Background Image

...

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.

-Neil Gaiman

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

So That's My Wish

Neil Gaiman

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Neil Gaiman

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.

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

I Think . . . I Said Things To Silas. He'll Be Angry.' 'if He Didn't Care About You, You Couldn't Upset Him,' Was All She Said.

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

I Finally Made Friends With My Father When I Entered My Twenties. We Had So Little In Common When I Was A Boy, And I Am Certain I Had Been A Disappointment To Him. He Did Not Ask For A Child With A Book, Off In Its Own World. He Wanted A Son Who Did What He Had Done; Swam And Boxed And Played Rugby, And Drove Cars At Speed With Abandon And Joy, But That Was Not What He Wound Up With.

I Love Doing The Readings. The Readings Are The Fun Bits... The Readings Are Probably The Things That Actually Keep Me Going On These. If I Couldn't Do The Readings, I Wouldn't Do The [signing] Tours. I Get To Stand Up There And Read To A Bunch Of Adults Who In Many Cases Nobody's Read To In Years, Since They Were About Five. They Just Squat On The Floor. That's Enormously Enjoyable.

I Think I’ll Dismember The World And Then I’ll Dance In The Wreckage.

She's Not Dead. You Didn't Kill Her, Nor Did The Hunger Birds, Although They Did Their Best To Get To You Through Her. She's Been Given Her Ocean. One Day, In Its Own Time, The Ocean Will Give Her Back.i Thought Of Corpses And Of Skeletons With Pearls For Eyes. I Thought Of Mermaids With Tails That Flicked When They Moved, Like My Goldfishes' Tails Had Flicked Before My Goldfish Had Stopped Moving, To Lie, Belly Up, Like Lettie, On The Top Of The Water. I Said, 'will She Be The Same?

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

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

I Know Not Whether You Came To Me Or I To You. Not Whether It Was A Dream, Asleep Or Awake. I Am Lost In The Darkness Of A Downcast Heart. Dream Or Reality. Let It Be Decided Tonight.

I Always Say That If You're A Novelist, The Challenge Is Not Writing What You Think Ought To Happen, But Trying In Some Way To Write What Did Happen In A World That Doesn't Necessarily Exist.

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

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.

There's This Thing, They Have In French: L'espirit D'escalier. The Spirit Of The Stairway. I Don't Think We Have A Word For It In English. It Means, Well, The Clever Things To Say That You Only Think To Yourself When You're On The Way Out.

Words Can Be Worrisome, Poeple Complex, Motives And Manners Unclear, Grant Her The Wisdom To Choose Her Path Right, Free From Unkindness And Fear.

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

I Was A Voracious Reader And I Could Never Understand Why Comics Were Of Any Less Merit Or Importance Than Any Other Way Of Writing. I Think The Thing That Keeps Me With Comics Is There's Still So Much To Be Done. There's Still This Huge Unplowed Field, This Huge Unexplored Wilderness, And As Long As I Can Keep Doing New Things And Coming Up With New Things, I Will.

And If There's A Moral There, I Don't Know What It Is, Save Maybe That We Should Take Our Goodbyes Whenever We Can.

I Don't Know Why People Would Want To Have Lunch With Writers. I've Eaten With Writers. We Have Appalling Table Manners, And Rarely Say Anything Other Than 'pass The Salt' Or 'if You're Not Going To Eat That, Can I Have It?'

Take One, And You Cannot Take The Other. But Neither Path Is Safe. Which Way Would You Walk — The Way Of Hard Truths Or The Way Of Fine Lies?

Read The Books You Love, Tell People About Authors You Like, And Don’t Worry About It.

Life Is Always Going To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Because Fiction Has To Be Convincing, And Life Doesn't.

With American Gods I Was Trying Very, Very Consciously - There Was A Level At Which It Was A Little Like Trying To Write A Novel In French - You Know, "this Novel Is To Be Written In American."

I Think Radio Plays Are My Favourite Medium, As They Make The Listener Work And Create And Contribute In A Way That Tv And Film Can Never Do, And They Have An Immediacy That Written Prose Often Lacks.

