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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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My Parents Would Frisk

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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Let Us Begin This Letter, This Prelude To An Encounter, Formally, As A Declaration, In The Old-fashioned Way: I Love You. You Do Not Know Me (although You Have Seen Me, Smiled At Me). I Know You (although Not So Well As I Would Like. I Want To Be There When Your Eyes Flutter Open In The Morning, And You See Me, And You Smile. Surely This Would Be Paradise Enough?). So I Do Declare Myself To You Now, With Pen Set To Paper. I Declare It Again: I Love You.

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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.

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She Sat Down On One Of Her Grandmother's Uncomfortable Armchairs, And The Cat Sprang Up Into Her Lap And Made Itself Comfortable. The Light That Came Through The Picture Window Was Daylight, Real Golden Late-afternoon Daylight, Not A White Mist Light. The Sky Was A Robin's-egg Blue, And Coraline Could See Trees And, Beyond The Trees, Green Hills, Which Faded On The Horizon Into Purples And Grays. The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky, The World Had Never Seemed So World ... Nothing, She Thought, Had Ever Been So Interesting.

Everything He Had Ever Done That Had Been Better Left Undone. Every Lie He Had Told — Told To Himself, Or Told To Others. Every Little Hurt, And All The Great Hurts. Each One Was Pulled Out Of Him, Detail By Detail, Inch By Inch. The Demon Stripped Away The Cover Of Forgetfulness, Stripped Everything Down To Truth, And It Hurt More Than Anything.

Children, As I Have Said, Use Back Ways And Hidden Paths, While Adults Take Roads And Official Paths.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

And If There's A Moral There, I Don't Know What It Is, Save Maybe That We Should Take Our Goodbyes Whenever We Can.

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.

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

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've Been Making A List Of The Things They Don't Teach You At School. They Don't Teach You How To Love Somebody. They Don't Teach You How To Be Famous. They Don't Teach You How To Be Rich Or How To Be Poor. They Don't Teach You How To Walk Away From Someone You Don't Love Any Longer. They Don't Teach You How To Know What's Going On In Someone Else's Mind. They Don't Teach You What To Say To Someone Who's Dying. They Don't Teach You Anything Worth Knowing.

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Empathy Is A Tool For Building People Into Groups, For Allowing Us To Function As More Than Self-obsessed Individuals.

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.

It's Like You Said The Other Day," Said Adam. "you Grow Up Readin' About Pirates And Cowboys And Spacemen And Stuff, And Jus' When You Think The World's Full Of Amazin' Things, They Tell You It's Really All Dead Whales And Chopped-down Forests And Nucular Waste Hangin' About For Millions Of Years. 'snot Worth Growin' Up For, If You Ask My Opinion.

But I Have Always Thought That These Tulips Must Have Had Names. They Were Red, And Orange And Red, And Red And Orange And Yellow, Like The Ember In A Nursery Fire Of A Winter's Evening. I Remember Them.

Traveling Through The Dragon's Den, It Has Just Been Explained That Haroun, The Ifrit, Has Been Caught In A Mirror Trap. Here Is The Passage That Follows: "so," Said Silas. "now There Are Only Three Of Us." "and A Pig," Said Kandar [the Mummy] "why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, With A Wolf-tongue, Through Wolf Teeth. "why The Pig?" "it's Lucky," Said Kandar. Miss Lupescu Growled, Unconvinced. "did Haroun Have A Pig?" Asked Kandar, Simply.

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

Whatever It Is You're Scared Of Doing, Do It.

There Was A Tale He Had Read Once, Long Ago, As A Small Boy: The Story Of A Traveler Who Had Slipped Down A Cliff, With Man-eating Tigers Above Him And A Lethal Fall Below Him, Who Managed To Stop His Fall Halfway Down The Side Of The Cliff, Holding On For Dear Life. There Was A Clump Of Strawberries Beside Him, And Certain Death Above Him And Below. What Should He Do? Went The Question. And The Reply Was, Eat The Strawberries. The Story Had Never Made Sense To Him As A Boy. It Did Now.

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There's This Thing, They Have In French: L'espirit D'escalier. The Spirit Of The Stairway. I Don't Think We Have A Word For It In English. It Means, Well, The Clever Things To Say That You Only Think To Yourself When You're On The Way Out.

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I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No, I Am Brave.

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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.

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Most Of What I Want To Try To Do Is Continue To Go Places With Fiction That I've Never Gone Before, And Tell Stories I've Never Told Before, And One Of The Problems You Rapidly Discover About Fans Is What Fans Want Is The Last Thing They Liked. They Want More Of That.

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

You Get Work However You Get Work. People Keep Working, In A Freelance World, And More And More Of Today's World Is Freelance, Because Their Work Is Good, And Because They Are Easy To Get Along With, And Because They Deliver The Work On Time. And You Don't Even Need All Three. Two Out Of Three Is Fine. People Will Tolerate How Unpleasant You Are If Your Work Is Good And You Deliver It On Time. They'll Forgive The Lateness Of The Work If It's Good, And If They Like You. And You Don't Have To Be As Good As The Others If You're On Time And It's Always A Pleasure To Hear From You.

