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

-Neil Gaiman

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I Will Write In

Neil Gaiman

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

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

A Book Is A Dream That You Hold In Your Hands.

I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful.

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

Night Was Spreading Slowly Around The Spinning Earth. It Should Have Been Full Of Pinpricks Of Light. It Was Not. There Were Five Billion People Down There. What Was Going To Happen Soon Would Make Barbarism Look Like A Picnic - Hot, Nasty, And Eventually Given Over To The Ants.

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

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.

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.

I Hope The Strong Women Out There Aren't Quiet And They Don't Go Away, Because When People Attack You For Speaking, The Best Way To Drive Them Nuts Is To Smile And Carry On Speaking, Louder, More Wisely, More Intensely, More Articulately Than Ever.

I Was A Book-y Child. I Was Much More Book-y Than Dark.

The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

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

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'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.

The Ideas Aren't That Important. Really They Aren't. Everyone's Got An Idea For A Book, A Movie, A Story, A Tv Series.

Monsters Come In All Shapes And Sizes, Some Of Them Are Things People Are Scared Of. Some Of Them Are Things That Look Like Things People Used To Be Scared Of A Long Time Ago. Sometimes Monsters Are Things People Should Be Scared Of, But They Aren't.

Death Is The Second Oldest Of The Endless. It's Hard Not To Love Her. She Loves You, After All.

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

What Need, Dunstan Wondered, Could Someone Have Of The Storm-filled Eggshells?

When You Dream, Sometimes You Remember. When You Wake, You Always Forget.

Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkably Difficult To Kill.

And Then It Went, And Time Passed Properly Once More, Every Second Following Every Other Second Just Like They're Meant To.

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

It's Easier To Lie To Yourself When You Say Things Out Loud.

It's Easier To Believe In Aliens Than In Gods.

I Think Of Myself As A Very Lazy Author.

Names Come And Names Go.

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.

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.

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

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

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

There Aren't Any Good Guys, And There Aren't Any Bad Guys. There's Just Us. People. Doing Our Best To Get By.

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.

Now Coraline," Said Miss Spink, "what's Your Name?" "coraline," Said Coraline. "and We Don't Know Each Other, Do We?" Coraline Looked At The Thin Young Woman With Black Button Eyes And Shook Her Head Slowly.

When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

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.

Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

People Think Dreams Aren't Real Just Because They Aren't Made Of Matter, Of Particles. Dreams Are Real. But They Are Made Of Viewpoints, Of Images, Of Memories And Puns And Lost Hopes.

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.

Go Get Your Heart Broken.

He Was Having More Fun Than A Barrelful Of Monkeys.* *several Years Earlier Spider Had Actually Been Tremendously Disappointed By A Barrelful Of Monkeys. It Had Done Nothing He Had Considered Particularly Entertaining, Apart From Emit Interesting Noises, And Eventually, Once The Noises Had Stopped And The Monkeys Were No Longer Doing Anything At All—except Possibly On An Organic Level—had Needed To Be Disposed Of In The Dead Of Night.

I Think There Should Be An Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% Of The People Have 99.99999% Of The Time.

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

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.

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled. I Could Not Control The World I Was In, Could Not Walk Away From Things Or People Or Moments That Hurt, But I Took Joy In The Things That Made Me Happy.

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

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

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

I Suppose The Point You Grow Up Is The Point You Let The Dreams Go.

Firstly, There No Such Person As Death. Second, Death's This Tall Guy With A Bone Face, Like A Skeletal Monk, With A Scythe And An Hourglass And A Big White Horse And A Penchant For Playing Chess With Scandinavians. Third, He Doesn't Exist Either.

'doctor Who' Was The First Mythology That I Learned, Before Ever I Ran Into Greek Or Roman Or Egyptian Mythologies.

Entropy And Optimism: The Twin Forces That Make The World Go Around.

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.

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

All We Have To Believe With Is Our Senses, The Tools We Use To Perceive The World: Our Sight, Our Touch, Our Memory. If They Lie To Us, Then Nothing Can Be Trusted. And Even If We Do Not Believe, Then Still We Cannot Travel In Any Other Way Than The Road Our Senses Show Us; And We Must Walk That Road To The End.

