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No, Look, There's A Blue Box. It's Bigger On The Inside Than It Is On The Outside. It Can Go Anywhere In Time And Space And Sometimes Even Where It's Meant To Go. And When It Turns Up, There's A Bloke In It Called The Doctor And There Will Be Stuff Wrong And He Will Do His Best To Sort It Out And He Will Probably Succeed Cos He's Awesome. Now Sit Down, Shut Up, And Watch 'blink'.

-Neil Gaiman

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No, Look, There's A

Neil Gaiman

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No, Look, There's A Blue Box. It's Bigger On The Inside Than It Is On The Outside. It Can Go Anywhere In Time And Space And Sometimes Even Where It's Meant To Go. And When It Turns Up, There's A Bloke In It Called The Doctor And There Will Be Stuff Wrong And He Will Do His Best To Sort It Out And He Will Probably Succeed Cos He's Awesome. Now Sit Down, Shut Up, And Watch 'blink'.

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With 'stardust', I Hope What I Was Doing Is Giving 30-year-olds And 40-year-olds And 25-year-olds And 60-year-olds A Chance To Get The Same Sense Of Wonder, The Same Feeling, The Same Magic, That They Got In Reading The Classic Fairy Tales As Children.

So, Having Found A Lady, Could You Not Have Come To Her Aid, Or Left Her Alone? Why Drag Her Into Your Foolishness?' 'love,' He Explained. She Looked At Him With Eyes The Blue Of The Sky. 'i Hope You Choke On It,' She Said, Flatly.

Most People Don't Realize How Important Librarians Are. I Ran Across A Book Recently Which Suggested That The Peace And Prosperity Of A Culture Was Solely Related To How Many Librarians It Contained. Possibly A Slight Overstatement. But A Culture That Doesn't Value Its Librarians Doesn't Value Ideas And Without Ideas, Well, Where Are We?

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 Just Want You To Know,' Said The Girl, Coldly, 'that Whoever You Are And Whatever You Intend With Me, I Shall Give You No Aid Of Any Kind, Nor Shall I Assist You, And I Shall Do Whatever Is In My Power To Frustrate Your Plans And Devices.' And Then She Added, With Feeling, 'idiot.

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.

If You Do Not Value Libraries Then You Do Not Value Information Or Culture Or Wisdom. You Are Silencing The Voices Of The Past And You Are Damaging The Future.

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.

Most People Can Start A Short Story Or A Novel. If You're A Writer, You Can Finish Them. Finish Enough Of Them, And You May Be Good Enough To Be Publishable.

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

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

You Know What My Mum Once Said?’ Said Rosie… ‘she Said That If A Just-married Couple Put A Coin In A Jar Every Time They Make Love In Their First Year, And Take A Coin Out For Every Time That They Make Love In The Years That Follow, The Jar Will Never Be Emptied.’ And This Means…?’ Well’, She Said. ‘it’s Interesting, Isn’t It?

I Very Rarely Want To Go Back And Fix Things, Because I'm Much More Interested In The Next Thing, And In Taking What I Learned From The Things That Don't Work, And Applying Them To New Things That May Work.

On The Whole, Anything That Gets You Writing And Keeps You Writing Is A Good Thing. Anything That Stops You Writing Is A Bad Thing.

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

Richard Began To Understand Darkness: Darkness As Something Solid And Real, So Much More Than A Simple Absence Of Light. He Felt It Touch His Skin, Questing, Moving, Exploring: Gliding Through His Mind. It Slipped Into His Lungs, Behind His Eyes, Into His Mouth.

The World Is Always Ending For Someone. It’s A Good Line. I Give It To The Father Of The Child. He Says It To His Wife. ‘the World Is Always Ending For Someone,’ He Says. She Is Trying To Quieten The Baby, And Does Not Hear Him. I Doubt That It Would Matter If She Did.

It Has Been Said That Civilization Is Twenty-four Hours And Two Meals Away From Barbarism.

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them. And It's Much Cheaper To Buy Somebody A Book Than It Is To Buy Them The Whole World!

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.

