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People Talk About Escapism As If It's A Bad Thing... Once You've Escaped, Once You Come Back, The World Is Not The Same As When You Left It. You Come Back To It With Skills, Weapons, Knowledge You Didn't Have Before. Then You Are Better Equipped To Deal With Your Current Reality.

-Neil Gaiman

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People Talk About Escapism

Neil Gaiman

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People Talk About Escapism As If It's A Bad Thing... Once You've Escaped, Once You Come Back, The World Is Not The Same As When You Left It. You Come Back To It With Skills, Weapons, Knowledge You Didn't Have Before. Then You Are Better Equipped To Deal With Your Current Reality.

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

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

It’s An Artist’s Job To Show People The World They Live In. We Hold Up Mirrors.

Gods Die. And When They Truly Die They Are Unmourned And Unremembered. Ideas Are More Difficult To Kill Than People, But They Can Be Killed, In The End.

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

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

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.

Nothing I Did Where The Only Reason For Doing It Was The Money Was Ever Worth It, Except As Bitter Experience.

Bitter Experience

The Lower You Start, The More Opportunities You Have.

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

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

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

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

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.

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.

25 And The Lord Spake Unto The Angel That Guarded The Eastern Gate, Saying 'where Is The Flaming Sword That Was Given Unto Thee?' 26 And The Angel Said, 'i Had It Here Only A Moment Ago, I Must Have Put It Down Some Where, Forget My Own Head Next.' 27 And The Lord Did Not Ask Him Again.

I Think Hell Is Something You Carry Around With You, Not Somewhere You Go.

I Can Get Away Before The Storm Hits. Away From A World In Which Opiates Have Become The Religion Of The Masses.

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

I Love Writing In Longhand. Writing In Longhand, I Think, Is A Marvelous Thing To Do For A Writer These Days. If You Have A Notebook And A Nice Pen You Can Go Off Somewhere, You Can Write That's Solar Powered. You Can Drop It Or Get It Wet And Pretty Much All Of Your Work Will Continue To Be There. If You Suddenly Decide To Look Up A Word Or Check A Reference You Will Not Look Up Four Hours Later, Blinking, Finding Yourself Somehow In The Middle Of An Ebay Auction You Never Had Any Plans To Be Part Of.

It Was A Perfectly Normal Gerbil. It Appeared To Be Living In An Exciting Construction Of Cylinders, Spheres And Treadmills, Such As The Spanish Inquisition Would Have Devised If They'd Had Access To A Plastics Molding Press.

Perfectly Normal

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

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

So, You Figure They Won't Notice You're Back?" Sneered The Marquis. "just, 'oh Look, There's Another Angel, Here, Grab A Harp And On With The Hosannas'?

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.

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

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.

I've Never Known Anyone Who Was What He Or She Seemed; Or At Least, Was Only What He Or She Seemed. People Carry Worlds Within Them.

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.

Things Need Not Have Happened To Be True. Tales And Adventures Are The Shadow Truths That Will Endure When Mere Facts Are Dust And Ashes And Forgotten.

The World Is Always Ending, And The End Is Always Being Averted, By Love Or Foolishness Or Just Plain Old Dumb Luck.

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.

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

Agnes Was The Worst Prophet That's Ever Existed. Because She Was Always Right. That's Why The Book Never Sold.

I'm Not Blessed, Or Merciful. I'm Just Me. I've Got A Job To Do, And I Do It. Listen: Even As We're Talking, I'm There For Old And Young, Innocent And Guilty, Those Who Die Together And Those Who Die Alone. I'm In Cars And Boats And Planes; In Hospitals And Forests And Abbatoirs. For Some Folks Death Is A Release, And For Others Death Is An Abomination, A Terrible Thing. But In The End, I'm There For All Of Them.

Life Is Sometimes Hard. Things Go Wrong, In Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do. Make Good Art.