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

Are You Scared?’ Asked Mr. Ibis. ‘not Really.’ ‘well, Try To Cultivate The Emotions Of True Awe And Spiritual Terror, As We Walk. They Are The Appropriate Feelings For The Situation At Hand.

Idris: Are All People Like This? The Doctor: Like What? Idris: So Much Bigger On The Inside.

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

If You Are Pointing Out One Of The Things A Story Is About, Then You Are Very Probably Right; If You Are Pointing Out The Only Thing A Story Is About You Are Very Probably Wrong - Even If You're The Author.

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called. Sometimes You'll Forget Precisely What Happened, But If A Story Touches You It Will Stay With You, Haunting The Places In Your Mind That You Rarely Ever Visit.

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.

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 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?'

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.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

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.

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

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

Sometimes We Can Choose The Paths We Follow. Sometimes Our Choices Are Made For Us. And Sometimes We Have No Choice At All.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After A While It Sort Of Began To Rain, Which Is To Say That It Was The Kind Of Rain That Never Comes To A Decision About Whether It's Actually Raining Or Not. Driving In It, You Would Never Have Been Certain Whether Or Not To Turn On Your Wipers.

Adult Helplessness Destroys Children. Or It Forces Them To Become Tiny Adults Of Their Own.

The Moment That You Feel That Just Possibly You Are Walking Down The Street Naked...that's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

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.

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?

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

When I Was Young I Was A Fool. So Wrap Me Up In Dreams And Death.

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.

It Was A Perfectly Normal Gerbil. It Appeared To Be Living In An Exciting Construction Of Cylinders, Spheres And Treadmills, Such As The Spanish Inquisition Would Have Devised If They'd Had Access To A Plastics Molding Press.

Perfectly Normal

We Do Not Always Remember The Things That Do No Credit To Us. We Justify Them, Cover Them In Bright Lies Or With The Thick Dust Of Forgetfulness. All Of The Things That Shadow Had Done In His Life Of Which He Was Not Proud, All The Things He Wished He Had Done Otherwise Or Left Undone, Came At Him Then In A Swirling Storm Of Guilt And Regret And Shame, And He Had Nowhere To Hide From Them. He Was As Naked And As Open As A Corpse On A Table, And Dark Anubis The Jackal God Was His Prosector And His Prosecutor And His Persecutor.

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.

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.

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

Soon Enough His Head Would Be Swimming With Tales Of Derring-do And High Adventure, Tales Of Beautiful Maidens Kissed, Of Evildoers Shot With Pistols Or Fought With Swords, Of Bags Of Gold, Of Diamonds As Big As The Tip Of Your Thumb, Of Lost Cities And Of Vast Mountains, Of Steam-trains And Clipper Ships, Of Pampas, Oceans, Deserts, Tundra.

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.

I'm Never, I Hope, Stupid Enough To Believe That Twitter Or Blogging Or Any Of This Stuff Is A Substitute For Actually Doing The Work Or Writing A Book.

I'm Writing. The Pages Are Starting To Stack Up. My Morale Is Improving The More I Feel Like A Writer.

One Thing That I Get From A Lot Of People With American Gods Is People Saying That They Would Love Some Kind Of Glossary With A List Of All The Gods And Who They Are, So That They Can Look Them Up.

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness. I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful, And Don't Forget To Make Some Art -- Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

You Hurt. It's Okay. I Hurt Too. Hold My Hand.

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.

It Seemed To Coraline That It Was Crouching, And Staring Down At Her, As If It Were Not Really A House But Only The Idea Of A House—and The Person Who Had Had The Idea, She Was Certain, Was Not A Good Person.

She Smiled At Coraline, As If It Had Been A Very Long Time Since She Had Smiled And She Had Almost, But Not Quite, Forgotten How.

It Has Always Been The Prerogative Of Children And Half-wits To Point Out That The Emperor Has No Clothes. But The Half-wit Remains A Half-wit, And The Emperor Remains An Emperor.

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

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful.

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.

