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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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Shadow Had Heard Too

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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Things Bloosom In Their Time. They Bud And Bloom, Blossom And Fade. Everything In Its Time.

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

Note For Americans And Other Aliens: Milton Keynes Is A New City Approximately Halfway Between London And Birmingham. It Was Built To Be Modern, Efficient, Healthy, And, All In All, A Pleasant Place To Live. Many Britons Find This Amusing.

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.

All That I Did," She Said, "everything I Tried To Do. All For Nothing." Nothing Is Done Entirely For Nothing, Said The Fox Of Dreams. Nothing Is Wasted. You Are Older, And You Have Made Decisions, And You Are Not The Fox You Were Yesterday. Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

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

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.

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

I'm Bored," She Said. "learn How To Tap-dance," He Suggested, Without Turning Around.

Words Save Our Lives, Sometimes.

You See With Your Eyes. This Means You Can Be Misled By Charm, By Outward Appearance. By Webs Of Glamour, By Surface Pretences. I Do Not See With My Eyes. I See Good And I See Evil. Nothing Else.

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

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

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.

Discontent Is A Good Thing: Discontented People Can Modify And Improve Their Worlds, Leave Them Better, Leave Them Different.

A Typical National World Weekly Would Tell The World How Jesus' Face Was Seen On A Big Mac Bun Bought By Someone From Des Moines, With An Artist's Impression Of The Bun; How Elvis Presley Was Recently Sighted Working In A Burger Lord In Des Moines; How Listening To Elvis Records Cured A Des Moines Housewife's Cancer; How The Spate Of Werewolves Infesting The Midwest Are The Offspring Of Noble Pioneer Women Raped By Bigfoot; And That Elvis Was Taken By Space Aliens In 1976 Because He Was Too Good For This World. Remarkably, One Of These Stories Is Indeed True.

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.

You Get On With Your Own Life. Lettie Gave It To You. You Just Have To Grow Up And Try And Be Worth It.

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

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

Knowing Everything

Human Beings Do Not Like Being Pushed About By Gods. They May Seem To, On The Surface, But Somewhere On The Inside, Underneath It All, They Sense It, And They Resent It.

Nothin’ Wrong With Witchfinding. I’d Like To Be A Witchfinder. It’s Just, Well, You’ve Got To Take It In Turns. Today We’ll Go Out Witchfinding, An’ Tomorrow We Could Hide, An’ It’d Be The Witches’ Turn To Find Us.

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.

It Seemed To Coraline That It Was Crouching, And Staring Down At Her, As If It Were Not Really A House But Only The Idea Of A House—and The Person Who Had Had The Idea, She Was Certain, Was Not A Good Person.

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.

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

Never Use Five Words If You Can Get Away With One, Eh? I've Known Dead Men Talk More Than You Do.

I Don't Think About Age Groups When I Write, Although I Think If I Know I'm Writing For Children I'll Be A Bit More Ambitious, And Think More About Every Word, Because I Know That They Pay Closer Attention When They Read Than Adults Do.

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

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.

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

This Is A Roadside Attraction,' Said Wednesday. 'one Of The Finest. Which Means It Is A Place Of Power.

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Days When Something Just Seems To Be Trying To Tell You Somebody?

One Of Those Days

To Journalists My Move From Comics To Films To Best-selling Novels Was Resembling Those Little Evolutionary Maps Too Much, Where You See The Fish, And Then It Can Walk, And Then It's An Ape And Then It Gets Up On Its Hind Legs And Finally It Is A Man. I Didn't Like That. I Didn't Like The Fact That There Was Something Rather Amphibious About Me - At Least In Their Heads - Back When I Was Writing Comics. So I Like Continuing To Write Comics, If Only Because It Points Out That I Haven't Just Started To Walk Upright Or Left The Water.

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.

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.)

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.

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