Background Image

...

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.

-Neil Gaiman

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Secret To Writing

Neil Gaiman

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Neil Gaiman

And Then He'd Tried To Become An Official Atheist And Hadn't Got The Rock-hard Self-satisfied Strength Of Belief Even For That.

You See, The Outcome Of The Battle Is Unimportant. What Matters Is The Chaos, And The Slaughter.

That's Sexism, That Is. Going Around Giving People Girly Presents Just Because They're A Girl.

Adventures Are All Very Well In Their Place, But There's A Lot To Be Said For Regular Meals And Freedom From Pain.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

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.

I Hope That This Year, You Make Mistakes. If You Do, Then It Means You Have Tried, Learned, Lived, Pushed Yourself, Changed You And Your World, And Most Importantly, You've Done Something.

M Is For Magic. All The Letters Are, If You Put Them Together Properly. You Can Make Magic With Them, And Dreams, And, I Hope, Even A Few Surprises.

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.

Adults Follow Paths. Children Explore. Adults Are Content To Walk The Same Way, Hundreds Of Times, Or Thousands; Perhaps It Never Occurs To Adults To Step Off The Paths, To Creep Beneath Rhododendrons, To Find The Spaces Between Fences. I Was A Child, Which Meant That I Knew A Dozen Different Ways Of Getting Out Of Our Property And Into The Lane, Ways That Would Not Involve Walking Down Our Drive.

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.

He..." Richard Began. "the Marquis. Well, You Know, To Be Honest, He Seems A Little Bit Dodgy To Me." Door Stopped. The Steps Dead-ended In A Rough Brick Wall. "mm," She Agreed. "he's A Little Bit Dodgy In The Same Way That Rats Are A Little Bit Covered In Fur.

Soon Enough His Head Would Be Swimming With Tales Of Derring-do And High Adventure, Tales Of Beautiful Maidens Kissed, Of Evildoers Shot With Pistols Or Fought With Swords, Of Bags Of Gold, Of Diamonds As Big As The Tip Of Your Thumb, Of Lost Cities And Of Vast Mountains, Of Steam-trains And Clipper Ships, Of Pampas, Oceans, Deserts, Tundra.

You Know What Killed Off The Dinosaurs, Whateley? We Did. In One Barbecue.

For A Moment He Thought She Was About To Hit Him, Which Would Have Been Bad, Or Even Start Crying, Which Would Have Been Much, Much Worse.

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

You Know What The Really Scary Thing About Bad Dreams? It's That Something's Going On In Your Head, And You Can't Control It. I Mean, It's Like There's These Bad Worlds Inside You. But It's Just You... It's Like You're Betraying Yourself.

I Think There Should Be An Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% Of The People Have 99.99999% Of The Time.

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

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

One Of Those Days

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.

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?

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

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.

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

He Stared Up At The Stars, And It Seemed To Him Then That They Were Dancers, Stately And Graceful, Performing A Dance Almost Infinite In Its Complexity. He Imagined He Could See The Very Faces Of The Stars; Pale, They Were, And Smiling Gently, As If They Had Spent So Much Time Above The World, Watching The Scrambling And The Joy And The Pain Of The People Below Them, That They Could Not Help Being Amused Every Time Another Little Human Believed Itself The Center Of Its World, As Each Of Us Does.

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

I Believe That All Men Are Just Overgrown Boys With Deep Problems Communicating.

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.

Sometimes Human Beings Are Very Much Like Bees. Bees Are Fiercely Protective Of Their Hive, Provided You Are Outside It. Once You’re In, The Workers Sort Of Assume That It Must Have Been Cleared By Management And Take No Notice; Various Freeloading Insects Have Evolved A Mellifluous Existence Because Of This Very Fact. Humans Act The Same Way.

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

An Angel Who Did Not So Much Fall As Saunter Vaguely Downwards.

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.

You're No Help," He Told The Lime. This Was Unfair. It Was Only A Lime; There Was Nothing Special About It At All. It Was Doing The Best It Could.

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

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

He Sighed. It Was A Long Sigh, Weary And Worldly-wise. The Kind Of Sigh You Could Picture God Heaving After Six Days Of Hard Work And Looking Forward To Some Serious Cosmic R&r, Only To Be Handed A Report By An Angel Concerning A Problem With Someone Eating An Apple.