Why Do They Blame Me For All Their Little Failings? They Use My Name As If I Spent My Entire Days Sitting On Their Shoulders, Forcing Them To Commits Acts They Would Otherwise Find Repulsive. 'the Devil Made Me Do It.' I Have Never Made One Of Them Do Anything. Never. They Live Their Own Tiny Lives. I Do Not Live Their Lives For Them.

I'd Love To Write Some Porn, But I Don't Know If I Have The Right Engines. When I Was A Young Man And I Was Tempted To Write Porn, Imaginary Parents Would Appear Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing; Just About The Point That I Managed To Banish The Imaginary Parents, Real Children Would Lean Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing.

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

Touched By Her Fingers, The Two Surviving Chocolate People Copulate Desperately, Losing Themselves In A Melting Frenzy Of Lust, Spending The Last Of Their Brief Borrowed Lives In A Spasm Of Raspberry Cream And Fear.

All Bookshelves Are Magical.

How Old Are You?" Asked Door. Richard Was Pleased She Had Asked; He Would Never Have Dared. "as Old As My Tongue," Said Hunter, Primly, "and A Little Older Than My Teeth.

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

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

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.

Because, If One Is Writing Novels Today, Concentrating On The Beauty Of The Prose Is Right Up There With Concentrating On Your Semi-colons, For Wasted Effort.

The Simplest Way To Make Sure That We Raise Literate Children Is To Teach Them To Read, And To Show Them That Reading Is A Pleasurable Activity.

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

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.

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

You Are Obvious, Boy. You Are Difficult To Miss. If You Came To Me In Company With A Purple Lion, A Green Elephant, And A Scarlet Unicorn Astride Which Was The King Of England In His Royal Robes, I Do Believe That It Is You And You Alone That People Would Stare At, Dismissing The Others As Minor Irrelevancies.

The Imagination And The Place That Dreams Come From Is So Huge And So Important. I'm Trying To Write About The Real World, In That I'm Trying To Write About Whatever It Is The Experience That Makes Us Human, The Things That We Have In Common.

Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

Freedom Of Speech

He Entertained These Thoughts Awkwardly, As A Man Entertains Unexpected Guests. Then, As He Reached His Objective, He Pushed These Thoughts Away, As A Man Apologizes To His Guests, And Leaves Them, Muttering Something About A Prior Engagement.

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

One Cannot Begin A New Dream Without Abandoning The Last [one].

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

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.)

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.

It's Not Irrelevant, Those Moments Of Connection, Those Places Where Fiction Saves Your Life. It's The Most Important Thing There Is.

Dreams Are Hopes, And Echoes Of Hope.

I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No, I Am Brave.

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

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.

And He Waited. It Was Only For A Few Seconds, But It Felt Like A Small Forever.

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.

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

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.

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.

So You Used To Know Everything?" She Wrinkled Her Nose. "everybody Did. I Told You. It's Nothing Special, Knowing How Things Work. And You Really Do Have To Give It All Up If You Want To Play." "to Play What?" "this," She Said. She Waved At The House And The Sky And The Impossible Full Moon And The Skeins And The Shawls And Clusters Of Bright Stars.

The Converse Held Reassuringly True: Daylight Was Safe. Daylight Was Always Safe.

The Comic Convention Itself Tends To Come Second To The Giant Announcements In Hall H And The Movies And The Tv. So I Think It's Always Good To Remind People That There Is A Wonderful Comic Convention Going On.

In Hollywood, Lying Is Something That People Do Like Breathing.

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.

What's It Like Then?" Asked Old Bailey. "being Dead?" The Marquis Sighed. And Then He Twisted His Lips Up Into A Smile, And With A Glitter Of His Old Self, He Replied, "live Long Enough, Old Bailey, And You Can Find Out For Yourself.

When Angels Go Bad They Are Worse Than Anyone Else. Remember Lucifer Used To Be An Angel.

You Know, I'm Normally So Sanguine. But... Being Accused Of Rushing These Two Books Out To Cash In On The Newbery Medal, Without Access To Time Travel Equipment Or Anything, Just Makes Me Want To Bang My Forehead Gently Against A Tree For Half An Hour. Is It Too Much To Ask People To Think?

