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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Was A Voracious

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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

Life Is Sometimes Hard. Things Go Wrong, In Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

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.

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

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were. Adult Stories Never Made Sense, And They Were Slow To Start. They Made Me Feel Like There Were Secrets, Masonic, Mythic Secrets, To Adulthood. Why Didn't Adults Want To Read About Narnia, About Secret Islands And Smugglers And Dangerous Fairies?

There Are Stories You Build And There Are Stories You Construct; Then There Are The Stories That You Hack Out Of Rock Removing All The Things That Are Not The Story.

It's Not A Bad Thing For A Writer Not To Feel At Home. Writers - We're Much More Comfortable At Parties Standing In The Corner Watching Everybody Else Having A Good Time Than We Are Mingling.

This Is A Work Of Fiction. Still, Given An Infinite Number Of Possible Worlds, It Must Be True On One Of Them. And If A Story Set In An Infinite Number Of Possible Worlds Is True In One Of Them, Then It Must Be True In All Of Them. So Maybe, It's Not As Fictional As We Think.

"ocean" Is More About ... Powerlessness And Hopelessness. When We're Very Small We Can't Actually Do Anything - We Have No Say In What Happens, We Have No Money Or Resources, We Sometimes Have No Idea What's Going On.

I Love The Auditioning Process. I Love Working With The Technical Guys. I Absolutely Love The Editing Room. That Was Completely Fascinating To Me, Working With An Editor In Crafting The Thing Into Something You Had In Your Head.

I Wanted To Put A Reference To Masturbation In One Of The Scripts For The Sandman. It Was Immediately Cut By The Editor [karen Berger]. She Told Me, "there's No Masturbation In The Dc Universe." To Which My Reaction Was, "well, That Explains A Lot About The Dc Universe."

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

Until That Moment She Had Never Thought She Could Do It. Never Thought She Would Be Brave Enough Or Scared Enough, Or Desperate Enough To Dare.

He Had Had A Severe Shock Some Weeks Earlier, When, Having Narrowly Failed To Capture A Large Grey-brown Hare For His Dinner, It Had Stopped At The Edge Of The Forest, Looked At Him With Disdain, And Said, 'well, I Hope You're Proud Of Yourself, That's All,' And Had Scampered Off Into The Long Grass

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

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

Put One Word After Another. Find The Right Word, Put It Down.

Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

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.

With 'stardust', I Hope What I Was Doing Is Giving 30-year-olds And 40-year-olds And 25-year-olds And 60-year-olds A Chance To Get The Same Sense Of Wonder, The Same Feeling, The Same Magic, That They Got In Reading The Classic Fairy Tales As Children.

M Is For Magic. All The Letters Are, If You Put Them Together Properly. You Can Make Magic With Them, And Dreams, And, I Hope, Even A Few Surprises.

We Don't Have A Clue What's Really Going Down, We Just Kid Ourselves That We're In Control Of Our Lives While A Paper's Thickness Away Things That Would Drive Us Mad If We Thought About Them For Too Long Play With Us, And Move Us Around From Room To Room, And Put Us Away At Night When They're Tired, Or Bored.

I Want To Write A Play. I'd Like To Do An Original Musical. I Should Probably Put Together A Poetry Collection.

So Many Things To See, People To Do.

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

I Don't Know If Any Single Book Made Me Want To Write. C.s. Lewis Was The First Writer To Make Me Aware That Somebody Was Writing The Book I Was Reading - These Wonderful Parenthetical Asides To The Reader.

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.

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Open Relationship

And So There Is Magic.

I Love Learning. I Tend To Stop Doing Things Once I Get Good At Them, And To Try Something Else I'm Not As Good At, Leaving A Bunch Of Fans Going, "but He Was Really Good At That. Why Isn't He Still Doing It?"

You Get Ideas From Daydreaming. You Get Ideas From Being Bored. You Get Ideas All The Time. The Only Difference Between Writers And Other People Is We Notice When We're Doing It.

I Am Anti-life, The Beast Of Judgment. I Am The Dark At The End Of Everything. The End Of Universes, Gods, Worlds…of Everything. And What Will You Be Then, Dreamlord?" "i Am Hope.

Biting's Excellent. It's Like Kissing - Only There Is A Winner.

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.

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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.

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

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

He Had Read Books, Newspapers And Magazines. He Knew That If You Ran Away You Sometimes Met Bad People Who Did Bad Things To You; But He Had Also Read Fairy Tales, So He Knew That There Were Kind People Out There, Side By Side With The Monsters.

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.

Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

Tools, Of Course, Can Be The Subtlest Of Traps.

