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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Think That The

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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How Big Are Souls Anyway?" Asked Coraline. The Other Mother Sat Down At The Kitchen Table And Leaned Against The Back Wall, Saying Nothing. She Picked At Her Teeth With A Long Crimson-varnished Fingernail, Then She Tapped The Finger, Gently, Tap-tap-tap Against The Polished Black Surface Of Her Black Button Eyes.

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Be Proud Of Your Mistakes. Well, Proud May Not Be Exactly The Right Word, But Respect Them, Treasure Them, Be Kind To Them, Learn From Them. And, More Than That, And More Important Than That, Make Them. Make Mistakes. Make Great Mistakes, Make Wonderful Mistakes, Make Glorious Mistakes. Better To Make A Hundred Mistakes Than To Stare At A Blank Piece Of Paper Too Scared To Do Anything Wrong.

You Know What The Really Scary Thing About Bad Dreams? It's That Something's Going On In Your Head, And You Can't Control It. I Mean, It's Like There's These Bad Worlds Inside You. But It's Just You... It's Like You're Betraying Yourself.

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

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.

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.

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

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Even Nothing Cannot Last Forever.

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

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.'

It’s Easier To Kill People, When You’re Dead Yourself. I Mean, It’s Not Such A Big Deal. You’re Not So Prejudiced Any More.

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

He Sighed. It Was A Long Sigh, Weary And Worldly-wise. The Kind Of Sigh You Could Picture God Heaving After Six Days Of Hard Work And Looking Forward To Some Serious Cosmic R&r, Only To Be Handed A Report By An Angel Concerning A Problem With Someone Eating An Apple.

There Are Three Things, And Three Things Only, That Can Lift The Pain Of Mortality And Ease The Ravages Of Life. These Are Wine, Women And Song.

Birds Are The Last Of The Dinosaurs. Tiny Velociraptors With Wings. Devouring Defenseless Wiggly Things And, And Nuts, And Fish, And, And Other Birds. They Get The Early Worms. And Have You Ever Watched A Chicken Eat? They May Look Innocent, But Birds Are, Well, They're Vicious.

I Tweet, Therefore My Entire Life Has Shrunk To 140 Character Chunks Of Instant Event And Predigested Gnomic Wisdom. And Swearing.

You Can't Just Boss Bacteria Around Like That," Said The Younger Mrs. Hempstock. "they Don't Like It." "stuff And Silliness," Said The Old Lady. "you Leave Wigglers Alone And They'll Be Carrying On Like Anything. Show Them Who's Boss And They Can't Do Enough For You. You've Tasted My Cheese.

Goodnight World. While I Sleep, I Hope You'll All Continue To Do Whatever It Is You Do. Unless You Murder Sleeping Authors. Don't Do That.

Coraline Opened The Box Of Chocolates. The Dog Looked At Them Longingly. "would You Like One?" She Asked The Little Dog. "yes, Please," Whispered The Dog. "only Not Toffee Ones. They Make Me Drool." "i Thought Chocolates Weren't Very Good For Dogs," She Said, Remembering Something Miss Forcible Had Once Told Her. "maybe Where You Come From," Whispered The Little Dog. "here, It's All We Eat.

I'd Love To Write Some Porn, But I Don't Know If I Have The Right Engines. When I Was A Young Man And I Was Tempted To Write Porn, Imaginary Parents Would Appear Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing; Just About The Point That I Managed To Banish The Imaginary Parents, Real Children Would Lean Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing.

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

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubble In Amber.

He's Out Here, Somewhere, And He Wants You Dead,' She Said. 'him As Killed Your Family. Us In The Graveyard, We Wants You To Stay Alive. We Wants You To Surprise Us And Disappoint Us And Impress Us And Amaze Us. Come Home, Bod.

The Squirrel Has Not Yet Found The Acorn That Will Grow To The Oak That Will Be Cut To Form The Cradle Of The Babe That Will Grow To Slay Me.

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.

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.

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.

The Cat Wrinkled Its Nose And Managed To Look Unimpressed. "calling Cats," It Confided, "tends To Be A Rather Overrated Activity. Might As Well Call A Whirlwind.

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I'm Just Going To Stay Here, In The Darkness Under The Arch. I Can Hear You All Out There, Trip-trapping, Trip-trapping Over My Bridge. Oh Yes, I Can Hear You. But I'm Not Coming Out.