It Is Good For Children To Find Themselves Facing The Elements Of A Fairy Tale - They Are Well-equipped To Deal With These

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.

I Couldn't Get You To The Ocean, But There Was Nothing Stopping Me Bringing The Ocean To You.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

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

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.

I Was The Kind Of Person Who Knew What He Wanted To Do; I Wanted To Write, I Wanted Not To Be In School, And I Felt That University Would Just Be Spending Another Four Years Of My Life Before I Could Write.

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

There Are Some As Are What They Are. And There Are Some As Aren't What They Seem To Be. And There Are Some As Only Seem To Be What They Seem To Be.

The Best Thing About Doing A Signing Tour Is That Numbers Become Faces. I Got To Sign Books For Six Or Seven Thousand People, All Of Whom Were Dreadfully Nice. Everything Else, The Interviews, The Hotels, The Plane Travel, The Best-seller Lists, Even The Sushi, Gets Old Awfully Fast. Well, Maybe Not The Sushi.

Bod Said, 'i Want To See Life. I Want To Hold It In My Hands. I Want To Leave A Footprint On The Sand Of A Desert Island. I Want To Play Football With People. I Want,' He Said, And Then He Paused And He Thought. 'i Want Everything.

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?

The Best Advice I Can Give On This Is, Once It's Done, To Put It Away Until You Can Read It With New Eyes. Finish The Short Story, Print It Out, Then Put It In A Drawer And Write Other Things. When You're Ready, Pick It Up And Read It, As If You've Never Read It Before. If There Are Things You Aren't Satisfied With As A Reader, Go In And Fix Them As A Writer: That's Revision.

[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.

She Sat Down On One Of Her Grandmother's Uncomfortable Armchairs, And The Cat Sprang Up Into Her Lap And Made Itself Comfortable. The Light That Came Through The Picture Window Was Daylight, Real Golden Late-afternoon Daylight, Not A White Mist Light. The Sky Was A Robin's-egg Blue, And Coraline Could See Trees And, Beyond The Trees, Green Hills, Which Faded On The Horizon Into Purples And Grays. The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky, The World Had Never Seemed So World ... Nothing, She Thought, Had Ever Been So Interesting.

Empathy Is A Tool For Building People Into Groups, For Allowing Us To Function As More Than Self-obsessed Individuals.

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.

Here You Go, She Said. I Don't Need It Anymore. I'm Very Grateful. I Think It May Have Saved My Life, Saved Some Other People's Death.

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

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

A World In Which There Are Monsters, And Ghosts, And Things That Want To Steal Your Heart Is A World In Which There Are Angels, And Dreams And A World In Which There Is Hope.

I Was A Stranger And You Took Me In. -joji G. Shoji, D. 1921

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I Suspect That We Build Our Traps Ourselves, Then We Back Into Them, Pretending Amazement The While.

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

A Short Story Is The Ultimate Close-up Magic Trick -- A Couple Of Thousand Words To Take You Around The Universe Or Break Your Heart.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

Jesus. Low-key Lyesmith," Said Shadow. And Then He Heard What He Was Saying And He Understood. "loki," He Said. "loki Lie-smith." "you're Slow," Said Loki, "but You Get There In The End." And His Lips Twisted Into A Scarred Smile And The Embers Danced In The Shadows Of His Eyes.

You Shone Like A Star. The Funniest, Wisest Writer & The Finest Friend

If The Same Object From Two Different Times Touches Itself, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either The Universe Will Cease To Exist. Or Three Remarkable Dwarfs Will Dance Through The Streets With Flowerpots On Their Heads.

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.

Picking One Of Your Favorite Creation Or Character Is Like Picking The Best One Of Your Children! I'm Not Sure It Really Works. My Very Favorite Characters Tend To Be Ones I Can Go Back To And Look At, And Have No Idea How They Popped Out Of My Head.

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

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.