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

And Did I Pass?" The Face Of The Old Woman On My Right Was Unreadable In The Gathering Dusk. On My Left The Younger Woman Said, "you Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

When We Consider That Each Of Us Has Only One Life To Live, Isn’t It Rather Tragic To Find Men And Women, With Brains Capable Of Comprehending The Stars And The Planets, Talking About The Weather; Men And Women, With Hands Capable Of Creating Works Of Art, Using Those Hands Only For Routine Tasks; Men And Women, Capable Of Independent Thought, Using Their Minds As A Bowling-alley For Popular Ideas; Men And Women, Capable Of Greatness, Wallowing In Mediocrity; Men And Women, Capable Of Self-expression, Slowly Dying A Mental Death While They Babble The Confused Monotone Of The Mob?

I Love Doing The Readings. The Readings Are The Fun Bits... The Readings Are Probably The Things That Actually Keep Me Going On These. If I Couldn't Do The Readings, I Wouldn't Do The [signing] Tours. I Get To Stand Up There And Read To A Bunch Of Adults Who In Many Cases Nobody's Read To In Years, Since They Were About Five. They Just Squat On The Floor. That's Enormously Enjoyable.

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.

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

If You Have Something Specific And Visible To Fear, Rather Than Something That Could Be Anything, It Is Easier.

Someone Killed My Mother And My Father And My Sister?" "yes, Someone Did." "a Man?" "a Man." "which Means," Said Bod, "you're Asking The Wrong Question." Silas Raised An Eyebrow. "how So?" "well," Said Bod. "if I Go Outside In The World, The Question Isn't Who Will Keep Me Safe From Him?" "no?" "no. It's Who Will Keep Him Safe From Me?

In Ten Years Time I’ll Be… (dead) Sixty.

There Was No Moon But The Night Sky Was A Riot Of Crisp And Glittering Autumn Stars. There Were Streetlights Too And Lights On Buildings And On Bridges Which Looked Like Earthbound Stars And They Glimmered Repeated As They Were Reflected With The City In The Night Water Of The Thames. It’s Fairyland Thought Richard.

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.

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

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

You See, Evil Always Contains The Seeds Of Its Own Destruction. It Is Ultimately Negative, And Therefore Encompasses Its Downfall Even At Its Moments Of Apparent Triumph. No Matter How Grandiose, How Well-planned, How Apparently Foolproof Of An Evil Plan, The Inherent Sinfulness Will By Definition Rebound Upon Its Instigators. No Matter How Apparently Successful It May Seem Upon The Way, At The End It Will Wreck Itself. It Will Founder Upon The Rocks Of Iniquity And Sink Headfirst To Vanish Without Trace Into The Seas Of Oblivion.

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

Richard Did Not Believe In Angels, He Never Had. He Was Damned If He Was Going To Start Now. Still, It Was Much Easier Not To Believe In Something When It Was Not Actually Looking Directly At You And Saying Your Name.

You Don't Have To Test Everything To Destruction Just To See If You Made It Right.

What's Your Name,' Coraline Asked The Cat. 'look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'cats Don't Have Names,' It Said. 'no?' Said Coraline. 'no,' Said The Cat. 'now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

I Don't Want Whatever I Want. Nobody Does. Not Really. What Kind Of Fun Would It Be If I Just Got Everything I Ever Wanted Just Like That, And It Didn't Mean Anything? What Then?

The Biggest Pitfall To Avoid Is Not Writing. Not Writing Is Really, Really Easy To Do, Especially If You're A Young Writer. The Hope That Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish It For You, Is A Very Common One To Have. That Is My Main Recommendation - You Have To Write, And You Have To Finish What You Write And Beyond That, It's All Detail.

Tools, Of Course, Can Be The Subtlest Of Traps.

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.

It's Like One Of Those Dreams That Changes You. You Keep Some Of The Dream Forever, And You Know Things Down Deep Inside Yourself, Because It Happened To You, But When You Go Looking For Details They Kind Of Just Slip Out Of Your Head.

Adults Should Not Weep, I Knew. They Did Not Have Mothers Who Would Comfort Them.

Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story.

I Suspect That Most Authors Don't Really Want Criticism, Not Even Constructive Criticism. They Want Straight-out, Unabashed, Unashamed, Fulsome, Informed, Naked Praise, Arriving By The Shipload Every Fifteen Minutes Or So.

Notoriety Wasn't As Good As Fame, But Was Heaps Better Than Obscurity.

Fiction Gives Us Empathy: It Puts Us Inside The Minds Of Other People, Gives Us The Gifts Of Seeing The World Through Their Eyes. Fiction Is A Lie That Tells Us True Things, Over And Over.

