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In Film, A Lot Of The Time You're Not As Engaged, It Is All Being Given To You, And You're Accepting It As It Comes In, But In Comics, As A Reader, You Are Going To Have To Work, Your Imagination Needs To Do An Awful Lot.

-Neil Gaiman

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In Film, A Lot

Neil Gaiman

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In Film, A Lot Of The Time You're Not As Engaged, It Is All Being Given To You, And You're Accepting It As It Comes In, But In Comics, As A Reader, You Are Going To Have To Work, Your Imagination Needs To Do An Awful Lot.

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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.

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

When I Was A Child, Adults Would Tell Me Not To Make Things Up, Warning Me Of What Would Happen If I Did. As Far As I Can Tell So Far, It Seems To Involve Lots Of Foreign Travel And Not Having To Get Up Too Early In The Morning.

I Realized The Other Day That About The Only Author I Genuinely Read For Pure Pleasure Is One Of The Worst Authors In The World, A Guy Called Harry Stephen Keeler, A Long Dead American Mystery Writer. He Was Probably The Greatest Bad Writer America Ever Produced.

He Told Me Not To Seek Revenge, But To Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox Spirit, Sadly. 'wise Counsel,' Said The Fox Of Dreams. 'vegeance Can Be A Road That Has No Ending. You Would Be Wise To Avoid It. And...?' 'i Shall Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox, With A Toss Of Her Head. 'but First I Shall Seek Revenge.

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

I Loved All Books That I Could Read, And I Never Knew If I Was Ready For It Until I Tried To Read It, So I Tried To Read Everything.

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

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.

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

Sometimes Big Things Happen, And They Echo. Those Echoes Crash Across Worlds. They Are The Ripples In The Fabric Of Things. Often They Manifest As Storms. Reality Is A Fragile Thing, After All.

A Life That Is, Like Any Other, Unlike Any Other.

American Gods Was Designed To Be If Not Open-ended, At Least A Trilogy Kind Of Shape, So There's Definitely One More Book, Probably Another Couple Of Books There To Get Written.

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

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

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.

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

People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

I Think I Would Rather Be A Man Than A God. We Don’t Need Anyone To Believe In Us. We Just Keep Going Anyhow. It’s What We Do.

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.

The Best Thing About Doing A Signing Tour Is That Numbers Become Faces. I Got To Sign Books For Six Or Seven Thousand People, All Of Whom Were Dreadfully Nice. Everything Else, The Interviews, The Hotels, The Plane Travel, The Best-seller Lists, Even The Sushi, Gets Old Awfully Fast. Well, Maybe Not The Sushi.

The Lovely Thing About Writing Comics For So Many Years Is That Comics Is A Medium That Is Mistaken For A Genre. It's Not That There Are Not Genres Within Comics, But Because Comics Tend To Be Regarded As A Genre In Itself, Content Becomes Secondary; As Long As I Was Doing A Comic, People Would Pick It Up.

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

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

I Want To Go Home. Then He Mentally Underlined The Last Sentence Three Times, Rewrote It In Huge Letters In Red Ink, And Circled It Before Putting A Number Of Exclamation Marks Next To It In His Mental Margin.

Exclamation Marks

I Am Frightened Of Nothing." "nothing?" "nothing." "are You Extremely Frightened Of Nothing?" "absolutely Terrified Of It." "i Have Nothing In My Pockets. Would You Like To See It?" "no, I Most Definitely Would Not.

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.

Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

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.

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...

Different People Remember Things Differently, And You'll Not Get Any Two People To Remember Anything The Same, Whether They Were There Or Not.

It Is Astonishing Just How Much Of What We Are Can Be Tied To The Beds We Wake Up In In The Morning, And It Is Astonishing How Fragile That Can Be.

In Hollywood The Man Who Cleans Your Pool Is An Actor. The Man Who Sells You Your Copy Of Variety Is An Actor. I Don't Think There's A Real Person Left In The Place.

There's A Tale In The Caballa That Suggests That The Angel Of Death Is So Beautiful That Upon Seeing It (or Him, Or Her) You Fall In Love So Hard, So Fast, That Your Soul Is Pulled Out Through Your Eyes. I Like That Story.

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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.

Fictions Are Merely Frozen Dreams, Linked Images With Some Semblance Of Structure. They Are Not To Be Trusted, No More Than The People Who Create Them.

