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It's Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Into, If One Works At It. And Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Out Of, If One Assumes That Everything Will, Somehow Or Other, Work Out For The Best.

-Neil Gaiman

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It's Astonishing How Much

Neil Gaiman

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It's Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Into, If One Works At It. And Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Out Of, If One Assumes That Everything Will, Somehow Or Other, Work Out For The Best.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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He Was Alone In The Darkness Once More, But The Darkness Became Brighter And Brighter Until It Was Burning Like The Sun.

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.

Doctor Who Has Never Pretended To Be Hard Science Fiction... At Best Doctor Who Is A Fairytale, With Fairytale Logic About This Wonderful Man In This Big Blue Box Who At The Beginning Of Every Story Lands Somewhere Where There Is A Problem...

There Was A Table Laid With Jellies And Trifles, With A Party Hat Beside Each Place, And A Birthday Cake With Seven Candles On It In The Center Of The Table. The Cake Had A Book Drawn On It, In Icing. My Mother, Who Had Organized The Party, Told Me That The Lady At The Bakery Said That They Had Never Put A Book On A Birthday Cake Before, And That Mostly For Boys It Was Footballs Or Spaceships. I Was Their First Book.

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

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.

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.

As Sure As Water's Wet And Days Are Long And A Friend Will Always Disappoint You In The End.

Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

Memory Is The Great Deceiver. Perhaps There Are Some Individuals Whose Memories Act Like Tape Recordings, Daily Records Of Their Lives Complete In Every Detail, But I Am Not One Of Them. My Memory Is A Patchwork Of Occurrences, Of Discontinuous Events Roughly Sewn Together: The Parts I Remember, I Remember Precisely, Whilst Other Sections Seemed To Have Vanished Completely.

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

Nearly' Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand-grenades.

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

Be Wise, Because The World Needs More Wisdom. And If You Cannot Be Wise, Pretend To Be Someone Who Is Wise, And Then Just Behave Like They Would.

Of Course You Don't Believe In Fairies. You're Fifteen. You Think I Believed In Fairies At Fifteen? Took Me Until I Was At Least A Hundred And Forty. Hundred And Fifty, Maybe. Anyway, He Wasn't A Fairy. He Was A Librarian. All Right?

When I Was A Kid And A Young Man I Read Everything. When I Was About 23, I Was Incredibly Lucky In That I Wound Up With Several Book Review Columns, Which Meant That I Had To Read Huge Amounts Of Stuff That Was Outside My Experience And Outside My Comfort Zone. I Think Every Young Writer Should Be Forced To Read The Kind Of Stuff They Would Not Normally Read For Pleasure.

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

Truly Life Is Wasted On The Living.

The Really Important Thing To Be Was Yourself, Just As Hard As You Could.

Important Things

Anything That Keeps You Happy And Writing Is Part Of My Writing Ritual: I Like Music, So I Tend To Have It Playing In The Background. But If I'm Interested, I Can Write In An Airport Waiting Areas.

It's Only A World, After All, And They're Just Sand Grains In The Desert, Worlds.

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.

A Piratical Ghost Story In Thirteen Ingenious But Potentially Disturbing Rhyming Couplets, Originally Conceived As A Confection Both To Amuse And To Entertain By Mr. Neil Gaiman, Scrivener, And Then Doodled, Elaborated Upon, Illustrated, And Beaten Soundly By Mr. Cris Grimly, Etcher And Illuminator, Featuring Two Brave Children, Their Diminutive But No Less Courageous Gazelle, And A Large Number Of Extremely Dangerous Trolls, Monsters, Bugbears, Creatures, And Other Such Nastiness, Many Of Which Have Perfectly Disgusting Eating Habits And Ought Not, Under Any Circumstances, To Be Encouraged.

I Love Writing In Longhand. Writing In Longhand, I Think, Is A Marvelous Thing To Do For A Writer These Days. If You Have A Notebook And A Nice Pen You Can Go Off Somewhere, You Can Write That's Solar Powered. You Can Drop It Or Get It Wet And Pretty Much All Of Your Work Will Continue To Be There. If You Suddenly Decide To Look Up A Word Or Check A Reference You Will Not Look Up Four Hours Later, Blinking, Finding Yourself Somehow In The Middle Of An Ebay Auction You Never Had Any Plans To Be Part Of.

