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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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One Thing That's Interesting

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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

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.

People Want To Forget The Impossible. It Makes Their World Safer.

I Walk Across The Dreaming Sands Under The Pale Moon: Through The Dreams Of Countries And Cities, Past Dreams Of Places Long Gone And Times Beyond Recall.

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

Nothing’s Changed. You’ll Go Home. You’ll Be Bored. You’ll Be Ignored. No One Will Listen To You, Really Listen To You. You’re Too Clever And Too Quiet For Them To Understand. They Don’t Even Get Your Name Right.

A God's Relationship To The World, Even A World In Which He Was Walking, Was About As Emotionally Connected As That Of A Computer Gamer Playing With Knowledge Of The Overall Shape Of The Game And Armed With A Complete Set Of Cheat Codes.

I Love Learning. I Tend To Stop Doing Things Once I Get Good At Them, And To Try Something Else I'm Not As Good At, Leaving A Bunch Of Fans Going, "but He Was Really Good At That. Why Isn't He Still Doing It?"

There's A Tale In The Caballa That Suggests That The Angel Of Death Is So Beautiful That Upon Seeing It (or Him, Or Her) You Fall In Love So Hard, So Fast, That Your Soul Is Pulled Out Through Your Eyes. I Like That Story.

Falling In Love

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

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.

Books Are Special, Books Are The Way We Talk To Generations That Have Not Turned Up Yet. The Fact That We Can Actually, Essentially Communicate With The People In Ancient Egypt, People In Rome And Greece, People In Ancient Britain, People In New York In The 1920s Who Can Communicate To Us And Change The Way We Think, And Change The Things That We Believe. I Think That Books Are Special. Books Are Sacred. And I Think That When You Are Selling Books, You Have To Remember That In All The Profits And Loss, In All Of That, You Are Treading On Sacred Ground.

Writing Fiction Is Not A Profession That Leaves One Well-disposed Toward Reading Fiction. One Starts Out Loving Books And Stories, And Then One Becomes Jaded And Increasingly Hard To Please. I Read Less And Less Fiction These Days, Finding The Buzz And The Joy I Used To Get From Fiction In Ever Stranger Works Of Non-fiction, Or Poetry.

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'll Agonize Over Sentences. Mostly Because You're Trying To Create Specific Effects With Sentences, And Because There Are A Number Of Different Voices In The Book.

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.

They Were Not My Friends, After All. They Were Just The People I Went To School With.

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.

From Meetings And Partings None Can Ever Escape. Nor From Magic.

There Was A Smile Dancing On His Lips, Although It Was A Wary Smile, For The World Is A Bigger Place Than A Little Graveyard On A Hill; And There Would Be Dangers In It And Mysteries, New Friends To Make, Old Friends To Rediscover, Mistakes To Be Made And Many Paths To Be Walked Before He Would, Finally, Return To The Graveyard Or Ride With The Lady On The Broad Back Of Her Great Grey Stallion.

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.

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

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.

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

Also, In My Bedroom, Nobody Minded If I Kept The Hall Door Half-open, Allowing In Enough Light That I Was Not Scared Of The Dark, And, Just As Important, Allowing Me To Read Secretly, After My Bedtime, Using The Dim Hallway Light To Read By, If I Needed To. I Always Needed To.

I Noticed A Long Time Ago That The Universe Rewards Belief Systems. It Doesn't Really Matter What You Believe - It'll Be There And Waiting For You If You Go And Look For It. Decide The Universe Is, Say, Run By Secret Enormous Teddy Bears, And I Can Guarantee You'll Immediately Start Running Across Evidence That This Is True.

The Only Ones Who Ever Come Here From Your Lands Are The Minstrels, And The Lovers, And The Mad. And You Don't Look Like Much Of A Minstrel, And You're— Pardon Me For Saying So Lad, But It's True— Ordinary As Cheese Crumbs. So It's Love If You Ask Me.

Shadow Had Heard Too Many People Telling Each Other Not To Repress Their Feelings, To Let Their Emotions Out, Let The Pain Go. Shadow Thought There Was A Lot To Be Said For Bottling Up Emotions. If You Did It Long Enough And Deep Enough, He Suspected, Pretty Soon You Wouldn't Feel Anything At All.