Oh- My Twitchy Witchy Girl I Think You Are So Nice, I Give You Bowls Of Porridge And I Give You Bowls Of Ice Cream. I Give You Lots Of Kisses, And I Give Lots Of Hugs, But I Never Give You Sandwiches With Bugs In.

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

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

I Took Delight In Hurling Books Across The Room If I Knew I Would Not Be Reading The Second Chapter. Then I’d Go And Pick Them Up Again, Because They Are Books, After All, And We Are Not Savages.

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

I Like Horror, But I Tend To Like It As Seasoning. I'd Get Very Bored If I Was Told I Had To Write A Horror Novel. I'd Love To Write A Novel With Horror Elements, But Too Much, And It Doesn't Taste Of Anything Else.

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

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

But Standing In That Hallway, It Was All Coming Back To Me. Memories Were Waiting At The Edges Of Things, Beckoning To Me.

Kim Newman's Anno Dracula Is Back In Print, And We Must Celebrate. It Was The First Mash-up Of Literature, History And Vampires, And Now, In A World In Which Vampires Are Everywhere, It's Still The Best, And Its Bite Is Just As Sharp. Compulsory Reading, Commentary, And Mindgame: Glorious.

Literature History

On The First Day Coraline's Family Moved In, Miss Spink And Miss Forcible Made A Point Of Telling Coraline How Dangerous The Well Was, And They Warned Her To Be Sure She Kept Away From It. So Coraline Set Off To Explore For It, So That She Knew Where It Was, To Keep Away From It Properly.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

The Best Thing—in Shadow's Opinion, Perhaps The Only Good Thing—about Being In Prison Was A Feeling Of Relief. The Feeling That He'd Plunged As Low As He Could Plunge And He'd Hit Bottom. He Didn't Worry That The Man Was Going To Get Him, Because The Man Had Got Him. He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring, Because Yesterday Had Brought 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.

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

And Did I Pass?" The Face Of The Old Woman On My Right Was Unreadable In The Gathering Dusk. On My Left The Younger Woman Said, "you Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

Of Course, Everyone's Parents Are Embarrassing. It Goes With The Territory. The Nature Of Parents Is To Embarrass Merely By Existing, Just As It Is The Nature Of Children Of A Certain Age To Cringe With Embarrassment, Shame, And Mortification Should Their Parents So Much As Speak To Them On The Street.

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

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.

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

If Not For Death, They’d Be Content To Simply Exist, But With Death, Well, Their Lives Will Have Meaning — A Boundary Beyond Which The Living Cannot Cross.

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

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

Some Hats Can Only Be Worn If You're Willing To Be Jaunty, To Set Them At An Angle And To Walk Beneath Them With A Spring In Your Stride As If You're Only A Step Away From Dancing. They Demand A Lot Of You.

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.

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.

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

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

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

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

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

I Must Confess, I Have Always Wondered What Lay Beyond Life, My Dear. Yeah, Everybody Wonders. And Sooner Or Later Everybody Gets To Find Out.

There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

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

Most Books On Witchcraft Will Tell You That Witches Work Naked. This Is Because Most Books On Witchcraft Were Written By Men.

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.

So I Went Out And Bought Myself A Copy Of The Writer And Artist Yearbook, Bought Lots Of Magazines And Got On The Phone And Talked To Editors About Ideas For Stories. Pretty Soon I Found Myself Hired To Do Interviews And Articles And Went Off And Did Them.

You Must Have A Bladder Like Lake Erie. I Think Empires Rose And Fell In The Time It Took You To Pee. I Could Hear It The Whole Time." Thank You. Do You Want Something?

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.

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.

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.

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

Once, I Was A Poet, And, Like All Poets, I Spent Too Long In The Kingdom Of Dreams.

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

I Wanted To Write Something That Would Be A Comedy In The Sense Of Making People Feel Happier When They Finish It Than They Did When Began It.

I Could Be Blindfolded And Dropped Into The Deepest Ocean And I Would Know Where To Find You. I Could Be Buried A Hundred Miles Underground And I Would Know Where You Are.

He Wondered How It Could Have Taken Him So Long To Realize He Cared For Her, And He Told Her So, And She Called Him An Idiot, And He Declared That It Was The Finest Thing That Ever A Man Had Been Called.

