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One Describes A Tale Best By Telling The Tale. You See? The Way One Describes A Story, To Oneself Or To The World, Is By Telling The Story. It Is A Balancing Act And It Is A Dream. The More Accurate The Map, The More It Resembles The Territory. The Most Accurate Map Possible Would Be The Territory, And Thus Would Be Perfectly Accurate And Perfectly Useless. The Tale Is The Map That Is The Territory. You Must Remember This.

-Neil Gaiman

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One Describes A Tale

Neil Gaiman

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One Describes A Tale Best By Telling The Tale. You See? The Way One Describes A Story, To Oneself Or To The World, Is By Telling The Story. It Is A Balancing Act And It Is A Dream. The More Accurate The Map, The More It Resembles The Territory. The Most Accurate Map Possible Would Be The Territory, And Thus Would Be Perfectly Accurate And Perfectly Useless. The Tale Is The Map That Is The Territory. You Must Remember This.

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I Have Never Written A Musical. I Have Never Written A Weird, Interactive Piece Of Theater. I Wanted To Do Something That Would Be Disturbing. It Will Be Disturbing Theater With Songs. There Will Be No People On Wires. That's Probably The Next One Of Those Things On My Bucket List Of Things That I Need To Write Before I Get Hit By That Car.

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I Was A Reader. I Loved Reading. Reading Things Gave Me Pleasure. I Was Very Good At Most Subjects In School, Not Because I Had Any Particular Aptitude In Them, But Because Normally On The First Day Of School They'd Hand Out Schoolbooks, And I'd Read Them--which Would Mean That I'd Know What Was Coming Up, Because I'd Read 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.

Nothing [the Demon] Could Think Up Was Half As Bad As The Stuff [people] Thought Up Themselves. They Seemed To Have A Talent For It. It Was Built Into Their Design Somehow. They Were Born Into A World That Was Against Them In A Thousand Little Ways, And Then Devoted Most Of Their Energies To Making It Worse.

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.

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

I Like The Stars. It's The Illusion Of Permanence, I Think. I Mean, They're Always Flaring Up And Caving In And Going Out. But From Here, I Can Pretend...i Can Pretend That Things Last. I Can Pretend That Lives Last Longer Than Moments. Gods Come, And Gods Go. Mortals Flicker And Flash And Fade. Worlds Don't Last; And Stars And Galaxies Are Transient, Fleeting Things That Twinkle Like Fireflies And Vanish Into Cold And Dust. But I Can Pretend.

There Are A Hundred Things She Has Tried To Chase Away The Things She Won't Remember And That She Can't Even Let Herself Think About Because That's When The Birds Scream And The Worms Crawl And Somewhere In Her Mind It's Always Raining A Slow Endless Drizzle.

How Big Are Souls Anyway?" Asked Coraline. The Other Mother Sat Down At The Kitchen Table And Leaned Against The Back Wall, Saying Nothing. She Picked At Her Teeth With A Long Crimson-varnished Fingernail, Then She Tapped The Finger, Gently, Tap-tap-tap Against The Polished Black Surface Of Her Black Button Eyes.

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.

I Miss You', He Admitted. 'i'm Here', She Said. 'that's When I Miss You Most. When You're Here. When You Aren't Here, When You're Just A Ghost Of The Past Or A Dream From Another Life, It's Easier Then.

There Are So Many Fragile Things, After All. People Break So Easily, And So Do Dreams And Hearts.

Well," He Said, "f’r Example, If They Ask Where You’ve Come From, You Could Say ‘behind Me,’and If They Asked Where You’re Going, You’d Say ‘in Front Of Me.

Name The Different Kinds Of People,’ Said Miss Lupescu. ‘now.’ Bod Thought For A Moment. ‘the Living,’ He Said. ‘er. The Dead.’ He Stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ He Offered, Uncertainly.

It Does Not Matter Where You Come From, If You Walk Toward The Truth You Will Reach It, Whatever Path You Take.

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

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

You Don't Get Heaven Or Hell. Do You Know The Only Reward You Get For Being Batman? You Get To Be Batman.