It Occurs To Me That The Peculiarity Of Most Things We Think Of As Fragile Is How Tough They Truly Are. There Were Tricks We Did With Eggs, As Children, To Show How They Were, In Reality, Tiny Load-bearing Marble Halls; While The Beat Of The Wings Of A Butterfly In The Right Place, We Are Told, Can Create A Hurricane Across An Ocean. 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 Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

Everybody Has A Secret World Inside Of Them. I Mean Everybody. All Of The People In The Whole World, I Mean Everybody — No Matter How Dull And Boring They Are On The Outside. Inside Them They've All Got Unimaginable, Magnificent, Wonderful, Stupid, Amazing Worlds... Not Just One World. Hundreds Of Them. Thousands, Maybe.

Sister Mary Chose That Moment To Come In With The Tea. Satanist Or Not, She'd Also Found A Plate And Arranged Some Iced Biscuits On It.

What Should I Believe? Thought Shadow, And The Voice Came Back To Him From Somewhere Deep Beneath The World, In A Bass Rumble: Believe Everything.

Life Is A Disease, Sexually Transmitted And Fatal.

My Parents Would Frisk Me Before Family Events. Before Weddings, Funerals, Bar Mitzvahs, And What Have You. Because If They Didn't, Then The Book Would Be Hidden Inside Some Pocket Or Other And As Soon As Whatever It Was Got Under Way I'd Be Found In A Corner. That Was Who I Was...that Was What I Did. I Was The Kid With The Book.

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

The World Is Always Ending, And The End Is Always Being Averted, By Love Or Foolishness Or Just Plain Old Dumb Luck.

If There's One Thing That A Study Of History Has Taught Us, It Is That Things Can Always Get Worse.

Bod Said, 'i Want To See Life. I Want To Hold It In My Hands. I Want To Leave A Footprint On The Sand Of A Desert Island. I Want To Play Football With People. I Want,' He Said, And Then He Paused And He Thought. 'i Want Everything.

Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell.

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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.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

The Main Rule Of Writing Is That If You Do It With Enough Assurance And Confidence, You’re Allowed To Do Whatever You Like. (that May Be A Rule For Life As Well As For Writing. But It’s Definitely True For Writing.) So Write Your Story As It Needs To Be Written. Write It Honestly, And Tell It As Best You Can. I’m Not Sure That There Are Any Other Rules. Not Ones That Matter.

The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky; The World Had Never Seemed So World.

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 Have A Very Open Relationship With Your Fans." "yes. We Have An Open Relationship. Obviously They Can See Other Authors If They Want, And I Can See Other Readers.

Open Relationship

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Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes.

I Believe That Anyone Who Claims To Know What's Going On Will Lie About The Little Things Too.

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I Think Of Myself As A Very Lazy Author.

You Can't Trust Other People. If It's Important, You Have To Do It Yourself.

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

He Stared Up At The Stars, And It Seemed To Him Then That They Were Dancers, Stately And Graceful, Performing A Dance Almost Infinite In Its Complexity. He Imagined He Could See The Very Faces Of The Stars; Pale, They Were, And Smiling Gently, As If They Had Spent So Much Time Above The World, Watching The Scrambling And The Joy And The Pain Of The People Below Them, That They Could Not Help Being Amused Every Time Another Little Human Believed Itself The Center Of Its World, As Each Of Us Does.

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

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

In My Dream, It Was The Tongue Of What Is, And Anything Spoken In It Becomes Real, Because Nothing Said In That Language Can Be A Lie. It Is The Most Basic Building Brick Of Everything.

Writing Imaginative Tales For The Young Is Like Sending Coals To Newcastle. For Coals.

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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.

I'm Somebody Who Considers Happiness A Journey, Not A Destination.

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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I Believe That All Men Are Just Overgrown Boys With Deep Problems Communicating.

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Encyclopedia Britannica

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.

He Shivered. His Coat Was Thin, And It Was Obvious He Would Not Get His Kiss, Which He Found Puzzling. The Manly Heroes Of The Penny Dreadfuls And Shilling Novels Never Had These Problems Getting Kissed.

I Remembered Something Somebody Had Once Said To Me. It's Okay. Everyday Is Freshly Ground.

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine.

Never Trust The Storyteller. Only Trust The Story.

Short Stories Are Tiny Windows Into Other Worlds And Other Minds And Dreams. They Are Journeys You Can Make To The Far Side Of The Universe And Still Be Back In Time For Dinner.

