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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

-Neil Gaiman

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People Kill What They

Neil Gaiman

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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

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You Can Take For Granted That People Know More Or Less What A Street, A Shop, A Beach, A Sky, An Oak Tree Look Like. Tell Them What Makes This One Different.

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 Think I've Got Fear Down, But How Do I Take It All The Way Up To Terror?

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.

We Have An Obligation To Make Things Beautiful. Not To Leave The World Uglier Than We Found It, Not To Empty The Oceans, Not To Leave Our Problems For The Next Generation.

Imagine A Mosaic Picture Of A House In The Country: Lots Of Red And Blue And Yellow And Black And Brown And White And A Dozen Different Shades Of Green Tiles Which Make A Beautiful Picture If You Stand Back Far Enough. All The Little Red Squares Are True - True Things, True Places, True Feelings. But The Red Squares Aren't The Picture. All The Rest Of It Is Lies And Stories, Often Within The Same Sentence.

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

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.

Goodnight World. While I Sleep, I Hope You'll All Continue To Do Whatever It Is You Do. Unless You Murder Sleeping Authors. Don't Do That.

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.

Lives Are Snowflakes - Unique In Detail, Forming Patterns We Have Seen Before, But As Like One Another As Peas In A Pod (and Have You Ever Looked At Peas In A Pod? I Mean, Really Looked At Them? There's Not A Chance You'd Mistake One For Another, After A Minute's Close Inspection.)

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?"

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

If People Are Standing Up There Saying, My Football Team Just Won With Help From God, Then Obviously God Just Pissed Over The Other Team.

Just Remember, What The French Say. No, Probably Not The French, They've Got A President Or Something. The Brits, Maybe, Or The Swedes. You Know What I Mean?" "no, Matthew. What Do They Say?" "the King Is Dead, That's What They Say. The King Is Dead. Long Live The King.

Set Your Fantasies In The Here And Now And Then, If Challenged, Claim To Be Writing Magical Realism.

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.

When Things Go Wrong, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

When Things Get Tough

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

I Watched My Life As If It Were Happening To Someone Else. My Son Died. And I Was Hurt, But I Watched My Hurt, And Even Relished It, A Little, For Now I Could Write A Real Death, A True Loss. My Heart Was Broken By My Dark Lady, And I Wept, In My Room, Alone; But While I Wept, Somewhere Inside I Smiled.

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

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.

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

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

Human Beings Do Not Relate To Written Words In The Same Way That They Will Relate To Spoken Words. They Do Not Relate To Music In The Same Way That They Do To Pictures. It's All Different Parts Of Our Head, Different Parts Of Our Minds Processing This.

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

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

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.

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

Suppose We Pick A Name For Him, Eh?" Caius Pompeius Stepped Over And Eyed The Child. "he Looks A Little Like My Proconsul, Marcus. We Could Call Him Marcus." Josiah Worthington Said, "he Looks More Like My Head Gardener, Stebbins. Not That I'm Suggesting Stebbins As A Name. The Man Drank Like A Fish." "he Looks Like My Nephew Harry," Said Mother Slaughter... "he Looks Like Nobody But Himself," Said Mrs.owens, Firmly. "he Looks Like Nobody." "then Nobody It Is," Said Silas. "nobody Owens.

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

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

It's Only A World, After All, And They're Just Sand Grains In The Desert, Worlds.

I Knowed A Man In Paphlagonia Who'd Swallow A Live Snake Every Morning, When He Got Up. He Used To Say, He Was Certain Of One Thing, That Nothing Worse Would Happen To Him All Day. 'course They Made Him Eat A Bowlful Of Hairy Centipedes Before They Hung Him, So Maybe That Claim Was A Bit Presumptive.

Here Are Your Instructions, Crowley. And Suddenly He Knew. He Hated That. They Could Just As Easily Have Told Him, They Didn't Suddenly Have To Drop Chilly Knowledge Straight Into His Brain.

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.

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

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

I Was Thinking One Of The Great Things About Fiction Is We, As A Race, Only Get To Look Out Of Our Own Eyes At The World. And Fiction Is A Fantastic Way Of Looking Out Through Somebody Else's Eyes.