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were. Adult Stories Never Made Sense, And They Were Slow To Start. They Made Me Feel Like There Were Secrets, Masonic, Mythic Secrets, To Adulthood. Why Didn't Adults Want To Read About Narnia, About Secret Islands And Smugglers And Dangerous Fairies?

And Weren't, When You Got Right Down To It, Particularly Evil. Human Beings Mostly Aren't. They Just Get Carried Away By New Ideas, Like Dressing Up In Jackboots And Shooting People, Or Dressing Up In White Sheets And Lynching People, Or Dressing Up In Tie-dye Jeans And And Playing Guitar At People. Offer People A New Creed With A Costume And Their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them.

As I Wouldn't Wear A Costume, I Couldn't Imagine Him Wanting To Wear One. And Seeing That The Greater Part Of My Wardrobe Is Black (it's A Sensible Colour. It Goes With Anything. Well, Anything Black)[...].

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.

You Could Fire A Machine Gun Randomly Through The Pages Of Lord Of The Rings And Never Hit Any Women.

Bod Quite Liked Crows. He Thought They Were Funny And He Liked The Way They Helped To Keep The Graveyard Tidy.

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All Cats Can See Futures, And See Echoes Of The Past. We Can Watch The Passage Of Creatures From The Infinity Of Now, From All The Worlds Like Ours, Only Fractionally Different. And We Follow Them With Our Eyes, Ghost Things, And The Humans See Nothing.

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.

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine.

Twitter Is Great And It's Glorious And It's Easy, But If Somebody Comes Up With Something Kind Of Like Twitter Tomorrow, That's Better Or Smarter Or More Useful, In Three Weeks Time, Twitter Could More Or Less Be History Because That's How Fast Things Go.

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

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

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

Miserable Person

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

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

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

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I Toyed Briefly With An Image Someone Once Mentioned To Me, Of A Village In The Shadow Of A Twin-peaked Mountain. In The Morning The Sun Rises. At Lunch It Sets Behind The Mountain. In The Early Afternoon It Rises Once More. The Cocks Crow For The Second Time, And Later The Sun Sets Again. No. One Peak. Metaphors Should Not Be Belaboured.

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Truly Life Is Wasted On The Living.

I've Been Inspired By Dreams - I've Even Stolen Scenes Or Images Or Characters From Them.

Whereas There Are Lots Of Good Novels Out There; There Are A Few Good Movies Out There. People Have Been Writing Great Poems For Years, But There Aren't A Lot Of Good Comics. I Like Trying To Write Them.

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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.

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

Like Some Kind Of Particularly Tenacious Vampire The Short Story Refuses To Die, And Seems At This Point In Time To Be A Wonderful Length For Our Generation.

Why Does She Want Me?" Coraline Asked The Cat. "why Does She Want Me To Stay Here With Her?" "she Wants Something To Love, I Think," Said The Cat. "something That Isn't Her. She Might Want Something To Eat As Well. It's Hard To Tell With Creatures Like That.

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.

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I Want To Write A Play. I'd Like To Do An Original Musical. I Should Probably Put Together A Poetry Collection.

Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

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

Books Were Safer Than Other People Anyway.

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.

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'.

Dreams Are Composed Of Many Things, My Son. Of Images And Hopes, Of Fears And Memories. Memories Of The Past, And Memories Of The Future.

I Believe That Stories Are Incredibly Important, Possibly In Ways We Don't Understand, In Allowing Us To Make Sense Of Our Lives, In Allowing Us To Escape Our Lives, In Giving Us Empathy And In Creating The World That We Live In.

It's Just Harder Out There In The World Of The Living, And We Cannot Protect You Out There As Easily. I Wanted To Keep You Perfectly Safe...but There Is Only One Perfectly Safe Place For Your Kind, And You Will Not Reach It Until All Your Adventures Are Over And None Of Them Matter Any Longer.

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

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.

For A Moment He Thought She Was About To Hit Him, Which Would Have Been Bad, Or Even Start Crying, Which Would Have Been Much, Much Worse.

