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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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Often The Adult Book

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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It Felt Like A Small Forever.

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.

Books Are Defensive, Not Offensive (unless You're The Puzzled Adult Trying To Make The Kid With The Book Interact).

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

I Was Kidnapped By Aliens, They Came Down From Outer Space With Ray Guns, But I Fooled Them By Wearing A Wig And Laughing In A Foreign Accent, And I Escaped.

And Then He'd Tried To Become An Official Atheist And Hadn't Got The Rock-hard Self-satisfied Strength Of Belief Even For That.

In The Case Of 'ocean At The End Of The Lane,' It's A Book About Helplessness. It's A Book About Family, It's A Book About Being 7 In A World Of People Who Are Bigger Than You, And More Dangerous, And Stepping Into Territory That You Don't Entirely Understand.

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.

Richard Wrote A Mental Diary In His Head. Dear Diary, He Began. On Friday I Had A Job, A Fiance, A Home, And A Life That Made Sense. (well, As Much As An Life Makes Sense). Then I Found An Injured Girl Bleeding On The Pavement And I Tried To Be Good Samaritan. Now I've Got No Fiance, No Home, No Job, And I'm Walking Around A Couple Of Hundred Feet Under The Streets Of London With The Projected Life Expectancy Of A Suicidal Fruit Fly.

I Believe That Anyone Who Says That Sex Is Overrated Just Hasn't Done It Properly.

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.

For The Record, I Don't Expect You To Believe Any Of This. Not Really. I'm A Liar By Trade, After All; Albeit, I Like To Think, An Honest Liar.

There Are New Gods Growing In America, Clinging To Growing Knots Of Belief: Gods Of Credit Card And Freeway, Of Internet And Telephone, Of Radio And Hospital And Television, Gods Of Plastic And Of Beeper And Of Neon. Proud Gods, Fat And Foolish Creatures, Puffed Up With Their Own Newness And Importance. "they Are Aware Of Us, They Fear Us, And They Hate Us," Said Odin. "you Are Fooling Yourselves If You Believe Otherwise.

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.

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

Don't Worry About Trying To Develop A Style. Style Is What You Can't Help Doing. If You Write Enough, You Draw Enough, You'll Have A Style, Whether You Want It Or Not. Don't Worry About Whether You're "commercial". Tell Your Own Stories, Draw Your Own Pictures. Let Other People Follow You.

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

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.

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.

I Loved The Sound Of The Words, Even If I Was Not Entirely Sure What All Of Them Meant.

Information And Knowledge: Two Currencies That Have Never Gone Out Of Style.

My Very Small Part In Watchmen Is That, Every Now And Then, Alan Would Phone Me: ''neil, You're An Educated Man. Where Does It Say...'' He Would Need A Quote From The Bible, Or An Essay About Owls. I Was His Occasional Research Assistant.

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

Repeat After Me, There Are The Living And The Dead, There Are Day-folk And Night-folk, There Are Ghouls And Mist-walkers, There Are High Hunters And The Hounds Of God. Also, There Are Solitary Types." "what Are You?" Asked Bod. "i," She Said Sternly, "am Miss Lupescu." "and What Is Silas?" She Hesitated. Then She Said, "he Is A Solitary Type.

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

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

Delirium: 'what's The Name Of The Word For The Precise Moment When You Realize That You've Actually Forgotten How It Felt To Make Love To Somebody You Really Liked A Long Time Ago?' Dream: 'there Isn't One.' Delirium: 'oh. I Thought Maybe There Was.'

Some Of Us Claim That He Was A Messiah, And Some Think That He Was Just A Man With Very Special Powers. But That Misses The Point. Whatever He Was, He Changed The World.

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

When We Hold Each Other, In The Darkness, It Doesn't Make The Darkness Go Away. The Bad Things Are Still Out There. The Nightmares Still Walking. When We Hold Each Other We Feel Not Safe, But Better. "it's All Right" We Whisper, "i'm Here, I Love You." And We Lie: "i'll Never Leave You." For Just A Moment Or Two The Darkness Doesn't Seem So Bad.

What About Volcanoes?" "what About Them?" "all That Lava Comes Up From Center Of The Earth Where It Is All Hot. I Saw A Program, It Had David Attenborough, So It's True.

China Was The Most Optimistic Place I'd Ever Been. Everybody I Met Was Pretty Much Convinced That Their Children Would Have It Better Than Their Parents Had Had It. It Was Like Being In America In The 1950's, With This Deep Optimism About The Future Because Everything Was Getting Better, And That Fascinated Me.

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.

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.

In Order For Stories To Work - For Kids And For Adults - They Should Scare. And You Should Triumph. There's No Point In Triumphing Over Evil If The Evil Isn't Scary.

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.

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

The Great Thing About Batman And Superman, In Truth, Is That They Are Literally Transcendent. They Are Better Than Most Of The Stories They Are In.

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

I Am Amiable. Vague. Puzzled. Messy-haired.

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

The Only Reason People Die, Is Because Everyone Does It. You All Just Go Along With It. It's Rubbish, Death. It's Stupid. I Don't Want Nothing To Do With It.

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