I Finally Made Friends With My Father When I Entered My Twenties. We Had So Little In Common When I Was A Boy, And I Am Certain I Had Been A Disappointment To Him. He Did Not Ask For A Child With A Book, Off In Its Own World. He Wanted A Son Who Did What He Had Done; Swam And Boxed And Played Rugby, And Drove Cars At Speed With Abandon And Joy, But That Was Not What He Wound Up With.

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.

You Don’t Want To Ask After The Health Of Anyone, If You’re A Funeral Director. They Think Maybe You’re Scouting For Business.

You Know How Is It When You Love Someone? And The Hard Part, The Bad Part, The Jerry Springer Show Part Is That You Never Stop Loving Someone. There's Always A Piece Of Them In Your Heart.

When You Love Someone

When You Start Out On A Career In The Arts You Have No Idea What You Are Doing. This Is Great. People Who Know What They Are Doing Know The Rules, And Know What Is Possible And Impossible. You Do Not. And You Should Not. The Rules On What Is Possible And Impossible In The Arts Were Made By People Who Had Not Tested The Bounds Of The Possible By Going Beyond Them. And You Can. If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do. And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Possible And Impossible

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.

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

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.

He Stared Down At The Golden Curls Of The Adversary, Destroyer Of Kings, Angel Of The Bottomless Pit, Great Beast That Is Called Dragon, Prince Of This World, Father Of Lies, Spawn Of Satan, And Lord Of Darkness. "you Know," He Concluded, After A While, "i Think He Actually Looks Like An Adam.

She Says Nothing At All, But Simply Stares Upward Into The Dark Sky And Watches, With Sad Eyes, The Slow Dance Of The Infinite Stars.

People Seem To Think That They Can't Come Up With Ideas, And They're Wrong. They Can And They Do, But They Just Think Of It As Daydreaming, Or Wasting Time. Kids Get Told Not To Make Things Up, And In My Case, Nobody Told Me Long Enough, Or It Just Didn't Stick.

But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?

It Stared At Them, And It Paused For A Hundred Years, Which Transpired In A Dozen Heart Beats.

Does It Make You Feel Big To Make A Little Boy Cry?

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

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

Telling The Truth

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

And, Too Ignorant To Be Scared, Too Young To Be Awed, Tristan Thorn Traveled Beyond The Fields We Know.

Stories May Well Be Lies, But They Are Good Lies That Say True Things, And Which Can Sometimes Pay The Rent.

It Is Good For Children To Find Themselves Facing The Elements Of A Fairy Tale - They Are Well-equipped To Deal With These

I Was Thinking One Of The Great Things About Fiction Is We, As A Race, Only Get To Look Out Of Our Own Eyes At The World. And Fiction Is A Fantastic Way Of Looking Out Through Somebody Else's Eyes.

The Problems With Success, Frankly, Are Infinitely Preferable To The Problems Of Failure.

I Watched My Life As If It Were Happening To Someone Else. My Son Died. And I Was Hurt, But I Watched My Hurt, And Even Relished It, A Little, For Now I Could Write A Real Death, A True Loss. My Heart Was Broken By My Dark Lady, And I Wept, In My Room, Alone; But While I Wept, Somewhere Inside I Smiled.

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 Think I Could Be A Perfectly Decent Cat. I've Been Around Cats Long Enough To Know What The Rules Of Being A Cat Are. When All Else Fails, Wash. And I Think I Could Master The Thing That Cats Do, Where They Stalk Away Pretending They Meant To Do Whatever It Was In The First Place; Showing Their Wounded Dignity.

In Reality The World Is Made Of Thousands Of Groups Of About Five Hundred People, All Of Whom Will Spend Their Lives Bumping Into Each Other, Trying To Avoid Each Other, And Discovering Each Other In The Same Unlikely Teashop In Vancouver. There Is An Unavoidability To This Process. It's Not Even Coincidence. It's Just The Way The World Works, With No Regard For Individuals Or Propriety.

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

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

Have You Ever Been In Love? Horrible Isn't It? It Makes You So Vulnerable. It Opens Your Chest And It Opens Up Your Heart And It Means That Someone Can Get Inside You And Mess You Up.