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.

Just Go With It. It Won't Hurt.' I Stared At Him. Adults Only Ever Said That When It, Whatever It Happened To Be, Was Going To Hurt So Much.

Fiction Takes Us To Places That We Would Never Otherwise Go, And Puts Us Behind Eyes That Are Not Our Own.

When Things Get Tough... Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

Dreams Shape The World

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.

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

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

All Good Technology Should Be Used To Piss Off People's Parents.

I'm Intrigued With Figuring Out The Places [where] The Horrible And The Beautiful Meet - That Aesthetic Fascinates Me.

It Is A Fool's Prerogative To Utter Truths That No One Else Will Speak.

Sometimes The Way To Do What You Hope To Do Will Be Clear Cut, And Sometimes It Will Be Almost Impossible To Decide Whether Or Not You Are Doing The Correct Thing, Because You'll Have To Balance Your Goals And Hopes With Feeding Yourself, Paying Debts, Finding Work, Settling For What You Can Get.

Chow^tm Contained Spun, Plaited, And Woven Protein Molecules, Capped And Coded, Carefully Designed To Be Ignored By Even The Most Ravenous Digestive Tract Enzymes; No-cal Sweeteners; Mineral Oils Replacing Vegetable Oils; Fibrous Materials, Colorings, And Flavorings. The End Result Was A Foodstuff Almost Indistinguishable From Any Other Except For Two Things. Firstly, The Price, Which Was Slightly Higher, And Secondly, The Nutritional Content, Which Was Roughly Equivalent To That Of A Sony Walkman.

Books Are The Way That We Communicate With The Dead. The Way That We Learn Lessons From Those Who Are No Longer With Us, That Humanity Has Built On Itself, Progressed, Made Knowledge Incremental Rather Than Something That Has To Be Relearned, Over And Over. There Are Tales That Are Older Than Most Countries, Tales That Have Long Outlasted The Cultures And The Buildings In Which They Were First Told.

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.

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.

Yes. We Both Have A Bad Feeling. Tonight We Shall Take Our Bad Feelings And Share Them, And Face Them. We Shall Mourn. We Shall Drain The Bitter Dregs Of Mortality. Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled, But Halved. No Man Is An Island.

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

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.

I Suppose The Point You Grow Up Is The Point You Let The Dreams Go.

People Take On The Shapes Of The Songs And The Stories That Surround Them, Especially If They Don't Have Their Own Song.

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

Stories Are Like Spiders, With All They Long Legs, And Stories Are Like Spiderwebs, Which Man Gets Himself All Tangled Up In But Which Look Pretty When You See Them Under A Leaf In The Morning Dew, And In The Elegant Way That They Connect To One Another, Each To Each.

I Believe That Life Is A Game, That Life Is A Cruel Joke, And That Life Is What Happens When You're Alive And That You Might As Well Lie Back And Enjoy It.

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

If A Devil Is One Who Dares, When Others Hold Back, Then I Am Happy To Play The Devil In This Mystery, Boy.

The World Is Always Ending, For Someone.

I Was Writing The Kind Of Comic That Would Make Me, At Age 26 Or 27, Go Down To A Comic Book Store Every Month And Spend My $2. That Was My Starting Point. I Wanted To Write A Comic That I Would Read. And That's Still My Agenda.

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

Virginia Is The Place, Where, Technologically Speaking, They Will Burn People At The Stake For Possessing Such Things As Toasters.

Are You Scared?’ Asked Mr. Ibis. ‘not Really.’ ‘well, Try To Cultivate The Emotions Of True Awe And Spiritual Terror, As We Walk. They Are The Appropriate Feelings For The Situation At Hand.

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.

I Know That This Is The Internet, And We're All Anonymous And All That, But Really. It Doesn't Hurt To Try To Be Nice.

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

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

Remember: That Giants Sleep Too Soundly; That Witches Are Often Betrayed By Their Appetites; Dragons Have One Soft Spot, Somewhere, Always; Hearts Can Be Well-hidden, And You Can Betray Them With Your Tongue. (from "instructions")

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.