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.

Nobody Actually Looks Like What They Really Are On The Inside.

My Bed Was Pushed Up Hard Against The Wall Just Below The Window. I Loved To Sleep With The Windows Open. Rainy Nights Were The Best Of All: I Would Open My Windows And Put My Head On My Pillow And Close My Eyes And Feel The Wind On My Face And Listen To The Trees Sway And Creak. There Would Be Raindrops Blown Onto My Face, Too, If I Was Lucky, And I Would Imagine That I Was In My Boat On The Ocean And That It Was Swaying With The Swell Of The Sea. I Did Not Imagine That I Was A Pirate, Or That I Was Going Anywhere. I Was Just On My Boat.

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

Because, If One Is Writing Novels Today, Concentrating On The Beauty Of The Prose Is Right Up There With Concentrating On Your Semi-colons, For Wasted Effort.

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

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.

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If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do.

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There Are Lots Of Artists In The World. But There's Only One You. And The Only Person Who Has Your Point Of View Is You. If You Decide Not To Make Things, All You've Done Is Deprive The World Of All The Stuff That Only You Could Have Brought To It.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

As A Journalist, I Would Talk To Writers, Directors, Creative People, And Discover That For An Awful Lot Of Them, The Moment They Became Successful, That Was All They Were Allowed To Do. So You End Up Talking To The Bestselling Science-fiction Author Who Wrote A Historical-fiction Novel That Everybody Loved, But No One Would Publish.

Life Is A Disease, Sexually Transmitted And Fatal.

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

Sometimes I Wish That Just Solving The Plot Problems Was Enough. And Then Elves Would Go And Do All The Actual Work Moving The Words Around.

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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.

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

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Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

I Don't Think About Age Groups When I Write, Although I Think If I Know I'm Writing For Children I'll Be A Bit More Ambitious, And Think More About Every Word, Because I Know That They Pay Closer Attention When They Read Than Adults Do.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

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

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

I'm Not Blessed, Or Merciful. I'm Just Me. I've Got A Job To Do, And I Do It. Listen: Even As We're Talking, I'm There For Old And Young, Innocent And Guilty, Those Who Die Together And Those Who Die Alone. I'm In Cars And Boats And Planes; In Hospitals And Forests And Abbatoirs. For Some Folks Death Is A Release, And For Others Death Is An Abomination, A Terrible Thing. But In The End, I'm There For All Of Them.

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.

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.

When You Say Words A Lot They Don't Mean Anything. Or Maybe They Don't Mean Anything Anyway, And We Just Think They Do.

I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

The Past Is Always Knocking At The Door, Trying To Break Through Into Today.

The Greatest Satisfaction You Can Obtain From Life Is Your Pleasure In Producing, In Your Own Individual Way, Something Of Value To Your Fellowmen. That Is Creative Living! For You, Life Can Be A Succession Of Glorious Adventures. Or It Can Be A Monotonous Bore. Take Your Choice!

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’m An Author. We Don’t Want To Lead. We Don’t Need To Follow. We Stay Home And Make Stuff Up And Write It Down And Send It Out Into The World, And Get Inside People’s Heads. Perhaps We Change The World And Perhaps We Don’t. We Never Know. We Just Make Stuff Up.

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

Loyalty Was A Great Thing, But No Lieutenants Should Be Forced To Choose Between Their Leader And A Circus With Elephants.

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes, Then You Are Making New Things, Trying New Things, Learning, Living, Pushing Yourself, Changing Yourself, Changing Your World. You're Doing Things You've Never Done Before, And More Importantly, You're Doing Something.

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

I Was Not Happy As A Child, Although From Time To Time I Was Content. I Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

Any View Of Things That Is Not Strange, Is False.

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.

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.

We Were Never Lovers, And We Never Will Be, Now. I Do Not Regret That, However. I Regret The Conversations We Never Had, The Time We Did Not Spend Together. I Regret That I Never Told Him That He Made Me Happy, When I Was In His Company. The World Was The Better For His Being In It. These Things Alone Do I Now Regret: Things Left Unsaid. And He Is Gone, And I Am Old.