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 Once Read That You Die Because You See The Angel Of Death, And You Fall In Love. And You Fall In Love So Hard Your Soul Is Sucked Out Through Your Eyes, And That's The Moment Of Death. It's A Lovely, Strange Old Jewish Legend.

Falling In Love

Life And Death Are Different Sides Of The Same Coin.

There Are Characters In Some Short Stories Who Exist As People, And There Are Other Characters In Different Short Stories Who Exist As Purely Literary Constructs. You Know, The Young Man In "forbidden Brides Of The Faceless Slaves In The Secret House Of The Night Of Dread Desire" - I Probably Got That Right - Is A Literary Construct, And Enjoys Being A Literary Construct. He Has No Life Off Stage, Whereas The Young Men In "how To Talk To Girls At Parties" Were As Near To Being Real Human Beings As I Could Possibly Get Them.

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

A Novel Seemed The Easiest Way To Get What I Had Had In My Head Into The Inside Of Other People's Heads. Books Are Good That Way.

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.

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

There Was A Hysteria In There, Certainly, But There Was Also The Exhaustion Of Someone Who Had Managed, Somehow, To Believe Several Dozen Impossible Things In The Last Twenty-four Hours, Without Ever Getting A Proper Breakfast.

Impossible Things

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

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.

I Have World Class Photographic Red-eye Pretty Much All The Time. As A General Rule, If It's Taken With A Flash, I Look Like I Am Possessed By The Blazing Forces Of Darkness, At Least In The Eye Department.

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.

Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

Freedom Of Speech

An Angel Who Did Not So Much Fall As Saunter Vaguely Downwards.

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

He Was Walking Into Faerie, In Search Of A Fallen Star, With No Idea How He Would Find The Star, Nor How To Keep Himself Safe And Whole As He Tried. He Looked Back And Fancied That He Could See The Lights Of Wall Behind Him, Wavering And Glimmering As If In A Heat-haze, But Still Inviting.

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.

A Nice, Easy Place For Freedom Of Speech To Be Eroded Is Comics, Because Comics Are A Natural Target Whenever An Election Comes Up.

Freedom Of Speech

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

She Had Forgotten Them All; Forgotten Richard Down In The Mud, And The Marquis And His Foolish Crossbow, And The World. She Was Delighted And Transported, In A Perfect Place, The World She Lived For. Her World Contained Two Things: Hunter, And The Beast. The Beast Knew That Too. It Was The Perfect Match, The Hunter And The Hunted. And Who Was Who, And Which Was Which, Only Time Would Reveal; Time And The Dance.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I Remember Making That Vow, The One Not To Forget. Not To Remember What Happened, But To Remember Who I Was And How I Felt.

The First Author I Remember Being Obsessed By, Actually Realizing 'i Like The Way He Writes And I Like The Way He Tells Stories,' Was C.s. Lewis And The 'narnia' Books.

The World Is Always Ending, For Someone.

I Suspect There Are Two Kinds Of Novelists. Those Who Have A Point Of View And Have Something To Say And Then Write A Novel In Order To Say That Thing, And Those Of Us Who Write The Book In Order To Find Out What We Think About That Thing.

Because If You Don't Stand Up For The Stuff You Don't Like, When They Come For The Stuff You Do Like, You've Already Lost.

Freedom Of Speech

So, If A City Has A Personality, Maybe It Also Has A Soul. Maybe It Dreams.

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

Truly Life Is Wasted On The Living.

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.

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.

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

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

For Me, Closing Libraries Is The Equivalent Of Eating Your Seed Corn To Save A Little Money.

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

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

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.

She Found Herself To Be Quite Worried That Something Would Jump Out At Her, So She Began To Whistle. She Thought It Might Make It Harder For Things To Jump Out At Her, If She Was Whistling.

The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can.

Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

The Current Total Of Countries In The World With First Amendments Is One. You Have Guaranteed Freedom Of Speech. Other Countries Don't Have That.

Freedom Of Speech

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

Important Things

For Me, I Would Rather Read A Good Book, From A Contented Author. I Don't Really Care What It Takes To Produce That.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

I Wish Being A Beekeeper, Which I Am, Gave You A Free Pass On The Carbon Footprint, But It Doesn't.