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

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called.

Whatever It Takes To Finish Things, Finish. You Will Learn More From A Glorious Failure Than You Ever Will From Something You Never Finished.

Whatever It Takes

You Think You're Being Given All Of These Things: Phones That Can Communicate With Other Devices, Car Service That's Better Than A Taxi, All Of These Amazing Things That Are Available To You At Any Time. It Isn't Until You've Swum Across The River That You Can Start To See The Negative Aspects Of It All.

What Would Be The Fun In Doing Things You Know Are Going To Work?

The Cartoon Me Writes The Books Cartoon People Read In The Cartoon World, Because They Need Things To Read There Too.

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.

When You Die, They Can Make You Into Diamonds Now. It’s Scientific. That’s How I Want To Be Remembered. I Want To Shine.

I'm Just Going To Stay Here, In The Darkness Under The Arch. I Can Hear You All Out There, Trip-trapping, Trip-trapping Over My Bridge. Oh Yes, I Can Hear You. But I'm Not Coming Out.

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!

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

I Love Religion. I Could Make Up Religions All Day. I Sort Of Think That In An Ideal World I'd Like To Be A Religion Designer. I'd Like People Come Up To Me And Say, I Need A Religion. I'd Go Talk To Them For A While, And I'd Design A Religion For Them. That Would Be A Great Job. There's A Need For People Like That. Fortunately, Seeing That One Can't Actually Do It, I Get Paid For Sort Of Making Them Up Anyway.

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

You Don’t Want To Ask After The Health Of Anyone, If You’re A Funeral Director. They Think Maybe You’re Scouting For Business.

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

Birds Are The Last Of The Dinosaurs. Tiny Velociraptors With Wings. Devouring Defenseless Wiggly Things And, And Nuts, And Fish, And, And Other Birds. They Get The Early Worms. And Have You Ever Watched A Chicken Eat? They May Look Innocent, But Birds Are, Well, They're Vicious.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

There Is Something About Riding A Unicorn, For Those People Who Still Can, Which Is Unlike Any Other Experience: Exhilarating, And Intoxicating, And Fine.

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.

Writers Are Liars My Dear, Surely You Know That By Now?

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A Library Is A Place That Is A Repository Of Information And Gives Every Citizen Equal Access To It.

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

People Ask Me What My Predictions Are For Publishing And How Digital Is Changing Things And I Tell Them My Only Real Prediction Is That Is It's All Changing. Amazon, Google And All Of Those Things Probably Aren't The Enemy. The Enemy Right Now Is Simply Refusing To Understand That The World Is Changing.

They Were Kissing. Put Like That, And You Could Be Forgiven For Presuming That This Was A Normal Kiss, All Lips And Skin And Possibly Even A Little Tongue. You'd Miss How He Smiled, How His Eyes Glowed. And Then, After The Kiss Was Done, How He Stood, Like A Man Who Had Just Discovered The Art Of Standing And Had Figured Out How To Do It Better Than Anyone Else Who Would Ever Come Along.

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.

Watch Out For That Pedestrian!" "it's On The Street, It Knows The Risks It's Taking!

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

If You Give A Writer A Pile Of Blank Paper And Say You Can Write Anything You Like On Any Subject You Want At Any Length You Want, You Will Probably Never Get Anything At All, Whereas If You Have 900 Words To Write, And It's Fiction That Is Somehow Op-ed Fiction, And It Needs To Tie In With Halloween . . . Okay, Those Are My Constraints, That's Where I Now Need To Start Building Something.

I Watch My Heart Disappearing Into Her Rosebud Mouth. My Valentine's Jest Somehow Seems Less Funny.

If You, As A Parent, Raise Your Children Well, They Won't Need You Anymore. If You Did It Properly, They Go Away.

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?

I Don't Know. I Had To Be Something, Didn't I?