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

We Were Never Lovers, And We Never Will Be, Now. I Do Not Regret That, However. I Regret The Conversations We Never Had, The Time We Did Not Spend Together. I Regret That I Never Told Him That He Made Me Happy, When I Was In His Company. The World Was The Better For His Being In It. These Things Alone Do I Now Regret: Things Left Unsaid. And He Is Gone, And I Am Old.

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.

While Clothes Do Not, As The Saying Would Sometimes Have It, Make The Man, And Fine Feathers Do Not Make Fine Birds, Sometimes They Can Add A Certain Spice To A Recipe.

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.

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.

The Real World Has No Obligation To Be Convincing, So It Throws Up Some Very Weird Moments Sometimes.

In A Novel, You Can Always Go Back And Make It Look Like You Knew What You Were Doing All Along Before The Thing Goes Out And Gets Published.

Be Boring, Knowing Everything. You Have To Give All That Stuff Up If You're Going To Muck About Here.

Knowing Everything

I Would Feel Infinitely More Comfortable In Your Presence If You Would Agree To Treat Gravity As A Law, Rather Than One Of A Number Of Suggested Options.

I Had Started To Feel That Somewhere In The Second Half Of The 20th Century, The Idea Of Page-turning As A Good Thing Had Been Lost. You Were Getting Books That Were The Equivalent Of Absolutely Beautifully Prepared Dishes Of Food That Didn't Taste Like Anything Much.

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.

Some People Have Great Ideas Maybe Once Or Twice In Their Life, And Then They Discover Electricity Or Fire Or Outer Space Or Something. I Mean, The Kind Of Brilliant Ideas That Change The Whole World. Some People Never Have Them At All... I Get Them Two Or Three Times A Week.

You Can Tell The Date Of An Old Science Fiction Novel By Every Word On The Page. Nothing Dates Harder And Faster And More Strangely Than The Future.

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

The Main Rule Of Writing Is That If You Do It With Enough Assurance And Confidence, You’re Allowed To Do Whatever You Like. (that May Be A Rule For Life As Well As For Writing. But It’s Definitely True For Writing.) So 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.

There Was A Hand In The Darkness, And It Held A Knife.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

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.

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

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.

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

So That's My Wish For You, And All Of Us, And My Wish For Myself. Make New Mistakes. Make Glorious, Amazing Mistakes. Make Mistakes Nobody's Ever Made Before. Don't Freeze, Don't Stop, Don't Worry That It Isn't Good Enough, Or It Isn't Perfect, Whatever It Is: Art, Or Love, Or Work Or Family Or Life.

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.

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

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

Carbon Footprint

I've Learned Over The Years That Everything Is More Or Less The Same Amount Of Work, So You May As Well Set Your Sights High And Try And Do Something Really Cool.

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.

You Wouldn't Die In Here, Nothing Ever Dies In Here, But If You Stayed Here For Too Long, After A While Just A Little Of You Would Exist Everywhere, All Spread Out. And That's Not A Good Thing. Never Enough Of You All Together In One Place, So T Here Wouldn't Be Anything Left That Would Think Of Itself As An 'i.' No Point Of View Any Longer, Because You'd Be An Infinite Sequence Of Views And Of Points.

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

If You Cared Enough About Your Characters, What Happened To Them Was Interesting... It's Important To Care About Them, About Who They Are And What They Do...i Don't Really Care Whose Side They Are On, And They Can Be Monstrous On The Outside Or, Worse, On The Inside, But You Still Have To Want To Spend Time With Them.

"some Things May Change," Said Wednesday, Abruptly. "people, However... People Stay The Same."

Writing's A Lot Like Cooking. Sometimes The Cake Won't Rise, No Matter What You Do, And Every Now And Again The Cake Tastes Better Than You Ever Could Have Dreamed It Would.

A Book Is A Dream That You Hold In Your Hands.

It's Easy, There's A Trick To It, You Do It Or You Die.

Talk Is Free But The Wise Man Chooses When To Spend His Words.