There Are Stories Within Stories, Whispered In The Quiet Of The Night, Shouted Above The Roar Of The Day, And Played Out Between Lovers And Enemies, Strangers And Friends. But All Are Fragile Things Made Of Just Twenty-six Letters Arranged And Re-arranged To Form Tales And Imaginings Which Will Dazzle Your Senses, Haunt Your Imagination And Move You To The Very Depths Of Your Soul.

Strangers And Friends

This Is Not A Place, After All. It Is Between Places. This Is Nowhere. A Brief Thought: I Could Stay Here, Abandon My Quest, Hang Forever In The Void, Safe And Cold And Alone.

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 Didn't Have A Daddy?" I Asked. "no." "did You Have A Daddy?" "you're All Questions, Aren't You? No, Love. We Never Went In For That Sort Of Thing. You Only Need Men If You Want To Breed More Men.

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.

A Library Is A Place That Is A Repository Of Information And Gives Every Citizen Equal Access To It.

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.

In A World Where People Die Every Day, I Think The Important Thing To Remember Is That For Each Moment Of Sorrow We Get When People Leave This World There's A Corresponding Moment Of Joy When A New Baby Comes Into This World. That First Wail Is-well, It's Magic, Isn't It? Perhaps It's A Hard Thing To Say, But Joy And Sorrow Are Like Milk And Cookies. That's How Well They Go Together. I Think We Should All Take A Moment To Meditate On That.

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

There's A Tale In The Caballa That Suggests That The Angel Of Death Is So Beautiful That Upon Seeing It (or Him, Or Her) You Fall In Love So Hard, So Fast, That Your Soul Is Pulled Out Through Your Eyes. I Like That Story.

Falling In Love

Nearly' Only Counts In Horseshoes And Hand-grenades.

The Really Important Thing To Be Was Yourself, Just As Hard As You Could.

Important Things

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.

Like The Newspapers Used To Say, If The Truth Isn't Big Enough, You Print The Legend.

You Know, It's Weird Being Interviewed! Because The Weird Thing About Being Interviewed Is You Get Asked These Questions That You've Never Thought About, And You Find Out What You Think As You Answer.

There Was A Table Laid With Jellies And Trifles, With A Party Hat Beside Each Place, And A Birthday Cake With Seven Candles On It In The Center Of The Table. The Cake Had A Book Drawn On It, In Icing. My Mother, Who Had Organized The Party, Told Me That The Lady At The Bakery Said That They Had Never Put A Book On A Birthday Cake Before, And That Mostly For Boys It Was Footballs Or Spaceships. I Was Their First Book.

We...we Could Be Friends.' We Could Be Rare Specimens Of An Exotic Breed Of Dancing African Elephants, But We're Not. At Least, I'm Not.

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

I've Been Inspired By Dreams - I've Even Stolen Scenes Or Images Or Characters From Them.

We All Not Only Could Know Everything. We Do. We Just Tell Ourselves We Don't To Make It All Bearable.

What Do I Do Now?” “i Don’t Know. Fade Away, Perhaps. Or Find Another Role.

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 Lived In Books More Than I Lived Anywhere Else.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Around Me Darkness Gathers, Fading Is The Sun That Shone, We Must Speak Of Other Matters, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone Flowers Gathered In The Morning, Afternoon They Blossom On, Still Are Withered In The Evening, You Can Be Me When I'm Gone.

When I Was About Ten My Favourite Article In The Huge And Mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica We Owned (the Ninth Edition) Was The One On Lycanthropy. (yes, I Had A Favourite 1890s Britannica Article When I Was Ten. I Am Now Aware This Is Not Entirely Usual.)

Encyclopedia Britannica

Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

What’s Your Name, Lad?” “newton. Newton Pulsifer.” “lucifer? What’s That You Say? Are Ye Of The Spawn Of Darkness, A Tempting Beguiling Creature From The Pit, Wanton Limbs Steaming From The Fleshpots Of Hades, In Tortured And Lubricious Thrall To Your Stygian And Hellish Masters?” “that’s Pulsifer,” Explained Newton. “with A P. I Don’t Know About The Other Stuff, But We Come From Surrey.” The Voice On The Phone Sounded Vaguely Disappointed.

"where Do You Get Your Ideas?" That's The One Question I'm Genuinely Sick Of Being Asked, And Also Genuinely Fascinated By. What Fascinates Me Is Not That People Ask The Question, But What Kind Of Answer Are They Really Looking For? Because If I Tell Them The Truth, Which Is "i Make Them Up," They Seem Very Disappointed. They Want To Know About The Trek I Do Once A Year To The Mountain.