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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.

There Was Only One Guy In The Whole Bible Jesus Ever Personally Promised A Place With Him In Paradise. Not Peter, Not Paul, Not Any Of Those Guys. He Was A Convicted Thief, Being Executed. So Don't Knock The Guys On Death Row. Maybe They Know Something You Don't.

Continuity Isn't Actually Something That I Ever Worry About. You Use It Where You Need To, And You Don't Use It Where You Don't Need To.

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What Power Would Hell Have If Those Imprisoned Were Not Able To Dream Of Heaven?

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For Love Is No Part Of The Dreamworld. Love Belongs To Desire, And Desire Is Always Cruel.

I Must Confess, I Have Always Wondered What Lay Beyond Life, My Dear. Yeah, Everybody Wonders. And Sooner Or Later Everybody Gets To Find Out.

Goodbyes Are Overrated.

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On The First Day Coraline's Family Moved In, Miss Spink And Miss Forcible Made A Point Of Telling Coraline How Dangerous The Well Was, And They Warned Her To Be Sure She Kept Away From It. So Coraline Set Off To Explore For It, So That She Knew Where It Was, To Keep Away From It Properly.

If You Can't Eat It, Drink It, Smoke It, Or Snort It... Then F*ck It!

Some Of The Things Are The Same No Matter Which World You're In, Kid. One Of 'em Is This: The Quickest Way Out Of Something Is Usually Straight Through It.

I Like Horror, But I Tend To Like It As Seasoning. I'd Get Very Bored If I Was Told I Had To Write A Horror Novel. I'd Love To Write A Novel With Horror Elements, But Too Much, And It Doesn't Taste Of Anything Else.

People Believe, Thought Shadow. It's What People Do. They Believe, And Then They Do Not Take Responsibility For Their Beliefs; They Conjure Things, And Do Not Trust The Conjuration. People Populate The Darkness; With Ghost, With Gods, With Electrons, With Tales. People Imagine, And People Believe; And It Is That Rock Solid Belief, That Makes Things Happen.

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

There Was A Hand In The Darkness, And It Held A Knife.

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.

Whatever's Happening," She Said, Eventually, "it Can All Be Sorted Out." She Saw The Expression On My Face Then, Worried. Scared Even. And She Said, "after Pancakes.

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

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.

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

You Are Young, And In Love. Every Young Man In Your Position Is The Most Miserable Young Man Who Ever Lived.

Miserable Person

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.

To Be Honest, I Think Love Is Complete Bullshit. I Don't Think Anyone Ever Loves Anyone. I Think The Best People Ever Get Is Horny; Horny And Scared, So When They Find Someone Who Makes Them Horny, And They Get Too Scared Of The World Outside, They Stay Together And They Call It Love.

Time Is Fluid Here', Said The Demon.

And Sometimes When You Fall... You Fly...

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.

I Have No Plans To Love You," Said Coraline. "no Matter What. You Can't Make Me Love You.

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

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.

Songs Remain. They Last...a Song Can Last Long After The Events And The People In It Are Dust And Dreams And Gone. That's The Power Of Songs.

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

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

Anywhere That I Can't Check My Email Is A Good Place To Write!

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

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.

The Lord Of Dreams Learns That One Must Change Or Die, And Makes His Decision

I've Learned Over The Years That Everything Is More Or Less The Same Amount Of Work, So You May As Well Set Your Sights High And Try And Do Something Really Cool.

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

The Squirrel Has Not Yet Found The Acorn That Will Grow To The Oak That Will Be Cut To Form The Cradle Of The Babe That Will Grow To Slay Me.

The Old Rules Are Crumbling And Nobody Knows What The New Rules Are...so Make Up Your Own Rules.

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

Belinda Stared Into The Fire For Some Time, Thinking About What She Had In Her Life, And What She Had Given Up; And Whether It Would Be Worse To Love Someone Who Was No Longer There, Or Not To Love Someone Who Was.

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

The Stuff You Bring Back From Dreams Is Free.

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

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We Are Small But We Are Many We Are Many We Are Small We Were Here Before You Rose We Will Be Here When You Fall

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.

When You Start Off, You Have To Deal With The Problems Of Failure. You Need To Be Thickskinned, To Learn That Not Every Project Will Survive.

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 Would Not Wish To Marry Someone Who Had Already Been Married. It Would Be,' She Opined, 'like Having Someone Else Break In One's Own Pony.

I Think You Have To Accept That An Artist Also Has A Relationship With His Or Her Art And His Or Her Fans: You Are In An Open Relationship Whether You Like It Or Not. Give The Artist Room To Go Into The Place They Create (literally Or Metaphorically) . And Love Them When They Can't Remember Where They Put Their Keys.