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You Shine Like A Beacon In A Dark World.

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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.

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And Weren't, When You Got Right Down To It, Particularly Evil. Human Beings Mostly Aren't. They Just Get Carried Away By New Ideas, Like Dressing Up In Jackboots And Shooting People, Or Dressing Up In White Sheets And Lynching People, Or Dressing Up In Tie-dye Jeans And And Playing Guitar At People. Offer People A New Creed With A Costume And Their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.

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Stories Are Made Up By People Who Make Them Up. If They Work, They Get Retold. There's The Magic Of It.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

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

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There Was Once A Young Man Who Wished To Gain His Heart’s Desire.

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.

The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

There Will Always Be People Who Are Much Better At Doing This Or Doing That, But You Are The Only You.

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

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

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

England And America

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?

You Musn’t Be Afraid Of The Dark.’ ‘i’m Not,’ Said Shadow. ‘i’m Afraid Of The People In The Dark.

Go Get Your Heart Broken.

I Loved The Sound Of The Words, Even If I Was Not Entirely Sure What All Of Them Meant.

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

Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

However You Must Have Sensed A Lurking 'but' Skulking Beneath My Happy, Blithe, And Chipper Exterior. A Minuscule Vexation, Like The Teeniest Lump Of Raw Liver Sticking To The Inside Of My Boot.

We Are Always Living In The Final Days. What Have You Got? A Hundred Years Or Much, Much Less Until The End Of Your World.

It's One Thing To Want Money, But If You Find Yourself Choking On A Coin As You Wake, The Money Is Slightly Less Desirable.

Finding Yourself

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

Nothing I Did Where The Only Reason For Doing It Was The Money Was Ever Worth It, Except As Bitter Experience.

Bitter Experience

Words Save Our Lives, Sometimes.

I Don't Know Why People Would Want To Have Lunch With Writers. I've Eaten With Writers. We Have Appalling Table Manners, And Rarely Say Anything Other Than 'pass The Salt' Or 'if You're Not Going To Eat That, Can I Have It?'

If People Are Standing Up There Saying, My Football Team Just Won With Help From God, Then Obviously God Just Pissed Over The Other Team.

The Future Had Suddenly Become Unknowable: Anything Could Happen: The Train Of My Life Had Jumped The Rails And Headed Off Across The Fields And Coming Down The Lane With Me, Then.

I Believe That Stories Are Incredibly Important, Possibly In Ways We Don't Understand, In Allowing Us To Make Sense Of Our Lives, In Allowing Us To Escape Our Lives, In Giving Us Empathy And In Creating The World That We Live In.

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

Miserable Person

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

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.

Whereas There Are Lots Of Good Novels Out There; There Are A Few Good Movies Out There. People Have Been Writing Great Poems For Years, But There Aren't A Lot Of Good Comics. I Like Trying To Write Them.

We Have The Right, And The Obligation, To Tell Old Stories In Our Own Ways, Because They Are Our Stories.

He Would Go Somewhere No One Knew Him, And He Would Sit In A Library All Day And Read Books And Listen To People Breathing.

The Biggest Pitfall To Avoid Is Not Writing. Not Writing Is Really, Really Easy To Do, Especially If You're A Young Writer. The Hope That Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish It For You, Is A Very Common One To Have. That Is My Main Recommendation - You Have To Write, And You Have To Finish What You Write And Beyond That, It's All Detail.

Fiction Gives Us Empathy: It Puts Us Inside The Minds Of Other People, Gives Us The Gifts Of Seeing The World Through Their Eyes. Fiction Is A Lie That Tells Us True Things, Over And Over.

I Felt Very Much Like A Hooker Who Had Just Been Told She Was A Lady Of The Evening.

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children's Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were.

We Live In A World In Which The Only Utopian Visions Arrive In Commercial Breaks: Magical Visions Of An Impossibly Hospitable World, Peopled By Bright-eyed Attractive Men, Women, Children... Where Nobody Dies... In My Worlds People Died. And I Thought That Was Honest. I Thought I Was Being Honest.

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

I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

So The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Is Out There Preserving And Fighting For, And Sometimes Winning And Sometimes Losing, The Fight For First Amendment Rights In Comics And, More Generally, For Freedom Of Speech.

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

My People, We Stay Indoors. We Have Keyboards. We Have Darkness. It's Quiet.

You Can Always Cheat An Honest Man, But It Takes More Work.