[i Spent] Much Of My Time Reminding Matt Groening That I Really Need To Be A Head In A Jar On Futurama.

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

I Am Selfish, Private And Easily Bored. Will This Be A Problem?

Picking One Of Your Favorite Creation Or Character Is Like Picking The Best One Of Your Children! I'm Not Sure It Really Works. My Very Favorite Characters Tend To Be Ones I Can Go Back To And Look At, And Have No Idea How They Popped Out Of My Head.

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

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.

They Were Having An Argument As Old And Comfortable As An Armchair, The Kind Of Argument That No One Ever Really Wins Or Loses But Which Can Go On Forever, If Both Parties Are Willing.

The Great Thing About Batman And Superman, In Truth, Is That They Are Literally Transcendent. They Are Better Than Most Of The Stories They Are In.

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 Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

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.

Dinner With Steven Moffat In Bar Shu, Spent Mostly In Enthusiastic Dr Who Neepery. I Love My Life....as A Side Note, Running Windows Vista On The Panasonic W7 Is Making Me Really Nostalgic For 1986. Whoever Thought I'd Get To Type Things Then Stare At A Blank Screen For A Bit And One-by-one Watch The Letters Appear? Cory And Mike's 'why Don't You Run Linux?' Talks Are Staring To Seem Much More Sensible.

Love Of My Life

I Think I Love My Dreaming Process Because One Of The Things That My Dreaming Process Does Is Sort Out Stories For Me.

I Like Reading. I Prefer Not Reading On My Computer, Because That Makes Whatever I Am Reading Feel Like Work. I Do Not Mind Reading On My Ipad.

It's Not What I'd Want For At My Funeral. When I Die, I Just Want Them To Plant Me Somewhere Warm. And Then When The Pretty Women Walk Over My Grave I Would Grab Their Ankles, Like In That Movie.

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

American Gods Is About 200,000 Words Long, And I'm Sure There Are Words That Are Simply In There 'cause I Like Them. I Know I Couldn't Justify Each And Every One Of Them.

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

Stories Are The Things That Allow Us To Persuade Each Other That We're Human.

A Nice, Easy Place For Freedom Of Speech To Be Eroded Is Comics, Because Comics Are A Natural Target Whenever An Election Comes Up.

Freedom Of Speech

Writer Advice... Write. Finish Things. Go For Walks. Read A Lot & Outside Your Comfort Zone. Stay Interested. Daydream. Write.

Richard Began To Understand Darkness: Darkness As Something Solid And Real, So Much More Than A Simple Absence Of Light. He Felt It Touch His Skin, Questing, Moving, Exploring: Gliding Through His Mind. It Slipped Into His Lungs, Behind His Eyes, Into His Mouth.

The Stuff You Bring Back From Dreams Is Free.

There's A Glorious Sense Of Freedom In Comedy, Just Allowing Myself To Tell Jokes, Allowing Myself To Interrupt Myself And Tell Old African Folk Stories That I Made Up - Or Didn't - And Jamaican Stories.

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.

Without Dreams, There Could Be No Despair.

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.

You See With Your Eyes. This Means You Can Be Misled By Charm, By Outward Appearance. By Webs Of Glamour, By Surface Pretences. I Do Not See With My Eyes. I See Good And I See Evil. Nothing Else.

Twitter Is Great And It's Glorious And It's Easy, But If Somebody Comes Up With Something Kind Of Like Twitter Tomorrow, That's Better Or Smarter Or More Useful, In Three Weeks Time, Twitter Could More Or Less Be History Because That's How Fast Things Go.

There's An Expression, Deja Vu, That Means That You Feel Like You've Been Somewhere Before, That You've Somehow Already Dreamed It Or Experienced It In Your Mind.

With Pornography, If You Don't Get Hard Or Wet, Depending On Your Gender, It Didn't Work. With Humour, If You Don't Laugh It Didn't Work. And With Horror, If You Don't Get Scared Or Haunted, Depending On What It's Trying To Do, It Didn't Work. I'm Fascinated By Those Three Categories.

Richard Wrote A Mental Diary In His Head. Dear Diary, He Began. On Friday I Had A Job, A Fiance, A Home, And A Life That Made Sense. (well, As Much As An Life Makes Sense). Then I Found An Injured Girl Bleeding On The Pavement And I Tried To Be Good Samaritan. Now I've Got No Fiance, No Home, No Job, And I'm Walking Around A Couple Of Hundred Feet Under The Streets Of London With The Projected Life Expectancy Of A Suicidal Fruit Fly.