If You Were Close Enough To Her Ruby-red Lips You Would Hear Her Say, 'i Will Rise Now And Go About The City In The Streets, And In The Broad Ways I Will Seek The One I Love.' She Is Whispering That, And She Whispers, 'by Night On My Bed I Sought Him Whom My Soul Loveth. Let Him Kiss Me With The Kisses Of His Mouth. My Beloved Is Mine And I Am His.

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

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.

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

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

But Libraries Are About Freedom. Freedom To Read, Freedom Of Ideas, Freedom Of Communication. They Are About Education (which Is Not A Process That Finishes The Day We Leave School Or University), About Entertainment, About Making Safe Spaces, And About Access To Information.

I Was A Voracious Reader And I Could Never Understand Why Comics Were Of Any Less Merit Or Importance Than Any Other Way Of Writing. I Think The Thing That Keeps Me With Comics Is There's Still So Much To Be Done. There's Still This Huge Unplowed Field, This Huge Unexplored Wilderness, And As Long As I Can Keep Doing New Things And Coming Up With New Things, I Will.

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

Oh, Monsters Are Scared. That's Why They're Monsters.

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.

Love Me When I Least Deserve It, Because That’s When I Really Need It.

Sometimes You Wake Up. Sometimes The Fall Kills You. And Sometimes, When You Fall, You Fly.

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

I Know Not Whether You Came To Me Or I To You. Not Whether It Was A Dream, Asleep Or Awake. I Am Lost In The Darkness Of A Downcast Heart. Dream Or Reality. Let It Be Decided Tonight.

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

I Thought, I'm Going To Die. And, Thinking That, I Was Determined To Live.

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

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

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

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

I Have Heard The Languages Of Apocalypse, And Now I Shall Embrace The Silence.

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.

[d]on't Ever Apologize To An Author For Buying Something In Paperback, Or Taking It Out From A Library (that's What They're There For. Use Your Library). Don't Apologize To This Author For Buying Books Second Hand, Or Getting Them From Bookcrossing Or Borrowing A Friend's Copy. What's Important To Me Is That People Read The Books And Enjoy Them, And That, At Some Point In There, The Book Was Bought By Someone. And That People Who Like Things, Tell Other People. The Most Important Thing Is That People Read.

I Enjoy Writing Scripts. I Can Find Out What Happens. With An Outline, I Feel Like I'm Doing An Architectural Diagram Of Something.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Use Your Blog To Connect. Use It As You. Don’t ‘network’ Or ‘promote.’ Just Talk.

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

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.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

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

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.

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.

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

We Are Always Living In The Final Days. What Have You Got? A Hundred Years Or Much, Much Less Until The End Of Your World.

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.

Sometimes The Best Way To Learn Something Is By Doing It Wrong And Looking At What You Did.

I Can Believe Things That Are True And Things That Aren't True And I Can Believe Things Where Nobody Knows If They're True Or Not.

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

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

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

I Don't Know If Any Single Book Made Me Want To Write. C.s. Lewis Was The First Writer To Make Me Aware That Somebody Was Writing The Book I Was Reading - These Wonderful Parenthetical Asides To The Reader.

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

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

You Shine Like A Beacon In A Dark World.

Never Trust A Demon. He Has A Hundred Motives For Anything He Does... Ninety-nine Of Them, At Least, Are Malevolent.

Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

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.

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.

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

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

I Hope That This Year, You Make Mistakes. If You Do, Then It Means You Have Tried, Learned, Lived, Pushed Yourself, Changed You And Your World, And Most Importantly, You've Done Something.

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

You Need More Than A Beginning If You're Going To Start A Book. If All You Have Is A Beginning, Then Once You've Written That Beginning, You Have Nowhere To Go.

Every Lover Is, In His Heart, A Madman, And, In His Head, A Minstrel.

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

I'm Willing To Make A Fool Out Of Myself In Public. I'm Also Willing To Make Those Mistakes That You're Going To Make The First Time You Go Out, So Hopefully The Next Time It Will Be Better.

It's Still National Library Week. You Should Be Especially Nice To A Librarian Today, Or Tomorrow. Sometime This Week, Anyway. Probably The Librarians Would Like Tea. Or Chocolates. Or A Reliable Source Of Funding.

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.

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

The Wise Man Knows When To Keep Silent. Only The Fool Tells All He Knows.

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

The Lower You Start, The More Opportunities You Have.