I Used To Get My Best Ideas From Being Bored, And Now, If I Even Think I'm Being Faintly Bored, I Have Two Million Twitter Followers I Can Engage With. It's Great, But I Also Think It's Important To Be Able To Let Your Thoughts Flow And Percolate.

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.

Being Brave Doesn't Mean You Aren't Scared. Being Brave Means You Are Scared, Really Scared, Badly Scared, And You Do The Right Thing Anyway.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

The Short Story Is Still Like The Novel's Wayward Younger Brother, We Know That It's Not Respectable - But I Think That Can Also Add To The Glory Of It.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

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

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

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.

You Know How Is It When You Love Someone? And The Hard Part, The Bad Part, The Jerry Springer Show Part Is That You Never Stop Loving Someone. There's Always A Piece Of Them In Your Heart.

When You Love Someone

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.

You’re Alive. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything.

All Fiction Is A Process Of Imagining: Whatever You Write, In Whatever Genre Or Medium, Your Task Is To Make Things Up Convincingly And Interestingly And New.

I Always Figure There Are Novels And Short Stories, And In Those, I'm God. No One Tells Me What To Do. I Don't Have To Lose A Page, Or Cut Anything, It's Just Mine. Then There Are Other Things Where You're Up Against Realities.

Television And Cinema Were All Very Well, But These Stories Happened To Other People. The Stories I Found In Books Happened Inside My Head. I Was, In Some Way, There. It's The Magic Of Fiction: You Take The Words And You Build Them Into Worlds.

But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?

As A Kid I Would Get My Parents To Drop Me Off At My Local Library On Their Way To Work During The Summer Holidays And I Would Walk Home At Night. For Several Years I Read The Children's Library Until I Finished The Children's Library. Then I Moved Into The Adult Library And Slowly Worked My Way Through Them.

Yes. Growing Up Is Highly Overrated. Just Be An Author.

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.

Her Other Mother Smiled Brightly And The Hair On Her Head Drifted Like Plants Under The Sea.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

I Think The Short Story Is A Very Underrated Art Form. We Know That Novels Deserve Respect.

I Imagine The World Dividing Into The People Who Want To Feed Their Children, And The Ones Shooting At Them.

I Started Out Writing Much More Science Fictiony Stuff And Writing About Science Fiction.

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.

Going To Comic-con For Me Is Always Hard And Weird, So It Just Makes Me Feel Guilty. There's Always A Hundre Thousand People Out There Who Have Copies Of Things That I've Written And They Really Want Signed And They're Not Going To Get Them Signed.

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

You Can't Run Away From Home Without Destroying Somebody's World.

Have Been Unavoidably Detained By The World. Expect Us When You See Us.

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

Never A Possession, Always The Possessor, With Skin As Pale As Smoke, And Eyes Tawny And Sharp As Yellow Wine: Desire Is Everything You Have Ever Wanted. Whoever You Are. Whatever You Are. Everything.

I Think I Love My Dreaming Process Because One Of The Things That My Dreaming Process Does Is Sort Out Stories For Me.

He Had Kissed Her Good Night That Night, And She Had Tasted Like Strawberry Daiquiris, And He Had Never Wanted To Kiss Anyone Else Again.

But He Did Not Understand The Price. Mortals Never Do. They Only See The Prize, Their Heart's Desire, Their Dream... But The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What You Once Wanted.

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

When You Dream, Sometimes You Remember. When You Wake, You Always Forget.

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

[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.

The Best Way To Show People True Things Is From A Direction That They Had Not Imagined The Truth Coming.

Now Me,” Said Mr. Vandemar. “what Number Am I Thinking Of?” “i Beg Your Pardon?” “what Number Am I Thinking Of?” Repeated Mr. Vandemar. “it’s Between One And A Lot,” He Added, Helpfully.

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.

We Who Make Stories Know That We Tell Lies For A Living. But They Are Good Lies That Say True Things, And We Owe It To Our Readers To Build Them As Best We Can. Because Somewhere Out There Is Someone Who Needs That Story. Someone Who Will Grow Up With A Different Landscape, Who Without That Story Will Be A Different Person. And Who With That Story May Have Hope, Or Wisdom, Or Kindness, Or Comfort. And That Is Why We Write.