There's Nothing For Getting You Good Fast Like Having To Be Good Fast, If That Makes Any Sense.

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

When Things Get Tough

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

It’s Easier To Kill People, When You’re Dead Yourself. I Mean, It’s Not Such A Big Deal. You’re Not So Prejudiced Any More.

There Was Only One Guy In The Whole Bible Jesus Ever Personally Promised A Place With Him In Paradise. Not Peter, Not Paul, Not Any Of Those Guys. He Was A Convicted Thief, Being Executed. So Don't Knock The Guys On Death Row. Maybe They Know Something You Don't.

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

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.

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.

The Ties Of Blood," Said Spider, "are Stronger Than Water." Water's Not Strong," Objected Fat Charlie.

It's Quiet. No Cars. No Birds. Nothing.' 'no Radio Waves,' Said The Doctor. 'not Even Radio Four.' 'you Can Hear Radio Waves?' 'of Course Not. Nobody Can Hear Radio Waves,' He Said Unconvincingly.

When I Was Young, You Know, The First Foreign Editions That Would Come In Of Anything Of Mine, I'd Sit There And Look At Them As These Strange And Wonderful Artifacts.

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

The Future Came And Went In The Mildly Discouraging Way That Futures Do.

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

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.

Sometimes We Can Choose The Paths We Follow. Sometimes Our Choices Are Made For Us. And Sometimes We Have No Choice At All.

Great, Big, Serious Novels Always Get Awards. If It's A Battle Between A Great, Big, Serious Novel And A Funny Novel, The Funny Novel Is Doomed.

Gods, Religions And National Boundaries Are Absolutely Imaginary. They Don't Tend To Exist. As Soon As You Pull Back Half A Mile And Look Down At The Earth There Are No National Boundaries. There Aren't Even National Boundaries When You Get Down And Walk Around. They're Just Imaginary Lines We Draw On Maps. I Just Get Fascinated By People Who Assume That Things That Are Imaginary Have No Relevance To Their Lives.

The Cat Looked As If It Were About To Say Something Sarcastic. Then It Flicked Its Whiskers And Said, "challenge Her. There's No Guarantee She'll Play Fair, But Her Kind Of Thing Loves Games And Challenges.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Don't Just Randomly Kill People... I Kill People When It's Funny.

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

What I Say Is, A Town Isn't A Town Without A Bookstore. It May Call Itself A Town, But Unless It's Got A Bookstore It Knows It's Not Fooling A Soul.

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

Everybody Who Has Ever Read Sandman Knows Exactly What The Sandman Looks Like, Which Is More Than Anybody Who Has Ever Read The Catcher In The Rye Can Say About Holden Caufield.

Take What You Have Learned, And Move On.

Genre Fiction, As Terry Pratchett Has Pointed Out, Is A Stew. You Take Stuff Out Of The Pot, You Put Stuff Back. The Stew Bubbles On.

She Took My Hands In Her, Then, And Squeezed Them. 'but You Stayed Where You Were Meant To Be, And You Didn't Listen To Them. Well Done. That's Quality, That Is,' And She Sounded Proud. In That Moment I Forgot My Hunger And I Forgot My Fear.

"death's A Capricious Thing, Innit?" "yes. Yes, She Is."

He Had Gone Beyond The World Of Metaphor And Simile Into The Place Of Things That Are, And It Was Changing Him.

Give Me Boredom. At Least I Know Where I'm Going To Eat And Sleep Tonight.

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

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

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

Doing Fine, Thank You, I Would Say, Never Knowing How To Talk About What I Do. If I Could Talk About It, I Would Not Have To Do It. I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Heart. Some Of Them. Not All.

I Asked Him If It Were A Mirage, And He Said Yes. I Said It Was A Dream, And He Agreed, But Said It Was The Desert's Dream Not His. And He Told Me That In A Year Or So, When He Had Aged Enough For Any Man, Then He Would Walk Into The Wind, Until He Saw The Tents. This Time, He Said, He Would Go On With Them.

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

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

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

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.

Leave No Path Untaken.