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

Las Vegas Has Become A Child's Picture-book Dream Of A City -- Here A Storybook Castle, There A Sphinx-flanked Black Pyramid Beaming White Light Into The Darkness As A Landing Beam For Ufos, And Everywhere Neon Oracles And Twisting Screens Predict Happiness And Good Fortune, Announce Singers And Comedians And Magicians In Residence Or On Their Way, And The Lights Always Flash And Beckon And Call.

"ocean" Is More About ... Powerlessness And Hopelessness. When We're Very Small We Can't Actually Do Anything - We Have No Say In What Happens, We Have No Money Or Resources, We Sometimes Have No Idea What's Going On.

Fiction Can Show You A Different World. It Can Take You Somewhere You’ve Never Been. Once You’ve Visited Other Worlds, Like Those Who Ate Fairy Fruit, You Can Never Be Entirely Content With The World That You Grew Up In. Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

You 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

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

Real Life Doesn't Have To Be Convincing, But Fiction Does.

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

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

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Tends To Be Really Good At Making Outlines And Sticking To Them. I'm Very Good At Doing That, But I Don't Like It. It Sort Of Takes A Lot Of The Fun Out.

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

Many Phenomena - Wars, Plagues, Sudden Audits - Have Been Advanced As Evidence For The Hidden Hand Of Satan In The Affairs Of Man, But Whenever Students Of Demonology Get Together The M25 London Orbital Motorway Is Generally Agreed To Be Among The Top Contenders For Exhibit A.

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.

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Man-made Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf. These Dogs Advance Deliberately, Purposefully, The Wilderness Made Flesh, Their Teeth Yellow, Their Breath A-stink, While In The Distance Their Owners Witter, "he's An Old Soppy Really, Just Poke Him If He's A Nuisance," And In The Green Of Their Eyes The Red Campfires Of The Pleistocene Gleam And Flicker.

Once, I Was A Poet, And, Like All Poets, I Spent Too Long In The Kingdom Of Dreams.

I Took Delight In Hurling Books Across The Room If I Knew I Would Not Be Reading The Second Chapter. Then I’d Go And Pick Them Up Again, Because They Are Books, After All, And We Are Not Savages.

This Is How You Do It: You Sit Down At The Keyboard And You Put One Word After Another Until Its Done. It's That Easy, And That Hard.

The Young Man Shivered. He Rolled The Stock Themes Of Fantasy Over In His Mind: Cars And Stockbrokers And Commuters, Housewives And Police, Agony Columns And Commercials For Soap, Income Tax And Cheap Restaurants, Magazines And Credit Cards And Streetlights And Computers... 'it Is Escapism, True,' He Said, Aloud. 'but Is Not The Highest Impulse In Mankind The Urge Toward Freedom, The Drive To Escape?

We Get To Experience The Same Thing In Very Different Ways With Different Parts Of Ourselves.

When You Reach The Little House, The Place Your Journey Started, You Will Recognize It, Although It Will Seem Much Smaller Than You Remember. Walk Up The Path, And Through The Garden Gate You Never Saw Before But Once. And Then Go Home. Or Make A Home. And Rest.

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

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

I Think There Are Several Aspects Of Our Marraige We're Going To Have To Work On." "babes," He Told Her. "you're Dead." "that's One Of Those Aspects, Obviously.

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

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

And There Are Always People Who Find Their Lives Have Become So Unsupportable They Believe The Best Thing They Could Do Would Be To Hasten Their Transition To Another Plane Of Existence.' 'they Kill Themselves, You Mean?' Said Bod. [...] 'indeed.' 'does It Work? Are They Happier Dead?' 'sometimes. Mostly, No. It's Like The People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, But Who Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

The Tongue Is The Most Remarkable. For We Use It Both To Taste Out Sweet Wine And Bitter Poison, Thus Also Do We Utter Words Both Sweet And Sout With The Same Tongue.

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

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.

If You Are Protected From Dark Things Then You Have No Protection Of, Knowledge Of, Or Understanding Of Dark Things When They Show Up.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Names Come And Names Go.

May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness.

They Believe Themselves Lucifer's Equals, Cain, All These Pitiful Little Gnats. But There Is Only One That We Have Ever Owned To Be Our Superior. There Is But One Greater Than Us, And To Him... To Him We No Longer Speak.

Be Hole, Be Dust, Be Dream, Be Wind/be Night, Be Dark, Be Wish, Be Mind,/now Slip, Now Slide, Now Move Unseen,/above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between.

