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The Cat Dropped The Rat Between Its Two Front Paws. "there Are Those," It Said With A Sigh, In Tones As Smooth As Oiled Silk, "who Have Suggested That The Tendency Of A Cat To Play With Its Prey Is A Merciful One - After All, It Permits The Occasional Funny Little Running Snack To Escape, From Time To Time. How Often Does Your Dinner Get To Escape?

-Neil Gaiman

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The Cat Dropped The

Neil Gaiman

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The Cat Dropped The Rat Between Its Two Front Paws. "there Are Those," It Said With A Sigh, In Tones As Smooth As Oiled Silk, "who Have Suggested That The Tendency Of A Cat To Play With Its Prey Is A Merciful One - After All, It Permits The Occasional Funny Little Running Snack To Escape, From Time To Time. How Often Does Your Dinner Get To Escape?

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My Theory On Genre Is That While There Are People Out There Who Believe That Genre Tells People What To Read, Actually I Believe That Genre Exists As A Marketing Tool To Tell You What To Avoid.

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Then One Stupid Person, No Different From Any Other Stupid Person, Wanders Into Your Stupid Life... You Give Them A Piece Of You. They Don't Ask For It. They Do Something Dumb One Day, Like Kiss You Or Smile At You, And Then Your Life Isn't Your Own Anymore.

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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.

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Encyclopedia Britannica

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I'm Never, I Hope, Stupid Enough To Believe That Twitter Or Blogging Or Any Of This Stuff Is A Substitute For Actually Doing The Work Or Writing A Book.

We Owe It To Each Other To Tell Stories.

We Have An Obligation To Read Aloud To Our Children. To Read Them Things They Enjoy. To Read To Them Stories We Are Already Tired Of. To Do The Voices, To Make It Interesting, And Not To Stop Reading To Them Just Because They Learn To Read To Themselves. Use Reading-aloud Time As Bonding Time, As Time When No Phones Are Being Checked, When The Distractions Of The World Are Put Aside.

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

You Don't Have To Test Everything To Destruction Just To See If You Made It Right.

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

First Rule Of Magic: Don't Let Anyone Know Your Real Name. Names Have Power.

In Order For Stories To Work - For Kids And For Adults - They Should Scare. And You Should Triumph. There's No Point In Triumphing Over Evil If The Evil Isn't Scary.

You Play Your Cards So Close To Your Chest," Said Shadow, "that I'm Not Even Sure They're Really Cards At All.

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.

It Is Sometimes A Mistake To Climb; It Is Always A Mistake Never Even To Make The Attempt.

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

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

Whereas There Are Lots Of Good Novels Out There; There Are A Few Good Movies Out There. People Have Been Writing Great Poems For Years, But There Aren't A Lot Of Good Comics. I Like Trying To Write Them.

I'm Sure There's An Alternate Universe Where I Got To Become A Pulpy Science Fiction Writer.

Science Fiction

Fiction Writers

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

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

Joy And Sorrow Are Like Milk And Cookies. That's How Well They Go Together.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Writers May Be Solitary But They Also Tend To Flock Together: They Like Being Solitary Together.

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

Death Is The Second Oldest Of The Endless. It's Hard Not To Love Her. She Loves You, After All.

All Writers Have This Vague Hope That The Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish Any Stories.

I'm Probably Slightly More Famous Than I've Been Comfortable With. Famous Enough To Have My Phone Calls Returned Is About As Famous As I Want To Be.

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

Sometimes You Wake Up. Sometimes The Fall Kills You. And Sometimes, When You Fall, You Fly.

They Were Having An Argument As Old And Comfortable As An Armchair, The Kind Of Argument That No One Ever Really Wins Or Loses But Which Can Go On Forever, If Both Parties Are Willing.

If I Come Back, It Will Be A Place, But It Won't Be A Home Any Longer.

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Johann Georg Hamann

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