If Not For Death, They’d Be Content To Simply Exist, But With Death, Well, Their Lives Will Have Meaning — A Boundary Beyond Which The Living Cannot Cross.

This Was The Void. Not Blackness, Not Nothingness. This Was What Lay Beneath The Thinly Painted Scrim Of Reality.

The Search For The Word Gets No Easier But Nobody Else Is Going To Write Your Novel For You.

I Once Read That You Die Because You See The Angel Of Death, And You Fall In Love. And You Fall In Love So Hard Your Soul Is Sucked Out Through Your Eyes, And That's The Moment Of Death. It's A Lovely, Strange Old Jewish Legend.

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People Kill What They Fear. They Burned, And Drowned, And Hanged Those They Saw As Witches, The Devil's Servants: The Wise Women And The Cunning Men, The Unfortunate, The Lost And The Strange

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

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

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

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.

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine. First They Were Driving Through Countryside, Then, Imperceptibly, The Occasional Town Became A Low Suburban Sprawl, And The Sprawl Became The City.

We Wrapped Our Dreams In Words And Patterned The Words So That They Would Live Forever, Unforgettable.

Are We Human Because We Gaze At The Stars Or Do We Gaze At The Stars Because We Are Human?

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

I'm Bored," She Said. "learn How To Tap-dance," He Suggested, Without Turning Around.

Sometimes Human Beings Are Very Much Like Bees. Bees Are Fiercely Protective Of Their Hive, Provided You Are Outside It. Once You’re In, The Workers Sort Of Assume That It Must Have Been Cleared By Management And Take No Notice; Various Freeloading Insects Have Evolved A Mellifluous Existence Because Of This Very Fact. Humans Act The Same Way.

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

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.

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

I Told You I Would Tell You My Names. This Is What They Call Me. I'm Called Glad-of-war, Grim, Raider, And Third. I Am One-eyed. I Am Called Highest, And True-guesser. I Am Grimnir, And I Am The Hooded One. I Am All-father, And I Am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I Have As Many Names As There Are Winds, As Many Titles As There Are Ways To Die. My Ravens Are Huginn And Muninn, Thought And Memory; My Wolves Are Freki And Geri; My Horse Is The Gallows.

He Had Kissed Her Good Night That Night, And She Had Tasted Like Strawberry Daiquiris, And He Had Never Wanted To Kiss Anyone Else Again.

I Love Making Things. I Love Building Things. I Love The Idea That Something's In The World That Wasn't There Before.

Building Things

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

Fairy Tales Are More Than True: Not Because They Tell Us That Dragons Exist, But Because They Tell Us That Dragons Can Be Beaten.

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

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

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

We Have An Obligation To Read Aloud To Our Children. To Read Them Things They Enjoy. To Read To Them Stories We Are Already Tired Of. To Do The Voices, To Make It Interesting, And Not To Stop Reading To Them Just Because They Learn To Read To Themselves. Use Reading-aloud Time As Bonding Time, As Time When No Phones Are Being Checked, When The Distractions Of The World Are Put Aside.

There Was Virginia Boote, The Food And Restaurant Critic, Who Had Once Been A Great Beauty But Was Now A Grand And Magnificent Ruin, And Who Delighted In Her Ruination.

I Don't Necessarily Think Stories Have Functions Any More Than Diamonds Have Functions, Or The Sky Has A Function... Stories Exist. They Keep Us Sane, I Think. We Tell Each Other Stories, We Believe Stories. I Love Watching The Slow Rise Of The Urban Legend. They're The Stories That We Use To Explain Ourselves To Ourselves.

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

I Think Radio Plays Are My Favourite Medium, As They Make The Listener Work And Create And Contribute In A Way That Tv And Film Can Never Do, And They Have An Immediacy That Written Prose Often Lacks.

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.

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.

All Bookshelves Are Magical.

If You Want To Call It That. But It Is A Very Specific Sort Of Magic. There's A Magic You Take From Death. Something Leaves The World, Something Else Comes Into It.

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')

Bod Was Thrilled. He Imagined A Future In Which He Could Read Everything, In Which All Stories Could Be Opened And Discovered.

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.

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.