If Writing A Novel Is A Year's Exile To A Foreign Country, Writing A Short Story Is A Weekend Spent Somewhere Exotic. They're Much More Like Vacations, More Exciting And Different, And You're Off.

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.

It's Certainly Not Too Late To Change To The Winning Side. But You Know, You Also Have The Freedom To Stay Just Where You Are. That's What It Means To Be An American. That's The Miracle Of America. Freedom To Believe Means The Freedom To Believe The Wrong Thing, After All. Just As Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

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?

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.

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...

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.

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

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

She Sat Down On One Of Her Grandmother's Uncomfortable Armchairs, And The Cat Sprang Up Into Her Lap And Made Itself Comfortable. The Light That Came Through The Picture Window Was Daylight, Real Golden Late-afternoon Daylight, Not A White Mist Light. The Sky Was A Robin's-egg Blue, And Coraline Could See Trees And, Beyond The Trees, Green Hills, Which Faded On The Horizon Into Purples And Grays. The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky, The World Had Never Seemed So World ... Nothing, She Thought, Had Ever Been So Interesting.

I Have Always Felt That Violence Was The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent, And Empty Threats The Last Sanctuary Of The Terminally Inept.

I Do Not Permit Affection Or Lack Thereof To Influence My Actions. There Is Good, And There Is Evil. The Good Must Be Protected, The Evil Eradicated. I Have Shown You The Triumph Of Evil As A Caution.

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.

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

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.

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

The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What Once You Wanted.

Getting What You Want

Names Come And Names Go.

All That I Did," She Said, "everything I Tried To Do. All For Nothing." Nothing Is Done Entirely For Nothing, Said The Fox Of Dreams. Nothing Is Wasted. You Are Older, And You Have Made Decisions, And You Are Not The Fox You Were Yesterday. Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

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

All Fiction Is A Process Of Imagining: Whatever You Write, In Whatever Genre Or Medium, Your Task Is To Make Things Up Convincingly And Interestingly And New.

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

Television And Cinema Were All Very Well, But These Stories Happened To Other People. The Stories I Found In Books Happened Inside My Head. I Was, In Some Way, There. It's The Magic Of Fiction: You Take The Words And You Build Them Into Worlds.

A Story Only Matters, I Suspect, To The Extent That The People In The Story Change.

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

It Is A Fool's Prerogative To Utter Truths That No One Else Will Speak.

I'm Probably Slightly More Famous Than I've Been Comfortable With. Famous Enough To Have My Phone Calls Returned Is About As Famous As I Want To Be.

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.

Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

Diana Used To Tell Me She Had A Travel Jinx, Something I Only Really Started To Believe When The Plane Door Fell Off.

"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.

Stories Are Like Spiders, With All They Long Legs, And Stories Are Like Spiderwebs, Which Man Gets Himself All Tangled Up In But Which Look Pretty When You See Them Under A Leaf In The Morning Dew, And In The Elegant Way That They Connect To One Another, Each To Each.

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

I Was Always So Relieved That Anyone Wants To Publish Anything I've Written.

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

Often The Adult Book Is Not For You, Not Yet, Or Will Only Be For You When You're Ready. But Sometimes You Will Read It Anyway, And You Will Take From It Whatever You Can. Then, Perhaps, You Will Come Back To It When You're Older, And You Will Find The Book Has Changed Because You Have Changed As Well, And The Book Is Wiser, Or More Foolish, Because You Are Wiser Or More Foolish Than You Were As A Child.

I've Never Known Anyone Who Was What He Or She Seemed; Or At Least, Was Only What He Or She Seemed. People Carry Worlds Within Them.

Belinda Stared Into The Fire For Some Time, Thinking About What She Had In Her Life, And What She Had Given Up; And Whether It Would Be Worse To Love Someone Who Was No Longer There, Or Not To Love Someone Who Was.

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

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

If You, As A Parent, Raise Your Children Well, They Won't Need You Anymore. If You Did It Properly, They Go Away.

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

Then One Stupid Person, No Different From Any Other Stupid Person, Wanders Into Your Stupid Life... You Give Them A Piece Of You. They Don't Ask For It. They Do Something Dumb One Day, Like Kiss You Or Smile At You, And Then Your Life Isn't Your Own Anymore.