I Am Fascinated A) By Transgressive Art And B) What Happens Beyond The Boundaries.

Know That Diamonds And Roses Are As Uncomfortable When They Tumble From One's Lips As Toads And Frogs: Colder, Too, And Sharper, And They Cut.

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled.

People Take On The Shapes Of The Songs And The Stories That Surround Them, Especially If They Don't Have Their Own Song.

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.

I Tend To Think Of Fear And Humour As Very, Very Close Together. And To Be Honest I Think Pornography Completes The Triangle, Because They Are Things That To Work Need To Evoke A Certain Reaction.

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

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

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

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 Knew Enough About Adults To Know That If Did Tell Them What Had Happened, I Would Not Be Believed. Adults Rarely Seemed To Believe Me When I Told The Truth Anyway.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If You Were To Try And Pick Him Out Of A Group Of Boys, You’d Be Wrong. He’d Be The Other One. Over At The Side. The One Your Eye Slipped Over.

What Would Be The Fun In Doing Things You Know Are Going To Work?

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

I Would Read. I Would Explore

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

You Know The Best Thing About Aeroplanes? Apart From The Peanuts In Little Silver Bags, I Mean. It's Looking Out Of The Windows At The Clouds And Thinking Maybe I Could Go Walking In There. Maybe It's A Special Place Where Everything's Okay. Sometimes I Do Go Walking In The Clouds But It's Just Cold And Wet And Empty. But When You Look Out Of A Plane It's A Special World... And I Like It.

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.

Lives Are Snowflakes - Unique In Detail, Forming Patterns We Have Seen Before, But As Like One Another As Peas In A Pod (and Have You Ever Looked At Peas In A Pod? I Mean, Really Looked At Them? There's Not A Chance You'd Mistake One For Another, After A Minute's Close Inspection.)

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

In Order For Stories To Work - For Kids And For Adults - They Should Scare. And You Should Triumph. There's No Point In Triumphing Over Evil If The Evil Isn't Scary.

There May Be A Parallel Between Woodcuts And Radio; Radio Plays Are A Living Art Form Everywhere Except The Usa.

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.

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

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

Rules And Responsibilities: These Are The Ties That Bind Us. We Do What We Do, Because Of Who We Are. If We Did Otherwise, We Would Not Be Ourselves. I Will Do What I Have To Do. And I Will Do What I Must.

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

That's The Trouble With You Young People. You Think Because You Ain't Been Here Long, You Know Everything. In My Life I Already Forgot More Than You Ever Know.

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.

You Got To Understand The God Thing. It’s Not Magic. It’s About Being You, But The You That People Believe In. It’s About Being The Concentrated, Magnified, Essence Of You. It’s About Becoming Thunder, Or The Power Of A Running Horse, Or Wisdom. You Take All The Belief And Become Bigger, Cooler, More Than Human. You Crystallize.” He Paused. “and Then One Day They Forget About You, And They Don’t Believe In You, And They Don’t Sacrifice, And They Don’t Care, And The Next Thing You Know You’re Running A Three-card Monte Game On The Corner Of Broadway And Forty-third.

You Have To Finish Things - That's What You Learn From, You Learn By Finishing Things.

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

My Wife, Amanda, Is Terribly Good At Warping Reality. She Is Like A Bowling Ball On A Rubber Sheet, And You Find Yourself Living In Her Universe, Doing Things That Are Completely Unexpected Or Unimaginable For You, But You Blink And You're Up On A Stage Singing, Or Wearing A Peculiar Wig, Or Writing A Book Filled With Feelings And Emotion, Or Doing Something Equally As Unlikely.

I Don't Think You Should Ever Insult People Unintentionally: If You're Doing It, You Ought To Mean It.

The Names Are The First Things To Go, After The Breath Has Gone, And The Beating Of The Heart. We Keep Our Memories Longer Than Our Names.

I Move From Dreamer To Dreamer, From Dream To Dream, Hunting For What I Need. Slipping And Sliding And Flickering Through The Dreams; And The Dreamer Will Wake, And Wonder Why This Dream Seemed Different, Wonder How Real Their Lives Can Truly Be.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

And Life Is A Good Thing For A Writer. It's Where We Get Our Raw Material, For A Start. We Quite Like To Stop And Watch It.