It Always Felt Like The Price Of Being A Writer Was That You Would - Even In The Most Terrible Moments, There Was A Little Phantom Version Of You Sitting On Your Shoulder With A Notebook Going, I Can Use This. Ok, Look At The Way That The Light Is Glinting Off The Broken Plastic On The Road Next To The Blood. You Can Use This. And It Was Always A Very Strange Feeling.

When I Was Young, You Know, The First Foreign Editions That Would Come In Of Anything Of Mine, I'd Sit There And Look At Them As These Strange And Wonderful Artifacts.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

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.

When Writing A Novel, That's Pretty Much Entirely What Life Turns Into: 'house Burned Down. Car Stolen. Cat Exploded. Did 1500 Easy Words, So All In All It Was A Pretty Good Day.

Childhood Memories Are Sometimes Covered And Obscured Beneath The Things That Come Later, Like Childhood Toys Forgotten At The Bottom Of A Crammed Adult Closet, But They Are Never Lost For Good.

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

That Which Is Dreamed Can Never Be Lost, Can Never Be Undreamed.

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

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.

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.

Nothin’ Wrong With Witchfinding. I’d Like To Be A Witchfinder. It’s Just, Well, You’ve Got To Take It In Turns. Today We’ll Go Out Witchfinding, An’ Tomorrow We Could Hide, An’ It’d Be The Witches’ Turn To Find Us.

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.

Often You Will Discover That The Harder You Work, And The More Wisely You Work, The Luckier You Get. But There Is Luck, And It Helps.

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.

Coming Over From England, I Was Awe-struck By What Americans Do At Halloween. I Find It Magnificent. In England, You Get The Occasional Fancy Dress Party.

In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.

The Future Came And Went In The Mildly Discouraging Way That Futures Do.

She Decides To Make A List Of The Things That Make Her Happy. She Writes 'plum-blossom' At The Top Of A Piece Of Paper. Then She Stares At The Paper, Unable To Think Of Anything Else. Eventually It Begins To Get Dark.

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

Behind The Curtain's Mystic Fold The Glowing Future Lies Unrolled.

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

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

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.

He Felt Her Heart Beating Against His Chest. The Moment Began To Transmute, And He Wondered If There Was Something He Should Do. He Wondered If He Should Kiss Her. He Wondered If He Wanted To Kiss Her, And He Realized That He Truly Didn't Know.

I Don't Think I'm Mainstream. I Think What I Am Is Lots And Lots Of Different Cults. And When You Get Lots And Lots Of Small Groups Who Like You A Lot, They Add Up To A Big Group Without Ever Actually Becoming Mainstream.

I Love Cgi If It's Invisible. I Don't Like It When It's There And Obvious.

I Was Not Scared Of Anything, When I Read My Book.

Lies And Half-truths Fall Like Snow, Covering The Things That I Remember, The Things I Saw. A Landscape, Unrecognizable After A Snowfall; That Is That She Has Made Of My Life.

It's Always Too Late For Sorries, But I Appreciate The Sentiment.

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.

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

The Real World Has No Obligation To Be Convincing, So It Throws Up Some Very Weird Moments Sometimes.

Making Fiction For Children, Making Books For Children, Isn't Something You Do For Money. It's Something You Do Because What Children Read And Learn And See And Take In Changes Them And Forms Them, And They Make The Future. They Make The World We're Going To Wind Up In, The World That Will Be Here When We're Gone. Which Sounds Preachy (and Is More Than You Need For A Quotebyte) But It's True. I Want To Tell Kids Important Things, And I Want Them To Love Stories And Love Reading And Love Finding Things Out. I Want Them To Be Brave And Wise. So I Write For Them.

They Kissed For The First Time Then In The Cold Spring Rain, Though Neither One Of Them Now Knew That It Was Raining. Tristran's Heart Pounded In His Chest As If It Was Not Big Enough To Contain All The Joy That It Held. He Opened His Eyes As He Kissed The Star. Her Sky-blue Eyes Stared Back Into His, And In Her Eyes He Could See No Parting From Her.

Why Do They Blame Me For All Their Little Failings? They Use My Name As If I Spent My Entire Days Sitting On Their Shoulders, Forcing Them To Commits Acts They Would Otherwise Find Repulsive. 'the Devil Made Me Do It.' I Have Never Made One Of Them Do Anything. Never. They Live Their Own Tiny Lives. I Do Not Live Their Lives For Them.

The Only People I Ever Get Irritated With Are The Ones Who Announce, Using My Twitter Handle, That They Are No Longer Following Me And Why.