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

One Of Those Days

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.

We Have To Get The... The Thing I Got... To The Angel. And Then He'll Tell Door About Her Family, And He'll Tell Me How To Get Home." Lamia Looked At Hunter With Delight. "and He Can Give You Brains," She Said, Cheerfully, "and Me A Heart.

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

Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

Libraries Are Our Friends.

Thought Provoking

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

When Things Get Tough

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.

When You Love Something You Just Don't Want To Stop Talking About It.

I Am Not By Nature The Kind Of Creator Who Is Transgressive In Order To Be Transgressive.

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.

Note For Americans And Other Aliens: Milton Keynes Is A New City Approximately Halfway Between London And Birmingham. It Was Built To Be Modern, Efficient, Healthy, And, All In All, A Pleasant Place To Live. Many Britons Find This Amusing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One Of The Great Things About Humor Is, You Can Slip Things Past People With Humor, You Can Use It As A Sweetener. So You Can Actually Tell Them Things, Give Them Messages, Get Terribly, Terribly Serious And Terribly, Terribly Dark, And Because There Are Jokes In There, They'll Go Along With You, And They'll Travel A Lot Further Along With You Than They Would Otherwise.

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

A Library Is A Place That Is A Repository Of Information And Gives Every Citizen Equal Access To It. That Includes Health Information. And Mental Health Information. It's A Community Space. It's A Place Of Safety, A Haven From The World.

The Lower You Start, The More Opportunities You Have.

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.

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

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.

Everything Here Is So Weak, Little Girl. Everything Breaks So Easily. They Want Such Simple Things.

I Do Not Believe That All Books Will Or Should Migrate Onto Screens: As Douglas Adams Once Pointed Out To Me, More Than 20 Years Before The Kindle Turned Up, A Physical Book Is Like A Shark. Sharks Are Old: There Were Sharks In The Ocean Before The Dinosaurs. And The Reason There Are Still Sharks Around Is That Sharks Are Better At Being Sharks Than Anything Else Is.

As Far As I'm Concerned, The World Is Composed Of Stories. For Architects, The World Is Composed Of Buildings, For Actors The World Is Composed Of Theatres, Or Whatever... For Me, The World Is Simply Composed Of Stories, When I Look, That's What I See.

He Tried To Listen To The Conversations Going On At The Table And He Found That He Could No Longer Concentrate On What Anyone Was Saying And Which Was Worse That He Was Not Interested In Any Of What He Was Able To Hear.

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.

I Was Bright, And I Could Use That As A Weapon: Words Can Wound, Whatever Those Sticks And Stones Sayings Claim About Them Never Hurting, And I Could Use Them If I Had To.

You're Always You, And That Don't Change, And You're Always Changing, And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

She Was Also An Adult, And When Adults Fight Children, Adults Always Win.

I Came To The Conclusion That In Comedy, Everybody Gets What They Need, Whereas In Horror, Everybody Gets What They Deserve. I Decided That At The End Of The Day, I Was Going To Give Everybody What They Needed.

The End Of The Day

Look. I Brought You Here To Give You A Choice-" "you Didn't Bring Us Here," Said Nick. "you're Here," Said Bod. "i Wanted You Here. I Came Here. You Followed Me. Same Thing.

How Can You Be Happy In This World? You Have A Hole In Your Heart. You Have A Gateway Inside You To Lands Beyond The World You Know. They Will Call You, As You Grow.

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.

Sleep My Little Baby-oh Sleep Until You Waken When You Wake You'll See The World If I'm Not Mistaken... Kiss A Lover Dance A Measure, Find Your Name And Buried Treasure... Face Your Life Its Pain, Its Pleasure, Leave No Path Untaken.

America Was, To Them, The Place That Good People Went To When They Died. They Were Prepared To Believe Just About Anything Could Happen In America.

Goodbyes Are Overrated.

It Is Neither Fair Nor Unfair, Nobody Owens. It Simply Is

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

There Is A Proverbial Saying Chiefly Concerned With Warning Against Too Closely Calculating The Numerical Value Of Un-hatched Chicks.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

People Talk About Books That Write Themselves, And It's A Lie. Books Don't Write Themselves. It Takes Thought And Research And Backache And Notes And More Time And More Work Than You'd Believe.