Young Man," He Said, "understand This: There Are Two Londons. There's London Above―that's Where You Lived―and Then There's London Below―the Underside―inhabited By The People Who Fell Through The Cracks In The World. Now You're One Of Them. Good Night.

It Doesn't Matter That I Can't Remember The Details Any Longer: Death Happened To Her. Death Happens To All Of Us.

I Decided That I Would Do My Best In The Future Not To Write Books Just For Money. If You Didn't Get The Money Then You Didn't Have Anything. If I Did The Work I Was Proud Of And I Didn't Get The Money, At Least I'd Have The Work.

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.

Why Do I Have This Imagination? It's The Only One I've Got!

Walk Any Path In Destiny's Garden, And You Will Be Forced To Choose, Not Once But Many Times.

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

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

I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Life. Some Of Them. Not All.

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

Carbon Footprint

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Man-made Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf. These Dogs Advance Deliberately, Purposefully, The Wilderness Made Flesh, Their Teeth Yellow, Their Breath A-stink, While In The Distance Their Owners Witter, "he's An Old Soppy Really, Just Poke Him If He's A Nuisance," And In The Green Of Their Eyes The Red Campfires Of The Pleistocene Gleam And Flicker.

Hasn't There Always Been A Moon?" "bless You. Not In The Slightest. I Remember The Day The Moon Came. We Looked Up In The Sky - It Was All Dirty Brown And Sooty Gray Here Then, Not Green And Blue.

I Learned To Write By Writing.

A Library Is A Place That Is A Repository Of Information And Gives Every Citizen Equal Access To It. That Includes Health Information. And Mental Health Information. It's A Community Space. It's A Place Of Safety, A Haven From The World.

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

There Are A Lot Of Artists Who've Said They'd Like To Work With Me. To Be Honest, I'm Not Sure There Is Such A Thing As An Inappropriate Artist. The Trick Is Matching The Artist With A Story.

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.

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.

A Life That Is, Like Any Other, Unlike Any Other.

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.

Las Vegas Has Become A Child's Picture-book Dream Of A City -- Here A Storybook Castle, There A Sphinx-flanked Black Pyramid Beaming White Light Into The Darkness As A Landing Beam For Ufos, And Everywhere Neon Oracles And Twisting Screens Predict Happiness And Good Fortune, Announce Singers And Comedians And Magicians In Residence Or On Their Way, And The Lights Always Flash And Beckon And Call.

When You Say Words A Lot They Don't Mean Anything. Or Maybe They Don't Mean Anything Anyway, And We Just Think They Do.

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

The End Of The Story Of Batman Is He's Dead. Because, In The End, The Batman Dies. What Else Am I Going To Do? Retire And Play Golf? It Doesn't Work That Way. It Can't. I Fight Until I Drop. And One Day, I Will Drop.

I Feel Like I Am Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell Me The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

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.

That's The Trouble With You Young People. You Think Because You Ain't Been Here Long, You Know Everything. In My Life I Already Forgot More Than You Ever Know.

The Ideas Aren't That Important. Really They Aren't. Everyone's Got An Idea For A Book, A Movie, A Story, A Tv Series.

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

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

Writing Is Flying In Dreams. When You Remember. When You Can. When It Works. It's That Easy.

I'm Willing To Make A Fool Out Of Myself In Public. I'm Also Willing To Make Those Mistakes That You're Going To Make The First Time You Go Out, So Hopefully The Next Time It Will Be Better.

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.

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.

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

When You're Starting Off As A Young Writer, You Look At All The Stuff That's Gone Before And The Stuff That's Influenced You, And You Reach The Ladle Of Your Imagination Into This Bubbling Stew Pot Of All Of This Stuff, And You Pour It Out. And That's Where You Start From.

I Love Mythic Stuff. I Love Playing With Gods, I Love Playing With Myths. A Lot Of It Has To Do With That They're The Basic Places Stories Come From. They're The Clay That You Make The Bricks Out Of.

Crowley Had Been Extremely Impressed With The Warranties Offered By The Computer Industry, And Had In Fact Sent A Bundle Below To The Department That Drew Up The Immortal Soul Agreements, With A Yellow Memo Form Attached Just Saying: "learn, Guys..."