Carbon Footprint

I Think I Could Be A Perfectly Decent Cat. I've Been Around Cats Long Enough To Know What The Rules Of Being A Cat Are. When All Else Fails, Wash. And I Think I Could Master The Thing That Cats Do, Where They Stalk Away Pretending They Meant To Do Whatever It Was In The First Place; Showing Their Wounded Dignity.

However You Must Have Sensed A Lurking 'but' Skulking Beneath My Happy, Blithe, And Chipper Exterior. A Minuscule Vexation, Like The Teeniest Lump Of Raw Liver Sticking To The Inside Of My Boot.

To Be A Good Writer... Read A Lot And Write Every Day.

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

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

Often You Will Discover That The Harder You Work, And The More Wisely You Work, The Luckier You Get. But There Is Luck, And It Helps.

He Was Painfully Shy, Which, As Is Often The Manner Of The Painfully Shy, He Overcompensated For By Being Too Loud At The Wrong Times.

Ray Bradbury Was Not Ahead Of His Time. He Was Perfectly Of His Time, And More Than That: He Created His Time And Left His Mark On The Time That Followed.

You Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

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

Leave No Stone Unturned. Deeply Explore The Beauty Of Your Life.

That Is The Eternal Folly Of Man. To Be Chasing After The Sweet Flesh, Without Realizing That It Is Simply A Pretty Cover For The Bones.

The Tv's The Altar. I'm What People Are Sacrificing To.' 'what Do They Sacrifice?' Asked Shadow. 'their Time, Mostly,' Said Lucy. 'sometimes Each Other.

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.

Different People Remember Things Differently, And You'll Not Get Any Two People To Remember Anything The Same, Whether They Were There Or Not.

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 Young Woman Was Crying, In The Way That Grownups Cry, Keeping It Inside As Much As They Can, And Hating It When It Still Pushes Out At The Edges, Making Them Ugly And Funny-looking On The Way.

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 May Be A Parallel Between Woodcuts And Radio; Radio Plays Are A Living Art Form Everywhere Except The Usa.

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. Sometimes You'll Forget Precisely What Happened, But If A Story Touches You It Will Stay With You, Haunting The Places In Your Mind That You Rarely Ever Visit.

Soon Enough His Head Would Be Swimming With Tales Of Derring-do And High Adventure, Tales Of Beautiful Maidens Kissed, Of Evildoers Shot With Pistols Or Fought With Swords, Of Bags Of Gold, Of Diamonds As Big As The Tip Of Your Thumb, Of Lost Cities And Of Vast Mountains, Of Steam-trains And Clipper Ships, Of Pampas, Oceans, Deserts, Tundra.

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

It Always Felt Like The Price Of Being A Writer Was That You Would - Even In The Most Terrible Moments, There Was A Little Phantom Version Of You Sitting On Your Shoulder With A Notebook Going, I Can Use This. Ok, Look At The Way That The Light Is Glinting Off The Broken Plastic On The Road Next To The Blood. You Can Use This. And It Was Always A Very Strange Feeling.

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

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

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

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

There's Definitely A Feeling With A Short Story That It's Pure Story Telling. You're Not Really Worried About Theme. You're Not Going To Stay With The Characters Long Enough To Live Your Life With Them. And You Have Different Kinds Of Relationships With Them.

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

Coraline Shivered. She Preferred Her Other Mother To Have A Location: If She Were Nowhere, Then She Could Be Anywhere. And, After All, It Is Always Easier To Be Afraid Of Something You Cannot See.

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

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.

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.

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

I Learned To Write By Writing. I Tended To Do Anything As Long As It Felt Like An Adventure, And To Stop When It Felt Like Work, Which Meant That Life Did Not Feel Like Work.

I Think That The Biggest, Quickest And Hardest Thing To Learn For A Writer Is That What We Think Of As The Unchanging Verities Of Story Are A Load Of Bollocks. Absolute Rubbish. There Are No Unchanging Verities.

To Be Despair. It Is A Portrait. Only Close Your Eyes And Feel.

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.

I've Known Ambitious People With No Aptitude For The Thing They Did. Most Of Whom, Rather Terrifyingly, Tended To Succeed.

I Am Fascinated A) By Transgressive Art And B) What Happens Beyond The Boundaries.

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.

The Thin Girl Was Gulping Down One Of Richard's Bananas In What Was, Richard Reflected, The Least Erotic Display Of Banana-eating He Had Ever Seen.

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.

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.