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

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

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

I Was A Voracious Reader And I Could Never Understand Why Comics Were Of Any Less Merit Or Importance Than Any Other Way Of Writing. I Think The Thing That Keeps Me With Comics Is There's Still So Much To Be Done. There's Still This Huge Unplowed Field, This Huge Unexplored Wilderness, And As Long As I Can Keep Doing New Things And Coming Up With New Things, I Will.

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.

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

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

Everything Has To Be Intrinsic Plot-wise In The Same Way, To Use The Linda Williams Analogy But To Move It On A Bit, As Musicals - In Old Musicals, Like In An Old Cole Porter Musical, You Get The Action, Then They Do A Song, Which Reflects A Moment - Everything Stops While That Is Being Sung - And Then You Restart. These Days In Most Musicals, The Plot Keeps Moving Through The Song. I Think It Would Be Nice If Someone Constructed Some Pornography Where The Sex Continues To Propel You Through The Story.

Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

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

He Entertained These Thoughts Awkwardly, As A Man Entertains Unexpected Guests. Then, As He Reached His Objective, He Pushed These Thoughts Away, As A Man Apologizes To His Guests, And Leaves Them, Muttering Something About A Prior Engagement.

We...we Could Be Friends.' We Could Be Rare Specimens Of An Exotic Breed Of Dancing African Elephants, But We're Not. At Least, I'm Not.

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

I Feel Like I Am Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell Me The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

The Only Advice I Can Give You Is What You're Telling Yourself. Only, Maybe You're Too Scared To Listen.

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

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

To Be Honest, I Think Love Is Complete Bullshit. I Don't Think Anyone Ever Loves Anyone. I Think The Best People Ever Get Is Horny; Horny And Scared, So When They Find Someone Who Makes Them Horny, And They Get Too Scared Of The World Outside, They Stay Together And They Call It Love.

Most People Don't Realize How Important Librarians Are. I Ran Across A Book Recently Which Suggested That The Peace And Prosperity Of A Culture Was Solely Related To How Many Librarians It Contained. Possibly A Slight Overstatement. But A Culture That Doesn't Value Its Librarians Doesn't Value Ideas And Without Ideas, Well, Where Are We?

Whatever's Happening," She Said, Eventually, "it Can All Be Sorted Out." She Saw The Expression On My Face Then, Worried. Scared Even. And She Said, "after Pancakes.

A Short Story Is The Ultimate Close-up Magic Trick -- A Couple Of Thousand Words To Take You Around The Universe Or Break Your Heart.

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.

I Started Out Writing Much More Science Fictiony Stuff And Writing About Science Fiction.

Every Lover Is, In His Heart, A Madman, And, In His Head, A Minstrel.

Fiction Can Show You A Different World. It Can Take You Somewhere You’ve Never Been. Once You’ve Visited Other Worlds, Like Those Who Ate Fairy Fruit, You Can Never Be Entirely Content With The World That You Grew Up In. Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

It's Like You Said The Other Day," Said Adam. "you Grow Up Readin' About Pirates And Cowboys And Spacemen And Stuff, And Jus' When You Think The World's Full Of Amazin' Things, They Tell You It's Really All Dead Whales And Chopped-down Forests And Nucular Waste Hangin' About For Millions Of Years. 'snot Worth Growin' Up For, If You Ask My Opinion.

Like The Newspapers Used To Say, If The Truth Isn't Big Enough, You Print The Legend.

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.

A Typical National World Weekly Would Tell The World How Jesus' Face Was Seen On A Big Mac Bun Bought By Someone From Des Moines, With An Artist's Impression Of The Bun; How Elvis Presley Was Recently Sighted Working In A Burger Lord In Des Moines; How Listening To Elvis Records Cured A Des Moines Housewife's Cancer; How The Spate Of Werewolves Infesting The Midwest Are The Offspring Of Noble Pioneer Women Raped By Bigfoot; And That Elvis Was Taken By Space Aliens In 1976 Because He Was Too Good For This World. Remarkably, One Of These Stories Is Indeed True.

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

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.

For Some, It Was Easier To Take The Leap From The Leafless Tree And Dance On Nothing Until Dancing Was Done.

When You're Starting Off As A Young Writer, You Look At All The Stuff That's Gone Before And The Stuff That's Influenced You, And You Reach The Ladle Of Your Imagination Into This Bubbling Stew Pot Of All Of This Stuff, And You Pour It Out. And That's Where You Start From.

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Rodney Dangerfield

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