I Think I Fell In Love With Her, A Little Bit. Isn't That Dumb? But It Was Like I Knew Her. Like She Was My Oldest, Dearest Friend. The Kind Of Person You Can Tell Anything To, No Matter How Bad, And They'll Still Love You, Because They Know You. I Wanted To Go With Her. I Wanted Her To Notice Me. And Then She Stopped Walking. Under The Moon, She Stopped. And Looked At Us. She Looked At Me. Maybe She Was Trying To Tell Me Something; I Don't Know. She Probably Didn't Even Know I Was There. But I'll Always Love Her. All My Life.

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.

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.

Where Magic Is Concerned, There Is Always An Initial Decision, An Initial Willingness To Let It Enter Your Life. If That Is Not There Neither Is Magic.

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 You Can't Eat It, Drink It, Smoke It, Or Snort It... Then F*ck It!

Normally, In Anything I Do, I'm Fairly Miserable. I Do It, And I Get Grumpy Because There Is A Huge, Vast Gulf, This Aching Disparity, Between The Platonic Ideal Of The Project That Was Living In My Head, And The Small, Sad, Wizened, Shaking, Squeaking Thing That I Actually Produce.

Mr. Vandemar Showed Them His Teeth, Demonstrating His Sunny And Delightful Disposition. It Was Unquestionably The Most Horrible Thing Richard Had Ever Seen.

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.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

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.

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

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

I'll Find You. Don't Worry. Just Be On Your Own And I'll Find You.

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.

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

This Is A Book For Every Fiddler Who Has Realized Halfway Through Playing An Ancient Scottish Air That The Ramones "i Wanna Be Sedated" Is What Folk Music Is Really All About, And Gone Straight Into It.

I Have Always Felt That Violence Was The Last Refuge Of The Incompetent, And Empty Threats The Last Sanctuary Of The Terminally Inept.

Peas Baffled Me. I Could Not Understand Why Grown-ups Would Take Things That Tasted So Good Raw, And Then Put Them In Tins, And Make Them Revolting.

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.

This Is How You Do It: You Sit Down At The Keyboard And You Put One Word After Another Until Its Done. It's That Easy, And That Hard.

Really, He Thought, If You Couldn't Trust A Poet To Offer Sensible Advice, Who Could You Trust?

Nobody's Seen Jesus In Years.

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.

He Was Alone In The Darkness Once More, But The Darkness Became Brighter And Brighter Until It Was Burning Like The Sun.

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

The Tongue Is The Most Remarkable. For We Use It Both To Taste Out Sweet Wine And Bitter Poison, Thus Also Do We Utter Words Both Sweet And Sout With The Same Tongue.

All We Have To Believe With Is Our Senses, The Tools We Use To Perceive The World: Our Sight, Our Touch, Our Memory. If They Lie To Us, Then Nothing Can Be Trusted. And Even If We Do Not Believe, Then Still We Cannot Travel In Any Other Way Than The Road Our Senses Show Us; And We Must Walk That Road To The End.

I Think...that I Would Rather Recollect A Life Mis-spent On Fragile Things Than Spent Avoiding Moral Debt.

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

It's A Given That We Exist In A World Where We Have To Live In Continuity Every Day; No One Is Immune To That, In Life Or Romance Novels. By The Same Token, It's Not Something I Find Terribly Important.

I Wondered, As I Wondered So Often When I Was That Age, Who I Was, And What Exactly Was Looking At The Face In The Mirror. If The Face I Was Looking At Wasn't Me, And I Knew It Wasn't, Because I Would Still Be Me Whatever Happened To My Face, Then What Was Me? And What Was Watching?

There Is A Madness, Yes, This Is True. Few Mortals Possess It, The Willingness To Step Away From The Protection Of Sanity. To Walk Into The Wild Wood Of Madness...

Goodbyes Are Overrated.

There Are Lots Of Artists In The World. But There's Only One You. And The Only Person Who Has Your Point Of View Is You. If You Decide Not To Make Things, All You've Done Is Deprive The World Of All The Stuff That Only You Could Have Brought To It.

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.

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

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

I Already Killed You Once Today, What Does It Take To Teach Some People?

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.

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Phillip E. Johnson

Category