Daisy Looked Up At Him With The Kind Of Expression That Jesus Might Have Given Someone Who Had Just Explained That He Was Probably Allergic To Bread And Fishes, So Could He Possibly Do Him A Quick Chicken Salad.

You Are Obvious, Boy. You Are Difficult To Miss. If You Came To Me In Company With A Purple Lion, A Green Elephant, And A Scarlet Unicorn Astride Which Was The King Of England In His Royal Robes, I Do Believe That It Is You And You Alone That People Would Stare At, Dismissing The Others As Minor Irrelevancies.

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.

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

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

There Are Accounts That, If We Open Our Hearts To Them, Will Cut Us Too Deeply.

Writers May Be Solitary But They Also Tend To Flock Together: They Like Being Solitary Together.

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.

I Really Like Being Able To Laugh At My Own Jokes.

There Are Stories That Are True, In Which Each Individual's Tale Is Unique And Tragic, And The Worst Of The Tragedy Is That We Have Heard It Before, And We Cannot Allow Ourselves To Feel It To Deeply. We Build A Shell Around It Like An Oyster Dealing With A Painful Particle Of Grit, Coating It With Smooth Pearl Layers In Order To Cope. This Is How We Walk And Talk And Function, Day In, Day Out, Immune To Others' Pain And Loss. If It Were To Touch Us It Would Cripple Us Or Make Saints Of Us; But, For The Most Part, It Does Not Touch Us. We Cannot Allow It To.

Style Is Made Up Of Whatever An Author Can't Avoid Doing.

My Ideal Reader Is Me. And Yes, My Ideal Reader Comes With Me And Is Forgiving.

It's Not Sipping Wine. It's A Mourning Wine. You Drain It. Like This.

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.

Hey, That's Life, Flick It Off If You Can't Take A Joke.

I Like Airplanes. I Like Anywhere That Isn't A Proper Place. I Like In Betweens.

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

It Doesn't Matter That You Didn't Believe In Us," Said Mr. Ibis. "we Believed In You.

That Doesn't Happen," She Explained. "stars Fall. They Don't Go Back Up Again." "you Could Be The First," He Told Her.

It's Not Hard To Own Something. Or Everything. You Just Have To Know That It's Yours, And Then Be Willing To Let It Go.

He Wondered Whether Home Was A Thing That Happened To A Place After A While, Or If It Was Something That You Found In The End, If You Simply Walked And Waited And Willed It Long Enough.

I Think That Pretty Much Every Form Of Fiction (i’d Include Fantasy, Obviously) Can Actually Be A Real Escape From Places Where You Feel Bad, And From Bad Places. It Can Be A Safe Place You Go, Like Going On Holiday, And It Can Be Somewhere That, While You’ve Escaped, Actually Teaches You Things You Need To Know When You Go Back, That Gives You Knowledge And Armour And Tools To Change The Bad Place You Were In. So No, They’re Not Escapist. They’re Escape.

The War Had Begun And Nobody Saw It. The Storm Was Lowering And Nobody Knew It.

I Would Like To See Anyone, Prophet, King Or God, Convince A Thousand Cats To Do The Same Thing At The Same Time.

Picking Five Favorite Books Is Like Picking The Five Body Parts You'd Most Like Not To Lose.

I Think Hell Is Something You Carry Around With You, Not Somewhere You Go.

Truly, Life Is Wasted On The Living, Nobody Owens. For One Of Us Is Too Foolish To Live, And It Is Not I.

That's Sexism, That Is. Going Around Giving People Girly Presents Just Because They're A Girl.

The World Always Seems Brighter When You've Just Made Something That Wasn't There Before.

This Is A Book For Every Fiddler Who Has Realized Halfway Through Playing An Ancient Scottish Air That The Ramones "i Wanna Be Sedated" Is What Folk Music Is Really All About, And Gone Straight Into It.

Rock And Roll Stars Have It Much Better Than Writers When They're On A Tour.

The Imagination And The Place That Dreams Come From Is So Huge And So Important. I'm Trying To Write About The Real World, In That I'm Trying To Write About Whatever It Is The Experience That Makes Us Human, The Things That We Have In Common.

It's A Given That We Exist In A World Where We Have To Live In Continuity Every Day; No One Is Immune To That, In Life Or Romance Novels. By The Same Token, It's Not Something I Find Terribly Important.

He Left The Drapes Open, Watched The Lights Of The Cars And Of The Fast Food Joints Through The Window Glass, Comforted To Know There Was Another World Out There, One He Could Walk To Anytime He Wanted.

Mr. Vandemar Showed Them His Teeth, Demonstrating His Sunny And Delightful Disposition. It Was Unquestionably The Most Horrible Thing Richard Had Ever Seen.

And I Would Try And Walk Far Enough Away That People Would Not Assume I Was With Him.

The Cat Looked As If It Were About To Say Something Sarcastic. Then It Flicked Its Whiskers And Said, "challenge Her. There's No Guarantee She'll Play Fair, But Her Kind Of Thing Loves Games And Challenges.

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 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.

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.

Mostly You Are What They Think You Are.

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

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