

Yes. Growing Up Is Highly Overrated. Just Be An Author.

I Was One Of Those Kids Who Had Books On Them. Before Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Funerals And Anything Else Where You're Actually Meant To Not Be Reading, My Family Would Frisk Me And Take The Book Away. If They Didn't Find It By This Point In The Procedure, I Would Be Sitting Over In That Corner Completely Unnoticed Just Reading My Book.

Nearly' Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand-grenades.

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

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.

Rock And Roll Stars Have It Much Better Than Writers When They're On A Tour.

Somebody Said That Writers Are Like Otters... Otters, If They Do A Trick And You Give Them A Fish, The Next Time They'll Do A Better Trick Or A Different Trick Because They'd Already Done That One. And Writers Tend To Be Otters. Most Of Us Get Pretty Bored Doing The Same Trick. We've Done It, So Let's Do Something Different.

I Wanted To Be An Author As Far Back As I Can Remember, Mixed With Occasional Bouts Of Wanting To Be A Werewolf When I Grew Up. But Mostly, When I Daydreamed, It Was About Being An Author.

Touched By Her Fingers, The Two Surviving Chocolate People Copulate Desperately, Losing Themselves In A Melting Frenzy Of Lust, Spending The Last Of Their Brief Borrowed Lives In A Spasm Of Raspberry Cream And Fear.

It Is Not That I Was Credulous, Simply That I Belived In All Things Dark And Dangerous. It Was Part Of My Young Creed That The Night Was Full Of Ghosts And Witches, Hungry And Flapping And Dressed Completely In Black.

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

He Was Painfully Shy, Which, As Is Often The Manner Of The Painfully Shy, He Overcompensated For By Being Too Loud At The Wrong Times.

Being Brave Doesn't Mean You Aren't Scared. Being Brave Means You Are Scared, Really Scared, Badly Scared, And You Do The Right Thing Anyway.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

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.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

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.

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

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.

Without Dreams, There Could Be No Despair.

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

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes...you're Doing Something.

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.

Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

Because, If One Is Writing Novels Today, Concentrating On The Beauty Of The Prose Is Right Up There With Concentrating On Your Semi-colons, For Wasted Effort.

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

I'll Agonize Over Sentences. Mostly Because You're Trying To Create Specific Effects With Sentences, And Because There Are A Number Of Different Voices In The Book.

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

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

You Mourn, For It Is Proper To Mourn. But Your Grief Serves You; You Do Not Become A Slave To Grief. You Bid The Dead Farewell, And You Continue.

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

Knowing Everything

It's Not The Fish You Catch, It's The Peace Of Mind You Take Home At The End Of The Day.

I Guess It's Just Another One Of Life's Little Mysteries." "i'm Tired Of Mysteries." "yeah? I Think They Add A Kind Of Zest To The World. Like Salt In A Stew.

Tomorrow May Be Hell, But Today Was A Good Writing Day, And On The Good Writing Days Nothing Else Matters.

As A Kid I Would Get My Parents To Drop Me Off At My Local Library On Their Way To Work During The Summer Holidays And I Would Walk Home At Night. For Several Years I Read The Children's Library Until I Finished The Children's Library. Then I Moved Into The Adult Library And Slowly Worked My Way Through Them.

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

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

One Describes A Tale Best By Telling The Tale. You See? The Way One Describes A Story, To Oneself Or To The World, Is By Telling The Story. It Is A Balancing Act And It Is A Dream. The More Accurate The Map, The More It Resembles The Territory. The Most Accurate Map Possible Would Be The Territory, And Thus Would Be Perfectly Accurate And Perfectly Useless. The Tale Is The Map That Is The Territory. You Must Remember This.

Nothing's Ever The Same," She Said. "be It A Second Later Or A Hundred Years. It's Always Churning And Roiling. And People Change As Much As Oceans.

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