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubbles In Amber,” She Explained. “there’s A Lot Of Time In London, And It Has To Go Somewhere—it Doesn’t All Get Used Up At Once.” “i May Still Be Hung Over,” Sighed Richard. “that Almost Made Sense.

When Writing A Novel, That's Pretty Much Entirely What Life Turns Into: 'house Burned Down. Car Stolen. Cat Exploded. Did 1500 Easy Words, So All In All It Was A Pretty Good Day.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Adults Follow Paths. Children Explore. Adults Are Content To Walk The Same Way, Hundreds Of Times, Or Thousands; Perhaps It Never Occurs To Adults To Step Off The Paths, To Creep Beneath Rhododendrons, To Find The Spaces Between Fences. I Was A Child, Which Meant That I Knew A Dozen Different Ways Of Getting Out Of Our Property And Into The Lane, Ways That Would Not Involve Walking Down Our Drive.

My Stuff Gets Published In Some Countries As Fiction And In Some Countries As Fantasy. It's Just Where They Think It Will Do Best In The Bookshops.

He Told Me Not To Seek Revenge, But To Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox Spirit, Sadly. 'wise Counsel,' Said The Fox Of Dreams. 'vegeance Can Be A Road That Has No Ending. You Would Be Wise To Avoid It. And...?' 'i Shall Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox, With A Toss Of Her Head. 'but First I Shall Seek Revenge.

Remember: When People Tell You Something’s Wrong Or Doesn’t Work For Them, They Are Almost Always Right. When They Tell You Exactly What They Think Is Wrong And How To Fix It, They Are Almost Always Wrong.

In Hollywood The Man Who Cleans Your Pool Is An Actor. The Man Who Sells You Your Copy Of Variety Is An Actor. I Don't Think There's A Real Person Left In The Place.

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

Only The Phoenix Rises And Does Not Descend. And Everything Changes. And Nothing Is Truly Lost.

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.

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

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

If You Read Enough Lionel Fanthorpe, Your Brain Starts To Turn To Jelly And Just Dribbles Out Of Your Ears.

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

Do You Know Why I Stopped Being Delight, My Brother? I Do. There Are Things Not In Your Book. There Are Paths Outside This Garden.

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

Why Are We Talking About This Good And Evil? They're Just Names For Sides. We Know That.

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.

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.

I Believe In A Personal God Who Cares About Me And Worries And Oversees Everything I Do. I Believe In An Impersonal God Who Set The Universe In Motion And Went Off To Hang With Her Girlfriends And Doesn't Even Know That I'm Alive. I Believe In An Empty And Godless Universe Of Causal Chaos, Background Noise, And Sheer Blind Luck... 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.

You Musn’t Be Afraid Of The Dark.’ ‘i’m Not,’ Said Shadow. ‘i’m Afraid Of The People In The Dark.

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

Religions Are, By Definition, Metaphors, After All: God Is A Dream, A Hope, A Woman, An Ironist, A Father, A City, A House Of Many Rooms, A Watchmaker Who Left His Prize Chronometer In The Desert, Someone Who Loves You - Even, Perhaps, Against All Evidence, A Celestial Being Whose Only Interest Is To Make Sure Your Football Team, Army, Business, Or Marriage Thrives, Prospers, And Triumphs Over All Opposition.

I Am Selfish, Private And Easily Bored. Will This Be A Problem?

Parameters Are The Things You Bounce Off To Create Art.

With Pornography, If You Don't Get Hard Or Wet, Depending On Your Gender, It Didn't Work. With Humour, If You Don't Laugh It Didn't Work. And With Horror, If You Don't Get Scared Or Haunted, Depending On What It's Trying To Do, It Didn't Work. I'm Fascinated By Those Three Categories.

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.

You Made Peace,” Said The Buffalo Man. “you Took Our Words And Made Them Your Own. They Never Understood That They Were Here—and The People Who Worshiped Them Were Here—because It Suits Us That They Are Here. But We Can Change Our Minds. And Perhaps We Will.

Every Hour Wounds. The Last One Kills.

I Move From Dreamer To Dreamer, From Dream To Dream, Hunting For What I Need. Slipping And Sliding And Flickering Through The Dreams; And The Dreamer Will Wake, And Wonder Why This Dream Seemed Different, Wonder How Real Their Lives Can Truly Be.