That Is The Eternal Folly Of Man. To Be Chasing After The Sweet Flesh, Without Realizing That It Is Simply A Pretty Cover For The Bones.

And There Never Was An Apple, In Adam's Opinion, That Wasn't Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell, Because There'll Always Be Better Writers Than You And There'll Always Be Smarter Writers Than You. There Will Always Be People Who Are Much Better At Doing This Or Doing That - But You Are The Only You.

People Pursue Things. As Soon As They Have Them They Run Away From Them.

Just Go With It. It Won't Hurt.' I Stared At Him. Adults Only Ever Said That When It, Whatever It Happened To Be, Was Going To Hurt So Much.

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.

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

For Me, I Would Rather Read A Good Book, From A Contented Author. I Don't Really Care What It Takes To Produce That.

I Looked At The World Of Books And Just Went, Oh My Gosh, If I'm Writing Novels, I'm On The Same Shelves As Jane Austen And Charles Dickens And Petronius - Whereas With Comics, They've Only Been Doing Them For A Hundred Years, And There's Stuff That Nobody's Done Before. I Think I'll Go Off And Do Some Of The Stuff No One's Ever Done Before.

Be Hole, Be Dust, Be Dream, Be Wind/be Night, Be Dark, Be Wish, Be Mind,/now Slip, Now Slide, Now Move Unseen,/above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between.

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

If You Have Something Specific And Visible To Fear, Rather Than Something That Could Be Anything, It Is Easier.

Spider Venom Comes In Many Forms. It Can Often Take A Long While To Discover The Full Effects Of The Bite. Naturalists Have Pondered This For Years: There Are Spiders Whose Bite Can Cause The Place Bitten To Rot And To Die, Sometimes More Than A Year After It Was Bitten. As To Why Spiders Do This, The Answer Is Simple. It's Because Spiders Think This Is Funny, And They Don't Want You Ever To Forget Them.

Gods Die. And When They Truly Die They Are Unmourned And Unremembered. Ideas Are More Difficult To Kill Than People, But They Can Be Killed, In The End.

Take One, And You Cannot Take The Other. But Neither Path Is Safe. Which Way Would You Walk — The Way Of Hard Truths Or The Way Of Fine Lies?

This Is Not A Place, After All. It Is Between Places. This Is Nowhere. A Brief Thought: I Could Stay Here, Abandon My Quest, Hang Forever In The Void, Safe And Cold And Alone.

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.

There Are So Many Places We Have Not Yet Seen. So Many People Still To Meet.

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

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.

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

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.

I'm Intrigued With Figuring Out The Places [where] The Horrible And The Beautiful Meet - That Aesthetic Fascinates Me.

Too Much Talking These Days. Talk Talk Talk. This Country Would Get Along Much Better If People Learned How To Suffer In Silence.

His Name Is Marcus: He Is Four And A Half And Possesses That Deep Gravity And Seriousness That Only Small Children And Mountain Gorillas Have Ever Been Able To Master.

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

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.

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The World Is Always Ending For Someone. It’s A Good Line. I Give It To The Father Of The Child. He Says It To His Wife. ‘the World Is Always Ending For Someone,’ He Says. She Is Trying To Quieten The Baby, And Does Not Hear Him. I Doubt That It Would Matter If She Did.

Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes.

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.

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

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

He Couldn’t See Why People Made Such A Fuss About People Eating Their Silly Old Fruit Anyway, But Life Would Be A Lot Less Fun If They Didn’t. And There Was Never An Apple, In Adam’s Opinion, That Wasn’t Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

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 Best Thing About Writing Fiction Is That Moment Where The Story Catches Fire And Comes To Life On The Page, And Suddenly It All Makes Sense And You Know What It's About And Why You're Doing It And What These People Are Saying And Doing, And You Get To Feel Like Both The Creator And The Audience. Everything Is Suddenly Both Obvious And Surprising ("but Of Course That's Why He Was Doing That, And That Means That...") And It's Magic And Wonderful And Strange.

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.

He..." Richard Began. "the Marquis. Well, You Know, To Be Honest, He Seems A Little Bit Dodgy To Me." Door Stopped. The Steps Dead-ended In A Rough Brick Wall. "mm," She Agreed. "he's A Little Bit Dodgy In The Same Way That Rats Are A Little Bit Covered In Fur.

There Was A Hysteria In There, Certainly, But There Was Also The Exhaustion Of Someone Who Had Managed, Somehow, To Believe Several Dozen Impossible Things In The Last Twenty-four Hours, Without Ever Getting A Proper Breakfast.

