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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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I Would Not Describe

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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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.

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Suggestions? Put It Aside For A Few Days, Or Longer, Do Other Things, Try Not To Think About It. Then Sit Down And Read It (printouts Are Best I Find, But That's Just Me) As If You've Never Seen It Before. Start At The Beginning. Scribble On The Manuscript As You Go If You See Anything You Want To Change. And Often, When You Get To The End You'll Be Both Enthusiastic About It And Know What The Next Few Words Are. And You Do It All One Word At A Time.

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

Sexton: I Think The Whole World's Gone Mad. Death: Uh-uh. It's Always Like This. You Probably Just Don't Get Out Enough.

In Many Ways, It Was Much, Much Harder To Get The First Book Contract. The Hardest Thing Probably Overall Has Been Learning Not To Trust People, Publicists And So Forth, Implicitly.

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As For Thinking Time Versus Writing Time, Well, That's Up To You. But - And I Wish It Were Otherwise - Books Don't Get Written By Thinking About Them, They Get Written By Writing Them. And That's When You Make Discoveries About What You're Writing. That's When You Get The Happy Accidents.

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

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Freedom Of Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

We Have An Obligation To Imagine. It Is Easy To Pretend That Nobody Can Change Anything, That We Are In A World In Which Society Is Huge And The Individual Is Less Than Nothing: An Atom In A Wall, A Grain Of Rice In A Rice Field. But The Truth Is, Individuals Change Their World Over And Over, Individuals Make The Future, And They Do It By Imagining That Things Can Be Different.

I Will Be A Wise And Tolerant Monarch, Dispencing Justice Fairly, And Only Setting Nightmares To Rip Out The Winds Of The Evil And The Wicked. Or Just Anybody That I Don't Like.

Something Told Him That Something Was Coming To An End. Not The World, Exactly. Just The Summer. There Would Be Other Summers, But There Would Never Be One Like This. Ever Again.

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

Everybody Going To Be Dead One Day, Just Give Them Time.

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.

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..."

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.

Rule One Of Reading Other People's Stories Is That Whenever You Say 'well That's Not Convincing' The Author Tells You That's The Bit That Wasn't Made Up. This Is Because Real Life Is Under No Obligation To Be Convincing.

There Were Faces At The Windows And Words Written In Blood; Deep In The Crypt A Lonely Ghoul Crunched On Something That Might Once Have Been Alive; Forked Lightnings Slashed The Ebony Night; The Faceless Were Walking; All Was Right With The World

It’s Not That They’re Small, The Fair Folk. Especially Not The Queen Of Them All, Mab Of The Flashing Eyes And The Slow Smile With Lips That Can Conjure Your Heart Under The Hills For A Hundred Years. It’s Not That They’re Small. It’s That We’re So Far Away.

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 Thin Girl Was Gulping Down One Of Richard's Bananas In What Was, Richard Reflected, The Least Erotic Display Of Banana-eating He Had Ever Seen.

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.

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

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.

You're A Big One,[...] A Tall Drink Of Water, But I Got To Tell You, You Don't Look Too Bright. I Got A Son, Stupid As A Man Who Bought His Stupid At A Two-for-one Sale, And You Remind Me Of Him.

And I Thought, Eight Years Ago, When I Began Carefully Charting The Progress Of American Gods, Nervously Dipping My Toes Into The Waters Of Blogging, Would I Have Imagined A Future In Which, Instead Of Recording The Vicissitudes Of Bringing A Book Into The World, I Would Be Writing About Not-even-interestingly Missing Cups Of Cold Camomile Tea? And I Thought, Yup. Sounds About Right. Happy Eighth Birthday, Blog.

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

So You Used To Know Everything?" She Wrinkled Her Nose. "everybody Did. I Told You. It's Nothing Special, Knowing How Things Work. And You Really Do Have To Give It All Up If You Want To Play." "to Play What?" "this," She Said. She Waved At The House And The Sky And The Impossible Full Moon And The Skeins And The Shawls And Clusters Of Bright Stars.

Being A Writer Of Fiction Isn't Like Being A Compulsive Liar, Honestly.

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

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.

All Cats Can See Futures, And See Echoes Of The Past. We Can Watch The Passage Of Creatures From The Infinity Of Now, From All The Worlds Like Ours, Only Fractionally Different. And We Follow Them With Our Eyes, Ghost Things, And The Humans See Nothing.

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

Any Way, Death Is So Final, Isn't It? "is It?" Asked Richard. "sometimes," Said The Marquis De Carabas. And They Went Down.

I Loved Writing A Book In Which, In Some Ways, It's Very, Very Classical, And In Some Ways I'm Breaking Lots Of Rules About What You Can Do And What You Can't Do.

I Wondered, As I Wondered So Often When I Was That Age, Who I Was, And What Exactly Was Looking At The Face In The Mirror. If The Face I Was Looking At Wasn't Me, And I Knew It Wasn't, Because I Would Still Be Me Whatever Happened To My Face, Then What Was Me? And What Was Watching?

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

Words Can Be Worrisome, Poeple Complex, Motives And Manners Unclear, Grant Her The Wisdom To Choose Her Path Right, Free From Unkindness And Fear.

Dreams Shape The World

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

It Was A Dream, And In Dreams You Have No Choices: Either There Are No Decisions To Be Made, Or They Were Made For You Long Before Ever The Dream Began.

It Doth Not Hurt", Whispered A Faint Voice, "she Will Take You Life And All You Are And All You Care'st For, And She Will Leave You With Nothing But Mist And Fog. She'll Take Your Joy. And One Day You'll Wake And Your Heart And Soul Will Have Gone. A Husk You'll Be, A Wisp You'll Be, And A Thing No More Than A Dream On Waking, Or A Memory Of Something Forgotten.

I Don't Believe In "writer's Block". I Try And Deal With Getting Stuck By Having More Than One Thing To Work On At A Time. And By Knowing That Even A Hundred Bad Words That Didn't Exist Before Is Forward Progress.

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

Bod Shrugged. "so?" He Said. "it's Only Death. I Mean, All Of My Best Friends Are Dead.

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.

First Rule Of Magic: Don't Let Anyone Know Your Real Name. Names Have Power.

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