Lies And Half-truths Fall Like Snow, Covering The Things That I Remember, The Things I Saw. A Landscape, Unrecognizable After A Snowfall; That Is That She Has Made Of My Life.

As Far As I'm Concerned, The Entire Reason For Becoming A Writer Is Not Having To Get Up In The Morning.

Do Not Lose Hope — What You Seek Will Be Found. Trust Ghosts. Trust Those That You Have Helped To Help You In Their Turn. Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story. (from 'instructions')

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

It Does Not Matter Where You Come From, If You Walk Toward The Truth You Will Reach It, Whatever Path You Take.

Nothing’s Changed. You’ll Go Home. You’ll Be Bored. You’ll Be Ignored. No One Will Listen To You, Really Listen To You. You’re Too Clever And Too Quiet For Them To Understand. They Don’t Even Get Your Name Right.

I Suppose I Could Claim That I Had Suspected That The World Was A Cheap And Shoddy Sham, A Bad Cover For Something Deeper And Weirder And Infinitely More Strange, And That, In Some Way, I Already Know The Truth. But I Think That's Just How The World Has Always Been. And Even Now I Know The Truth, The World Still Seems Cheap And Shoddy. Different World, Different Shoddy, But That's How It Feels.

You Mourn, For It Is Proper To Mourn. But Your Grief Serves You; You Do Not Become A Slave To Grief. You Bid The Dead Farewell, And You Continue.

Sometimes Life Is Hard. Things Go Wrong—in Life And In Love And In Business And In Friendship And In Health And In All The Other Ways That Life Can Go Wrong. And When Things Get Tough, This Is What You Should Do: Make Good Art. . . . Someone On The Internet Thinks What You’re Doing Is Stupid Or Evil Or It’s All Been Done Before: Make Good Art. Probably Things Will Work Out Somehow, Eventually Time Will Take The Sting Away, And It Doesn’t Even Matter. Do What Only You Can Do Best: Make Good Art.

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

She Found Herself To Be Quite Worried That Something Would Jump Out At Her, So She Began To Whistle. She Thought It Might Make It Harder For Things To Jump Out At Her, If She Was Whistling.

Anyone Who Believes What A Cat Tells Him Deserves All He Gets.

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.

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.

People Tend To Find Books When They Are Ready For Them.

She Was The Storm, She Was The Lightning, She Was The Adult World With All Its Power And All Its Secrets And All Its Foolish Casual Cruelty.

Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

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

Many Phenomena - Wars, Plagues, Sudden Audits - Have Been Advanced As Evidence For The Hidden Hand Of Satan In The Affairs Of Man, But Whenever Students Of Demonology Get Together The M25 London Orbital Motorway Is Generally Agreed To Be Among The Top Contenders For Exhibit A.

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

The Great Thing About Batman And Superman, In Truth, Is That They Are Literally Transcendent. They Are Better Than Most Of The Stories They Are In.

Remember Your Name. Do Not Lose Hope ---what You Seek Will Be Found.

Following Instructions

The Doctor: Sorry, Do You Have A Name? Idris: Seven Hundred Years And Finally He Asks. The Doctor: But What Do I Call You? Idris: I Think You Call Me... Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only When We're Alone. Idris: We Are Alone. The Doctor: Oh. Come On Then, Sexy.

My Heart… It Feels Like My Chest Can Barely Contain It. Like It’s Trying To Escape Because It Doesn’t Belong To Me Any More. It Belongs To You.

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.

Be Proud Of Your Mistakes. Well, Proud May Not Be Exactly The Right Word, But Respect Them, Treasure Them, Be Kind To Them, Learn From Them. And, More Than That, And More Important Than That, Make Them. Make Mistakes. Make Great Mistakes, Make Wonderful Mistakes, Make Glorious Mistakes. Better To Make A Hundred Mistakes Than To Stare At A Blank Piece Of Paper Too Scared To Do Anything Wrong.

If You Only Write When Inspired, You May Be A Fairly Decent Poet, But You'll Never Be A Novelist.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

When You Start Out On A Career In The Arts You Have No Idea What You Are Doing. This Is Great. People Who Know What They Are Doing Know The Rules, And Know What Is Possible And Impossible. You Do Not. And You Should Not. The Rules On What Is Possible And Impossible In The Arts Were Made By People Who Had Not Tested The Bounds Of The Possible By Going Beyond Them. And You Can. If You Don't Know It's Impossible It's Easier To Do. And Because Nobody's Done It Before, They Haven't Made Up Rules To Stop Anyone Doing That Again, Yet.