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.

Friday's A Free Day. A Woman's Day.

If He Didn't Care About You, You Couldn't Upset Him.

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

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

One Thing That's Interesting To Me Is How We As Humans Seem To Be Losing Our Ability To Stand Still And Be Alone With Our Thoughts. If You Want To, You Have To Arrange It Now. You Have To Go Off Where There's No Wifi And Leave Your Equipment Behind, But Still Have Some Sort Of Gps Tracking To Make Sure You Don't Get Lost Or Die.

I Think Most Things Are Pretty Magical, And That It's Less A Matter Of Belief Than It Is One Of Just Stopping To Notice.

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.

I'm Going To Go Home. Everything Is Going To Be Normal Again. Boring Again. Wonderful Again.

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

Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

You Know What Killed Off The Dinosaurs, Whateley? We Did. In One Barbecue.

I Don't Just Randomly Kill People... I Kill People When It's Funny.

I Still Love The Book-ness Of Books, The Smell Of Books: I Am A Book Fetishist—books To Me Are The Coolest And Sexiest And Most Wonderful Things There Are.

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

It Seems To Me That One Of The Most Interesting Things About God As A Concept, If You Decide To Believe In God, Is That God's Ways Are Unknowable. And God Obviously, Look At The World Around You, Does Or Is Responsible For Some Terrible, Terrible, Awful Things. A Young Girl Kidnapped And Kept In The Darkness And Sexually Abused. The Deaths Of Six Million Jews. A Mudslide That Buries A Village. All Of These Things. If God Is Doing The Good Stuff, He's Got To Be Doing That Stuff Too.

Everything Has To Be Intrinsic Plot-wise In The Same Way, To Use The Linda Williams Analogy But To Move It On A Bit, As Musicals - In Old Musicals, Like In An Old Cole Porter Musical, You Get The Action, Then They Do A Song, Which Reflects A Moment - Everything Stops While That Is Being Sung - And Then You Restart. These Days In Most Musicals, The Plot Keeps Moving Through The Song. I Think It Would Be Nice If Someone Constructed Some Pornography Where The Sex Continues To Propel You Through The Story.

It's Quiet. No Cars. No Birds. Nothing.' 'no Radio Waves,' Said The Doctor. 'not Even Radio Four.' 'you Can Hear Radio Waves?' 'of Course Not. Nobody Can Hear Radio Waves,' He Said Unconvincingly.

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

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

I Feel Like I Am Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell Me The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

With American Gods I Was Trying Very, Very Consciously - There Was A Level At Which It Was A Little Like Trying To Write A Novel In French - You Know, "this Novel Is To Be Written In American."

To Absent Friends, Lost Loves, Old Gods, And The Season Of Mists; And May Each And Every One Of Us Always Give The Devil His Due.

Go, And Make Interesting Mistakes, Make Amazing Mistakes, Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes. Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

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

Of Course, Everyone's Parents Are Embarrassing. It Goes With The Territory. The Nature Of Parents Is To Embarrass Merely By Existing, Just As It Is The Nature Of Children Of A Certain Age To Cringe With Embarrassment, Shame, And Mortification Should Their Parents So Much As Speak To Them On The Street.

Oh- My Twitchy Witchy Girl I Think You Are So Nice, I Give You Bowls Of Porridge And I Give You Bowls Of Ice Cream. I Give You Lots Of Kisses, And I Give Lots Of Hugs, But I Never Give You Sandwiches With Bugs In.

When I Was Young, I Was Reading Anything And Anything I Could Lay My Hands On. I Was A Veracious-to-the-point-of-insane Reader.

We Do What We Do, Because Of Who We Are. If We Did Otherwise, We Would Not Be Ourselves.

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

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.

Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes.

There Was Once A Young Man Who Wished To Gain His Heart’s Desire.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

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

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes...you're Doing Something.

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

Walk Any Path In Destiny's Garden, And You Will Be Forced To Choose, Not Once But Many Times.

This Is How You Can Tell A Real Photographer: Mostly, A Real Photographer Does Not Say 'i Wish I Had My Camera On Me Right Now'. Instead A Real Photographer Pulls Out Her Camera And Takes The Photograph.

You Can Buy A Book New, Buy It In Hardback Or Wait For The Paperback, Find It Used Or As A Collectible. I Don't Mind. What I Care About Most Is That People Are Reading.

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