It's 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

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

I Don't Think Immediate Tragedy Is A Very Good Source Of Art. It Can Be, But Too Often It's Raw And Painful And Un-dealt-with. Sometimes Art Can Be A Really Good Escape From The Intolerable, And A Good Place To Go When Things Are Bad, But That Doesn't Mean You Have To Write Directly About The Bad Thing; Sometimes You Need To Let Time Pass, And Allow The Thing That Hurts To Get Covered With Layers, And Then You Take It Out, Like A Pearl, And You Make Art Out Of It.

Work. Home. The Pub. Meeting Girls. Living In The City. Life. Is That All There 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.

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

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.

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

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.

"where Do You Get Your Ideas?" That's The One Question I'm Genuinely Sick Of Being Asked, And Also Genuinely Fascinated By. What Fascinates Me Is Not That People Ask The Question, But What Kind Of Answer Are They Really Looking For? Because If I Tell Them The Truth, Which Is "i Make Them Up," They Seem Very Disappointed. They Want To Know About The Trek I Do Once A Year To The Mountain.

She Was Witchy, Yes, And In Charge Of A Cauldron Roiling With Ideas And Stories, But She Always Gave The Impression That The Stories, The Ones She Wrote And Wrote So Very Well And So Wisely, Had Simply Happened, And That All She Had Done Was To Hold The Pen. (on Diana Wynne Jones)

None Of This Is Truly Happening," He Said To Shadow. He Sounded Miserable. "it's All In Your Head. Best Not To Think Of It.

I Hope You'll Make Mistakes. If You're Making Mistakes, It Means You're Out There Doing Something.

I Love Mythic Stuff. I Love Playing With Gods, I Love Playing With Myths. A Lot Of It Has To Do With That They're The Basic Places Stories Come From. They're The Clay That You Make The Bricks Out Of.

"some Things May Change," Said Wednesday, Abruptly. "people, However... People Stay The Same."

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

"only Write What You Know" Is Very Good Advice. I Do My Best To Stick To It. I Wrote About Gods And Dreams And America Because I Knew About Them. And I Wrote About What It's Like To Wander Into Faerie Because I Knew About That. I Wrote About Living Underneath London Because I Knew About That Too. And I Put People Into The Stories Because I Knew Them: The Ones With Pumpkins For Heads, And The Serial Killers With Eyes For Teeth, And The Little Chocolate People Filled With Raspberry Cream And The Rest Of Them.

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.

You Are An Analog Girl, Living In A Digital World.

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.

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.

Hasn't There Always Been A Moon?" "bless You. Not In The Slightest. I Remember The Day The Moon Came. We Looked Up In The Sky - It Was All Dirty Brown And Sooty Gray Here Then, Not Green And Blue.

For Tea She Went Down To See Misses Spink And Forcible. She Had Three Digestive Biscuits, A Glass Of Limeade, And A Cup Of Weak Tea. The Limeade Was Very Interesting. It Didn't Taste Anything Like Limes. It Tasted Bright Green And Vaguely Chemical. Coraline Liked It Enormously. She Wished They Had It At Home. "how Are Your Dear Mother And Father?" Asked Miss Spink. "missing," Said Coraline. "i Haven't Seen Either Of Them Since Yesterday. I'm On My Own. I Think I've Probably Become A Single Child Family.

I Wondered How I Looked To Her, In That Place, And Knew That Even In A Place That Was Nothing But Knowledge That Was The One Thing I Could Not Know. That If I Look Inward I Would See Only Infinite Mirrors Staring Into Myself For Eternity.

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

The Marquis Sighed. "i Thought It Was Just A Legend," He Said. "like The Alligators In The Sewers Of New York City." Old Bailey Nodded, Sagely: "what, The Big White Buggers? They're Down There. I Had A Friend Lost A Head To One Of Them." A Moment Of Silence. Old Naeiley Handed The Statue Back To The Marquis. Then He Raised His Hand, And Snapped It, Like A Crocodile Hand, At The Carabas. "it Was Ok," Gurned Old Bailey With A Grin That Was Most Terrible To Behold. "he Had Another.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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