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

Small Children Believe Themselves To Be Gods, Or Some Of Them Do, And They Can Only Be Satisfied When The Rest Of The World Goes Along With Their Way Of Seeing Things.

Every Now And Then I'll Do Little Things, A Short Story Or Something, That Doesn't Have Any Fantastical Elements, But Mostly I Like The Power Of Playing God And I Like To Imagine Things.

For Tea She Went Down To See Misses Spink And Forcible. She Had Three Digestive Biscuits, A Glass Of Limeade, And A Cup Of Weak Tea. The Limeade Was Very Interesting. It Didn't Taste Anything Like Limes. It Tasted Bright Green And Vaguely Chemical. Coraline Liked It Enormously. She Wished They Had It At Home. "how Are Your Dear Mother And Father?" Asked Miss Spink. "missing," Said Coraline. "i Haven't Seen Either Of Them Since Yesterday. I'm On My Own. I Think I've Probably Become A Single Child Family.

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

There's A But, Isn't There?" Said Coraline. "i Can Feel It. Like A Rain Cloud.

The Things That Really Change The World, According To Chaos Theory, Are The Tiny Things. A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings In The Amazonian Jungle, And Subsequently A Storm Ravages Half Of Europe.

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

Goodbyes Are Overrated.

Because There Are Mysteries. Because There Are Things That People Are Forbidden To Speak About. Because There Are Things They Do Not Remember.

He Shivered. His Coat Was Thin, And It Was Obvious He Would Not Get His Kiss, Which He Found Puzzling. The Manly Heroes Of The Penny Dreadfuls And Shilling Novels Never Had These Problems Getting Kissed.

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.

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

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

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.

We Writers – And Especially Writers For Children, But All Writers – Have An Obligation To Our Readers: It's The Obligation To Write True Things, Especially Important When We Are Creating Tales Of People Who Do Not Exist In Places That Never Were – To Understand That Truth Is Not In What Happens But What It Tells Us About Who We Are. Fiction Is The Lie That Tells The Truth, After All.

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

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.

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

Not Knowing Everything Is All That Makes It Ok, Sometimes.

Knowing Everything

Any Way, Death Is So Final, Isn't It? "is It?" Asked Richard. "sometimes," Said The Marquis De Carabas. And They Went Down.

I Don't Believe In "writer's Block". I Try And Deal With Getting Stuck By Having More Than One Thing To Work On At A Time. And By Knowing That Even A Hundred Bad Words That Didn't Exist Before Is Forward Progress.

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

When Most People Said "i'm Psychic, You See," They Meant "i Have An Overactive But Unoriginal Imagination/wear Black Nail Varnish/talk To My Budgie;" When Anathema Said It, It Sounded As Though She Was Admitting To A Hereditary Disease Which She'd Much Prefer Not To Have.

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

Whenever It Rains You Will Think Of Her.

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.

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.

What Makes You Think I'm Giving You A Ride?” “because I'm A Damsel In Distress,” She Said. “and You Are A Knight In Whatever. A Really Dirty Car.

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

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.

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

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

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

Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkably Difficult To Kill.

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.

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

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

You've A Good Heart. Sometimes That's Enough To See You Safe Wherever You Go. But Mostly, It's Not.

The Greatest Satisfaction You Can Obtain From Life Is Your Pleasure In Producing, In Your Own Individual Way, Something Of Value To Your Fellowmen. That Is Creative Living! For You, Life Can Be A Succession Of Glorious Adventures. Or It Can Be A Monotonous Bore. Take Your Choice!

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

The Names Are The First Things To Go, After The Breath Has Gone, And The Beating Of The Heart. We Keep Our Memories Longer Than Our Names.

The Search For The Word Gets No Easier But Nobody Else Is Going To Write Your Novel For You.

When The First Living Thing Existed, I Was There Waiting. When The Last Living Thing Dies, My Job Will Be Finished. I'll Put The Chairs On The Tables, Turn Out The Lights And Lock The Universe Behind Me When I Leave.

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

You Get Ideas From Daydreaming. You Get Ideas From Being Bored. You Get Ideas All The Time. The Only Difference Between Writers And Other People Is We Notice When We're Doing It.