When The First Living Thing Existed, I Was There Waiting. When The Last Living Thing Dies, My Job Will Be Finished. I'll Put The Chairs On The Tables, Turn Out The Lights And Lock The Universe Behind Me When I Leave.

I Asked Him If It Were A Mirage, And He Said Yes. I Said It Was A Dream, And He Agreed, But Said It Was The Desert's Dream Not His. And He Told Me That In A Year Or So, When He Had Aged Enough For Any Man, Then He Would Walk Into The Wind, Until He Saw The Tents. This Time, He Said, He Would Go On With Them.

There's Never Been A True War That Wasn't Fought Between Two Sets Of People Who Were Certain They Were In The Right. The Really Dangerous People Believe They Are Doing Whatever They Are Doing Solely And Only Because It Is Without Question The Right Thing To Do. And That Is What Makes Them Dangerous.

The Comic Convention Itself Tends To Come Second To The Giant Announcements In Hall H And The Movies And The Tv. So I Think It's Always Good To Remind People That There Is A Wonderful Comic Convention Going On.

I Like The Stars. It's The Illusion Of Permanence, I Think. I Mean, They're Always Flaring Up And Caving In And Going Out. But From Here, I Can Pretend... I Can Pretend That Things Last.

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

When Things Get Tough

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.

None Of Us Know Where Our Stories Come From. That's Why Writers Make Fun Of People Who Ask Us Where We Get Our Ideas... Because We Don't Know.

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.

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Manmade Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf.

I Was Not So Old That I Would Deny My Own Senses.

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.

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 Only Have Two Kinds Of Dreams: The Bad And The Terrible. Bad Dreams I Can Cope With. They're Just Nightmares, And The End Eventually. I Wake Up. The Terrible Dreams Are The Good Dreams. In My Terrible Dreams, Everything Is Fine. I Am Still With The Company. I Still Look Like Me. None Of The Last Five Years Ever Happened. Sometimes I'm Married. Once I Even Had Kids. I Even Knew Their Names. Everything's Wonderful And Normal And Fine. And Then I Wake Up, And I'm Still Me. And I'm Still Here. And That Is Truly Terrible.

I Thought About Moving South, About Continuing To Run, Continuing To Pretend I Was Alive. But It Was, I Knew Now, Much Too Late For That. There Are Doors, After All, Between The Living And The Dead, And They Swing In Both Directions.

The Real Problem With Stories - If You Keep Them Going Long Enough, They Always End In Death.

The Best Way To Show People True Things Is From A Direction That They Had Not Imagined The Truth Coming.

We Owe It To Each Other To Tell Stories.

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

For Me, Closing Libraries Is The Equivalent Of Eating Your Seed Corn To Save A Little Money.

Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled But Halved. No Man Is An Island

The Time Lords Really Didn't Like Genocide. I'm Not Too Keen On It Myself. It's The Potential You're Killing Off. What If, One Day, There Was A Good Dalek? What If...

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.

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.)

You're Brave. You Are The Bravest Person I Know, And You Are My Friend. I Don't Care If You Are Imaginary.

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

The Best Advice I Can Give On This Is, Once It's Done, To Put It Away Until You Can Read It With New Eyes. Finish The Short Story, Print It Out, Then Put It In A Drawer And Write Other Things. When You're Ready, Pick It Up And Read It, As If You've Never Read It Before. If There Are Things You Aren't Satisfied With As A Reader, Go In And Fix Them As A Writer: That's Revision.

Never Mind. There. For Good Or Bad. It's Done.

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

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

As Far As I'm Concerned, The Entire Reason For Becoming A Writer Is Not Having To Get Up In The Morning.

What's It Like Then?" Asked Old Bailey. "being Dead?" The Marquis Sighed. And Then He Twisted His Lips Up Into A Smile, And With A Glitter Of His Old Self, He Replied, "live Long Enough, Old Bailey, And You Can Find Out For Yourself.

Mostly You Are What They Think You Are.

They All Do The Same Things. They May Think Their Sins Are Original, But For The Most Part They Are Petty And Repetitive.

Everybody Who Has Ever Read Sandman Knows Exactly What The Sandman Looks Like, Which Is More Than Anybody Who Has Ever Read The Catcher In The Rye Can Say About Holden Caufield.

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.

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.

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

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.

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Genevieve Gorder

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