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.

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.

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.

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

American Gods Is About 200,000 Words Long, And I'm Sure There Are Words That Are Simply In There 'cause I Like Them. I Know I Couldn't Justify Each And Every One Of Them.

She Didn't Have A Daddy?" I Asked. "no." "did You Have A Daddy?" "you're All Questions, Aren't You? No, Love. We Never Went In For That Sort Of Thing. You Only Need Men If You Want To Breed More Men.

You're A Big One,[...] A Tall Drink Of Water, But I Got To Tell You, You Don't Look Too Bright. I Got A Son, Stupid As A Man Who Bought His Stupid At A Two-for-one Sale, And You Remind Me Of Him.

Bod Was Thrilled. He Imagined A Future In Which He Could Read Everything, In Which All Stories Could Be Opened And Discovered.

Fairy Tales Are More Than True: Not Because They Tell Us That Dragons Exist, But Because They Tell Us That Dragons Can Be Beaten.

They Also Held That The Way To Salvation Was To Give Way To Lust And Temptation In All Things. And No Greater Percentage Of Them Turned Up Here Than Of Any Other Religion. Amusing, Isn't It?

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

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.

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

Some Things Are Too Big To Be Seen; Some Emotions Are Too Huge To Be Felt.

I Loved Writing A Book In Which, In Some Ways, It's Very, Very Classical, And In Some Ways I'm Breaking Lots Of Rules About What You Can Do And What You Can't Do.

Never Mind. There. For Good Or Bad. It's Done.

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

It's A Wonderful Thing, As A Writer, To Be Given Parameters And Walls And Barriers.

Something Feels Weird," He Told Laura. That Wasn't The First Thing He Said To Her. The First Thing Was "i Love You," Because It's A Good Thing To Say If You Can Mean It, And Shadow Did.

Hunchbacks Danced At My Wedding For Luck. It's A Thing You Don't See Nowadays.

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

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

Life - And I Don't Suppose I'm The First To Make This Comparison - Is A Disease: Sexually Transmitted, And Invariably Fatal.

I'm Never Quite Sure If I'm Me When I'm Dressed Up.

If I'm Writing A Novel, I'll Probably Get Up In The Morning, Do Email, Perhaps Blog, Deal With Emergencies, And Then Be Off Novel-writing Around 1.00pm And Stop Around 6.00pm. And I'll Be Writing In Longhand, A Safe Distance From My Computer. If I'm Not Writing A Novel, There Is No Schedule, And Scripts And Introductions And Whatnot Can Find Themselves Being Written At Any Time And On Anything.

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

If Ever You Get To Be My Age," Said The Old Woman, "you Will Know All There Is To Know About Regrets, And You Will Know That One More, Here Or There, Will Make No Difference In The Long Run.

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

I Wanted To Be An Author As Far Back As I Can Remember, Mixed With Occasional Bouts Of Wanting To Be A Werewolf When I Grew Up. But Mostly, When I Daydreamed, It Was About Being An Author.

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.

I Am Remarkably Likeable. Few People Have Ever Been As Likeable As I Am. There Is, Frankly, No End To My Likeability. People Gather Together In Public Assemblies To Discuss How Much They Like Me. I Have Several Awards, And A Small Medal From A Small Country In South America Which Pays Tribute Both To How Much I Am Liked And My General All Around Wonderfulness. I Don't Have It On Me, Of Course. I Keep My Medals In My Sock Drawer.

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.

The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

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.

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.

Actually I Didn't Shoot A Man In Reno Just To Watch Him Die, But He Could Tell I Was Extremely Cross.

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.

A Story Only Matters, I Suspect, To The Extent That The People In The Story Change.

You're No Help," He Told The Lime. This Was Unfair. It Was Only A Lime; There Was Nothing Special About It At All. It Was Doing The Best It Could.

It Sounded Like A Piece Of Blackboard Being Dragged Over The Nails Of A Wall Of Severed Fingers.

Face Your Life, Its Pain, Its Pleasure, Leave No Path Untaken.

I Am Anti-life, The Beast Of Judgment. I Am The Dark At The End Of Everything. The End Of Universes, Gods, Worlds…of Everything. And What Will You Be Then, Dreamlord?" "i Am Hope.

Can't Make An Omelette Without Killing A Few People.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

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