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

You'll Think This Is A Bit Silly, But I'm A Bit--well, I Have A Thing About Birds." "what, A Phobia?" "sort Of." "well, That's The Common Term For An Irrational Fear Of Birds." "what Do They Call A Rational Fear Of Birds, Then?

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.

Sister Mary Chose That Moment To Come In With The Tea. Satanist Or Not, She'd Also Found A Plate And Arranged Some Iced Biscuits On It.

The Only People I Ever Get Irritated With Are The Ones Who Announce, Using My Twitter Handle, That They Are No Longer Following Me And Why.

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

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.

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

It Doth Not Hurt", Whispered A Faint Voice, "she Will Take You Life And All You Are And All You Care'st For, And She Will Leave You With Nothing But Mist And Fog. She'll Take Your Joy. And One Day You'll Wake And Your Heart And Soul Will Have Gone. A Husk You'll Be, A Wisp You'll Be, And A Thing No More Than A Dream On Waking, Or A Memory Of Something Forgotten.

Not Only Are There No Happy Endings,' She Told Him, 'there Aren't Even Any Endings.

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.

It's An America With Strange Mythic Depths. I See It As A Distorting Mirror; A Book Of Danger And Secrets, Of Romance And Magic. It's About The Soul Of America, Really. What People Brought To America; What Found Them When They Came; And The Things That Lie Sleeping Beneath It All.

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.

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.

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

There's A Glorious Sense Of Freedom In Comedy, Just Allowing Myself To Tell Jokes, Allowing Myself To Interrupt Myself And Tell Old African Folk Stories That I Made Up - Or Didn't - And Jamaican Stories.

The Fallen Autumn Leaves Were Slick Beneath Bod's Feet, And The Mists Blurred The Edges Of The World. Nothing Was As Clean-cut As He Had Thought It, A Few Minutes Before.

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

You Can't Make Me Love You.

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

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

Each Person Who Ever Was Or Is Or Will Be Has A Song. It Isn't A Song That Anybody Else Wrote. It Has Its Own Melody, It Has Its Own Words. Very Few People Get To Sing Their Song. Most Of Us Fear That We Cannot Do It Justice With Our Voices, Or That Our Words Are Too Foolish Or Too Honest, Or Too Odd. So People Live Their Song Instead.

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes, Then You Are Making New Things, Trying New Things, Learning, Living, Pushing Yourself, Changing Yourself, Changing Your World. You're Doing Things You've Never Done Before, And More Importantly, You're Doing Something.

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.

Nobody Looks Like What They Really Are On The Inside. You Don’t. I Don’t. People Are Much More Complicated Than That. It’s True Of Everybody.

The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What Once You Wanted.

Getting What You Want

I Do Not Believe That All Books Will Or Should Migrate Onto Screens: As Douglas Adams Once Pointed Out To Me, More Than 20 Years Before The Kindle Turned Up, A Physical Book Is Like A Shark. Sharks Are Old: There Were Sharks In The Ocean Before The Dinosaurs. And The Reason There Are Still Sharks Around Is That Sharks Are Better At Being Sharks Than Anything Else Is.

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

It Occurs To Me That The Peculiarity Of Most Things We Think Of As Fragile Is How Tough They Truly Are. There Were Tricks We Did With Eggs, As Children, To Show How They Were, In Reality, Tiny Load-bearing Marble Halls; While The Beat Of The Wings Of A Butterfly In The Right Place, We Are Told, Can Create A Hurricane Across An Ocean. Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

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

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

I Believe That Mankind's Destiny Lies In The Stars.

The Trouble With Everything, These Days, For Me, Is Time. There Is Only One Me. There Are A Ridiculous Number Of Demands On My Time. There Are So Many Things I'm Trying To Do. It's So Much More About When I'm Going To Get Time To Do It, If I Get Time.

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.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

Reading Is Important. Books Are Important. Librarians Are Important. (also, Libraries Are Not Child-care Facilities, But Sometimes Feral Children Raise Themselves Among The Stacks.)