There Are Four Simple Ways For The Observant To Tell Mr. Croup And Mr. Vandemar Apart: First, Mr. Vandemar Is Two And A Half Heads Taller Than Mr. Croup; Second, Mr. Croup Has Eyes Of A Faded China Blue, While Mr. Vandemar's Eyes Are Brown; Third, While Mr. Vandemar Fashioned The Rings He Wears On His Right Hand Out Of The Skulls Of Four Ravens, Mr. Croup Has No Obvious Jewelery; Fourth, Mr. Croup Likes Words, While Mr. Vandemar Is Always Hungry. Also, They Look Nothing At All Alike.

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

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.

Sometimes An Old Idea Gets Relegated To The Back Of The Line In The Mad Delight Of A New Idea, One You've Never Had Before, And That You Write Fast In The Thrill Of The New. No Rules. Just Stories, And You Tell As Many Of Them As You Can.

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

I Watch With Envious Eyes And Mind, The Single-souled Who Dare Not Feel The Wind That Blows Beyond The Moon, Who Do Not Hear The Fairy Reel

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.

Spider Venom Comes In Many Forms. It Can Often Take A Long While To Discover The Full Effects Of The Bite. Naturalists Have Pondered This For Years: There Are Spiders Whose Bite Can Cause The Place Bitten To Rot And To Die, Sometimes More Than A Year After It Was Bitten. As To Why Spiders Do This, The Answer Is Simple. It's Because Spiders Think This Is Funny, And They Don't Want You Ever To Forget Them.

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.

The Secret To Writing Is Just To Write. Write Every Day. Never Stop Writing. Write On Every Surface You See; Write On People On The Street. When The Cops Come To Arrest You, Write On The Cops. Write On The Police Car. Write On The Judge. I'm In Jail Forever Now, And The Prison Cell Walls Are Completely Covered With My Writing, And I Keep Writing On The Writing I Wrote. That's My Method.

I'm More Or Less Happily Writing Chapter Six Of The Graveyard Book. I Say More Or Less As I'm At That Place Where I Hope That The Book Knows What It's Doing Because Right Now I Don't Have A Clue - I'm Writing One Scene After Another Like A Man Walking Through A Valley In Thick Fog, Just Able To See The Path A Little Way Ahead, But With No Idea Where It's Actually Going To Lead Him.

Life And Death Are Different Sides Of The Same Coin.

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.

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

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.

Like The Newspapers Used To Say, If The Truth Isn't Big Enough, You Print The Legend.

If You Are Pointing Out One Of The Things A Story Is About, Then You Are Very Probably Right; If You Are Pointing Out The Only Thing A Story Is About You Are Very Probably Wrong - Even If You're The Author.

It Is Going To Take More Than Just A Couple Of Good-hearted Souls To Raise This Child. It Will Take A Graveyard.

Richard Opened His Hand, And The Key Stared Up At Him From His Palm. "by My Crooked Teeth," Asked Richard, Remembering, "who Am I?

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.

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

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.

I Suppose I Could Claim That I Had Suspected That The World Was A Cheap And Shoddy Sham, A Bad Cover For Something Deeper And Weirder And Infinitely More Strange, And That, In Some Way, I Already Know The Truth. But I Think That's Just How The World Has Always Been. And Even Now I Know The Truth, The World Still Seems Cheap And Shoddy. Different World, Different Shoddy, But That's How It Feels.

Libraries Really Are The Gates To The Future.

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

The Truth Is, It's Not The Idea, It's Never The Idea, It's Always What You Do With It.

Nice' In A Bodyguard Is About As Useful As The Ability To Regurgitate Whole Lobsters.

Is There Any Person In The World Who Does Not Dream? Who Does Not Contain Within Them Worlds Unimagined?

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

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.

We Save Our Lives In Such Unlikely Ways.

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

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

As A Teenager I Wrote To R.a. Lafferty. And He Responded, Too, With Letters That Were Like R.a. Lafferty Short Stories, Filled With Elliptical Answers To Straight Questions And Simple Answers To Complicated Ones.

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.

The Strangest Part Of Being So Well Known Is Definitely Getting A New Yorker Profile. It's A Wonderful, Strange Process, Like Seeing Yourself Through A Distorting Mirror.

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