Coraline Opened The Box Of Chocolates. The Dog Looked At Them Longingly. "would You Like One?" She Asked The Little Dog. "yes, Please," Whispered The Dog. "only Not Toffee Ones. They Make Me Drool." "i Thought Chocolates Weren't Very Good For Dogs," She Said, Remembering Something Miss Forcible Had Once Told Her. "maybe Where You Come From," Whispered The Little Dog. "here, It's All We Eat.

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.

People Populate The Darkness; With Ghosts, With Gods, With Electrons, With Tales.

I Do Not Threaten, I Merely Advise Caution.

As Sure As Water's Wet And Days Are Long And A Friend Will Always Disappoint You In The End.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

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

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

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.

For Me, The Glory Of My First 25 Years As A Writer Was I Could Put Things Off As Long As I Wanted.

I Told You I Would Tell You My Names. This Is What They Call Me. I'm Called Glad-of-war, Grim, Raider, And Third. I Am One-eyed. I Am Called Highest, And True-guesser. I Am Grimnir, And I Am The Hooded One. I Am All-father, And I Am Gondlir Wand-bearer. I Have As Many Names As There Are Winds, As Many Titles As There Are Ways To Die. My Ravens Are Huginn And Muninn, Thought And Memory; My Wolves Are Freki And Geri; My Horse Is The Gallows.

Have You Thought About What It Means To Be A God?" Asked The Man. He Had A Beard And A Baseball Cap. "it Means You Give Up Your Mortal Existence To Become A Meme: Something That Lives Forever In People's Minds, Like The Tune Of A Nursery Rhyme. It Means That Everyone Gets To Re-create You In Their Own Minds. You Barely Have Your Own Identity Any More. Instead, You're A Thousand Aspects Of What People Need You To Be. And Everyone Wants Something Different From You. Nothing Is Fixed, Nothing Is Stable.

Look. I Brought You Here To Give You A Choice-" "you Didn't Bring Us Here," Said Nick. "you're Here," Said Bod. "i Wanted You Here. I Came Here. You Followed Me. Same Thing.

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.

His Name Is Marcus: He Is Four And A Half And Possesses That Deep Gravity And Seriousness That Only Small Children And Mountain Gorillas Have Ever Been Able To Master.

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

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.

The House Smelled Musty And Damp, And A Little Sweet, As If It Were Haunted By The Ghosts Of Long-dead Cookies.

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

Growing Up, I Took So Many Cues From Books. They Taught Me Most Of What I Knew About What People Did, About How To Behave. They Were My Teachers And My Advisers.

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.

People Seem To Think That They Can't Come Up With Ideas, And They're Wrong. They Can And They Do, But They Just Think Of It As Daydreaming, Or Wasting Time. Kids Get Told Not To Make Things Up, And In My Case, Nobody Told Me Long Enough, Or It Just Didn't Stick.

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

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.

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

And I Would Try And Walk Far Enough Away That People Would Not Assume I Was With Him.

Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

The Biggest Difference Between England And America Is That England Has History, While America Has Geography.

England And America

It Is Astonishing Just How Much Of What We Are Can Be Tied To The Beds We Wake Up In In The Morning, And It Is Astonishing How Fragile That Can Be.

You Can't Just Boss Bacteria Around Like That," Said The Younger Mrs. Hempstock. "they Don't Like It." "stuff And Silliness," Said The Old Lady. "you Leave Wigglers Alone And They'll Be Carrying On Like Anything. Show Them Who's Boss And They Can't Do Enough For You. You've Tasted My Cheese.

You Were Her Way Here, And It's A Dangerous Thing To Be A Door.

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.

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.

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

When Things Get Tough

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

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

I Love Cgi If It's Invisible. I Don't Like It When It's There And Obvious.

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?

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.

It Stared At Them, And It Paused For A Hundred Years, Which Transpired In A Dozen Heart Beats.

All Your Questions Can Be Answered, If That Is What You Want. But Once You Learn Your Answers, You Can Never Unlearn Them.

Unanswered Questions

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

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

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