Impossible Things

I Remember Making That Vow, The One Not To Forget. Not To Remember What Happened, But To Remember Who I Was And How I Felt.

The Doctor: Sorry, Do You Have A Name? Idris: Seven Hundred Years And Finally He Asks. The Doctor: But What Do I Call You? Idris: I Think You Call Me... Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only When We're Alone. Idris: We Are Alone. The Doctor: Oh. Come On Then, Sexy.

Leave No Path Untaken.

Sometimes Life Is Hard. Things Go Wrong—in Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All The Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do: Make Good Art. . . . Someone On The Internet Thinks What You’re Doing Is Stupid Or Evil Or It’s All Been Done Before: Make Good Art. Probably Things Will Work Out Somehow, Eventually Time Will Take The Sting Away, And It Doesn’t Even Matter. Do What Only You Can Do Best: Make Good Art.

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).

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.

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.

And, Selfish And Scared, I Wonder How Much More He Has To Give.

If A Devil Is One Who Dares, When Others Hold Back, Then I Am Happy To Play The Devil In This Mystery, Boy.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

Don't Worry About Trying To Develop A Style. Style Is What You Can't Help Doing. If You Write Enough, You Draw Enough, You'll Have A Style, Whether You Want It Or Not. Don't Worry About Whether You're "commercial". Tell Your Own Stories, Draw Your Own Pictures. Let Other People Follow You.

Going To Comic-con For Me Is Always Hard And Weird, So It Just Makes Me Feel Guilty. There's Always A Hundre Thousand People Out There Who Have Copies Of Things That I've Written And They Really Want Signed And They're Not Going To Get Them Signed.

When You Reach The Little House, The Place Your Journey Started, You Will Recognize It, Although It Will Seem Much Smaller Than You Remember. Walk Up The Path, And Through The Garden Gate You Never Saw Before But Once. And Then Go Home. Or Make A Home. And Rest.

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.

Adventures Are All Very Well In Their Place, But There's A Lot To Be Said For Regular Meals And Freedom From Pain.

I Walk Across The Dreaming Sands Under The Pale Moon: Through The Dreams Of Countries And Cities, Past Dreams Of Places Long Gone And Times Beyond Recall.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

One Of Those Days

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.

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.

I Think I Fell In Love With Her, A Little Bit. Isn't That Dumb? But It Was Like I Knew Her. Like She Was My Oldest, Dearest Friend. The Kind Of Person You Can Tell Anything To, No Matter How Bad, And They'll Still Love You, Because They Know You. I Wanted To Go With Her. I Wanted Her To Notice Me. And Then She Stopped Walking. Under The Moon, She Stopped. And Looked At Us. She Looked At Me. Maybe She Was Trying To Tell Me Something; I Don't Know. She Probably Didn't Even Know I Was There. But I'll Always Love Her. All My Life.

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.

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

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.

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.

A Disturbing Novel About Dreams And Wishes, A Nightmarish Distaff Monkey's Paw Of A Book That It's Impossible To Forget. Lisa Tuttle Remains Our Preeminent Chronicler Of Family Madness And Desire.

I Would Not Describe Myself As A Political Writer Except In The Sense That The Personal Is Political, Which Is Something That I Do Strongly Believe. And In That Sense American Gods Is A Very Personal Novel And A Political Novel. I Was Trying To Describe The Experience Of Coming To America As An Immigrant, The Experience Of Watching The Way That America Tends To Eat Other Cultures.

I'm More Or Less Happily Writing Chapter Six Of The Graveyard Book. I Say More Or Less As I'm At That Place Where I Hope That The Book Knows What It's Doing Because Right Now I Don't Have A Clue - I'm Writing One Scene After Another Like A Man Walking Through A Valley In Thick Fog, Just Able To See The Path A Little Way Ahead, But With No Idea Where It's Actually Going To Lead Him.

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

I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Life. Some Of Them. Not All.

The Imagination Is A Muscle. If It Is Not Exercised, It Atrophies.

May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness.

Do Not Lose Hope — What You Seek Will Be Found. Trust Ghosts. Trust Those That You Have Helped To Help You In Their Turn. Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story. (from 'instructions')

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

I Knowed A Man In Paphlagonia Who'd Swallow A Live Snake Every Morning, When He Got Up. He Used To Say, He Was Certain Of One Thing, That Nothing Worse Would Happen To Him All Day. 'course They Made Him Eat A Bowlful Of Hairy Centipedes Before They Hung Him, So Maybe That Claim Was A Bit Presumptive.

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.

It’s An Artist’s Job To Show People The World They Live In. We Hold Up Mirrors.

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.

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..."

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