I Don't Think I'm Mainstream. I Think What I Am Is Lots And Lots Of Different Cults. And When You Get Lots And Lots Of Small Groups Who Like You A Lot, They Add Up To A Big Group Without Ever Actually Becoming Mainstream.

Sometimes Big Things Happen, And They Echo. Those Echoes Crash Across Worlds. They Are The Ripples In The Fabric Of Things. Often They Manifest As Storms. Reality Is A Fragile Thing, After All.

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.

He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring Because Yesterday Has Brought It.

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.

When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

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.

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.

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 Looked At The World Of Books And Just Went, Oh My Gosh, If I'm Writing Novels, I'm On The Same Shelves As Jane Austen And Charles Dickens And Petronius - Whereas With Comics, They've Only Been Doing Them For A Hundred Years, And There's Stuff That Nobody's Done Before. I Think I'll Go Off And Do Some Of The Stuff No One's Ever Done Before.

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

Call No Man Happy, Said Shadow, Until He Is Dead

She Seems So Cool, So Focused, So Quiet, Yet Her Eyes Remain Fixed Upon The Horizon. You Think You Know All There Is To Know About Her Immediately Upon Meeting Her, But Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. Passion Flows Through Her Like A River Of Blood. She Only Looked Away For A Moment, And The Mask Slipped, And You Fell. All Your Tomorrows Start Here.

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.

You Don't Get Explanations In Real Life. You Just Get Moments That Are Absolutely, Utterly, Inexplicably Odd.

We Have The Right, And The Obligation, To Tell Old Stories In Our Own Ways, Because They Are Our Stories.

Sometimes I Think That Ideas Float Through The Atmosphere Like Huge Squishy Pumpkins, Waiting For Heads To Drop On.

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

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.

I Hope The Strong Women Out There Aren't Quiet And They Don't Go Away, Because When People Attack You For Speaking, The Best Way To Drive Them Nuts Is To Smile And Carry On Speaking, Louder, More Wisely, More Intensely, More Articulately Than Ever.

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

Recounting The Strange Is Like Telling One's Dreams: One Can Communicate The Events Of A Dream, But Not The Emotional Content, The Way That A Dream Can Colour One's Entire Day.

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.

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.

Nobody's Seen Jesus In Years.

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 Didn't Like People Rewriting My Dialogue. I Didn't Like The Fact That We'd Start A Comic With The Joker, And By The Time We Inked It, He Would Have Turned Into The Scarecrow.

Librarians Are The Coolest People Out There Doing The Hardest Job Out There On The Frontlines. And Every Time I Get To Encounter Or Work With Librarians, I'm Always Impressed By Their Sheer Awesomeness.

My Wife, Amanda, Is Terribly Good At Warping Reality. She Is Like A Bowling Ball On A Rubber Sheet, And You Find Yourself Living In Her Universe, Doing Things That Are Completely Unexpected Or Unimaginable For You, But You Blink And You're Up On A Stage Singing, Or Wearing A Peculiar Wig, Or Writing A Book Filled With Feelings And Emotion, Or Doing Something Equally As Unlikely.

It's Not What I'd Want For At My Funeral. When I Die, I Just Want Them To Plant Me Somewhere Warm. And Then When The Pretty Women Walk Over My Grave I Would Grab Their Ankles, Like In That Movie.

I Will Be A Wise And Tolerant Monarch, Dispencing Justice Fairly, And Only Setting Nightmares To Rip Out The Winds Of The Evil And The Wicked. Or Just Anybody That I Don't Like.

Well-meaning Adults Can Easily Destroy A Child’s Love Of Reading: Stop Them Reading What They Enjoy, Or Give Them Worthy-but-dull Books That You Like, The 21st-century Equivalents Of Victorian “improving” Literature. You’ll Wind Up With A Generation Convinced That Reading Is Uncool And Worse, Unpleasant.

Nobody's American," Said Wednesday. "not Originally. That's My Point.

London Grew Into Something Huge And Contradictory. It Was A Good Place, And A Fine City, But There Is A Price To Be Paid For All Good Places, And A Price That All Good Places Have To Pay.

She Says Nothing At All, But Simply Stares Upward Into The Dark Sky And Watches, With Sad Eyes, The Slow Dance Of The Infinite Stars.

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

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William Morris Hunt

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