Why Does She Want Me?" Coraline Asked The Cat. "why Does She Want Me To Stay Here With Her?" "she Wants Something To Love, I Think," Said The Cat. "something That Isn't Her. She Might Want Something To Eat As Well. It's Hard To Tell With Creatures Like That.

It Would Have Been Hard For Fat Charlie To Say Exactly When The Accumulation Of Birds On The Wire Mesh Moved From Interesting To Terrifying. It Was Somewhere In The First Hundred Or So, Anyway. And It Was In The Way They Didn't Coo, Or Caw, Or Trill, Or Song. They Simply Landed On The Wire, And They Watched Him.

There's Not Much High And Low Culture Any More: There's Just Mingling Streams Of Art And What Matters Is Whether It's Good Art Or Bad Art.

You Can Tell The Date Of An Old Science Fiction Novel By Every Word On The Page. Nothing Dates Harder And Faster And More Strangely Than The Future.

What I Say Is, A Town Isn't A Town Without A Bookstore. It May Call Itself A Town, But Unless It's Got A Bookstore It Knows It's Not Fooling A Soul.

Partly Because I Get Such Astonishingly Nice Fans.

Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People.

I Love Religion. I Could Make Up Religions All Day. I Sort Of Think That In An Ideal World I'd Like To Be A Religion Designer. I'd Like People Come Up To Me And Say, I Need A Religion. I'd Go Talk To Them For A While, And I'd Design A Religion For Them. That Would Be A Great Job. There's A Need For People Like That. Fortunately, Seeing That One Can't Actually Do It, I Get Paid For Sort Of Making Them Up Anyway.

So That's My Wish For You, And All Of Us, And My Wish For Myself. Make New Mistakes. Make Glorious, Amazing Mistakes. Make Mistakes Nobody's Ever Made Before. Don't Freeze, Don't Stop, Don't Worry That It Isn't Good Enough, Or It Isn't Perfect, Whatever It Is: Art, Or Love, Or Work Or Family Or Life.

There Are Only Two Worlds - Your World, Which Is The Real World, And Other Worlds, The Fantasy. Worlds Like This Are Worlds Of The Human Imagination: Their Reality, Or Lack Of Reality, Is Not Important. What Is Important Is That They Are There. These Worlds Provide An Alternative. Provide An Escape. Provide A Threat. Provide A Dream, And Power; Provide Refuge, And Pain. They Give Your World Meaning. They Do Not Exist; And Thus They Are All That Matters.

Normally, In Anything I Do, I'm Fairly Miserable. I Do It, And I Get Grumpy Because There Is A Huge, Vast Gulf, This Aching Disparity, Between The Platonic Ideal Of The Project That Was Living In My Head, And The Small, Sad, Wizened, Shaking, Squeaking Thing That I Actually Produce.

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.

The Magic And The Danger Of Fiction Is This: It Allows Us To See Through Other Eyes. It Takes Us To Places We Have Never Been, Allows Us To Care About, Worry About, Laugh With, And Cry For People Who Do Not, Outside Of The Story, Exist. There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

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.

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.

Write. Finish Things. Get Them Published. Write Something Else While You're Waiting For Someone To Publish The First Thing.

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.

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.

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.

There Is A Madness, Yes, This Is True. Few Mortals Possess It, The Willingness To Step Away From The Protection Of Sanity. To Walk Into The Wild Wood Of Madness...

"death's A Capricious Thing, Innit?" "yes. Yes, She Is."

Right," Said Fat Charlie Conversationally. "you Realize, Of Course, That This Means War." It Was The Traditional War Cry Of A Rabbit When Pushed Too Far.

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?"

When I Was About Ten My Favourite Article In The Huge And Mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica We Owned (the Ninth Edition) Was The One On Lycanthropy. (yes, I Had A Favourite 1890s Britannica Article When I Was Ten. I Am Now Aware This Is Not Entirely Usual.)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Books Smell And Feel Better. They Have That Wonderful Thingness Of Turning The Pages.

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

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