Possible And Impossible

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")

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.

The Lovely Thing About Writing Comics For So Many Years Is That Comics Is A Medium That Is Mistaken For A Genre. It's Not That There Are Not Genres Within Comics, But Because Comics Tend To Be Regarded As A Genre In Itself, Content Becomes Secondary; As Long As I Was Doing A Comic, People Would Pick It Up.

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.

When I Was Young I Was A Fool. So Wrap Me Up In Dreams And Death.

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.

He Told Me Not To Seek Revenge, But To Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox Spirit, Sadly. 'wise Counsel,' Said The Fox Of Dreams. 'vegeance Can Be A Road That Has No Ending. You Would Be Wise To Avoid It. And...?' 'i Shall Seek The Buddha,' Said The Fox, With A Toss Of Her Head. 'but First I Shall Seek Revenge.

Black As Night, Sweet As Sin.

Where Does Contagion End And Art Begin?

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

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.

Anything That Keeps You Happy And Writing Is Part Of My Writing Ritual: I Like Music, So I Tend To Have It Playing In The Background. But If I'm Interested, I Can Write In An Airport Waiting Areas.

How Can You Be Happy In This World? You Have A Hole In Your Heart. You Have A Gateway Inside You To Lands Beyond The World You Know. They Will Call You, As You Grow.

'doctor Who' Was The First Mythology That I Learned, Before Ever I Ran Into Greek Or Roman Or Egyptian Mythologies.

Fiction Gives Us Empathy: It Puts Us Inside The Minds Of Other People, Gives Us The Gifts Of Seeing The World Through Their Eyes. Fiction Is A Lie That Tells Us True Things, Over And Over.

You Get Work However You Get Work. People Keep Working, In A Freelance World, And More And More Of Today's World Is Freelance, Because Their Work Is Good, And Because They Are Easy To Get Along With, And Because They Deliver The Work On Time. And You Don't Even Need All Three. Two Out Of Three Is Fine. People Will Tolerate How Unpleasant You Are If Your Work Is Good And You Deliver It On Time. They'll Forgive The Lateness Of The Work If It's Good, And If They Like You. And You Don't Have To Be As Good As The Others If You're On Time And It's Always A Pleasure To Hear From You.

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.

Most Of What I Want To Try To Do Is Continue To Go Places With Fiction That I've Never Gone Before, And Tell Stories I've Never Told Before, And One Of The Problems You Rapidly Discover About Fans Is What Fans Want Is The Last Thing They Liked. They Want More Of That.

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

The Wise Man Knows When To Keep Silent. Only The Fool Tells All He Knows.

Science Is A Way Of Talking About The Universe In Words That Bind It To A Common Reality. Magic Is A Method Of Talking To The Universe In Words That It Cannot Ignore. The Two Are Rarely Compatible.

I Love Making Things. I Love Building Things. I Love The Idea That Something's In The World That Wasn't There Before.

Building Things

I Don't Know Much More Than I Did When I Was Alive. Most Of The Stuff I Know Now That I Didn't Know Then I Can't Put Into Words.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Don't Think Immediate Tragedy Is A Very Good Source Of Art. It Can Be, But Too Often It's Raw And Painful And Un-dealt-with. Sometimes Art Can Be A Really Good Escape From The Intolerable, And A Good Place To Go When Things Are Bad, But That Doesn't Mean You Have To Write Directly About The Bad Thing; Sometimes You Need To Let Time Pass, And Allow The Thing That Hurts To Get Covered With Layers, And Then You Take It Out, Like A Pearl, And You Make Art Out Of It.

So The Day Became One Of Waiting, Which Was, He Knew, A Sin: Moments Were To Be Experienced; Waiting Was A Sin Against Both The Time That Was Still To Come And The Moments One Was Currently Disregarding.

It's Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Into, If One Works At It. And Astonishing How Much Trouble One Can Get Oneself Out Of, If One Assumes That Everything Will, Somehow Or Other, Work Out For The Best.

I Still Love The Book-ness Of Books, The Smell Of Books: I Am A Book Fetishist—books To Me Are The Coolest And Sexiest And Most Wonderful Things There Are.

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

The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

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.

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.

Don't Worry About Trying To Develop A Style. Style Is What You Can't Help Doing. If You Write Enough, You Draw Enough, You'll Have A Style, Whether You Want It Or Not. Don't Worry About Whether You're "commercial". Tell Your Own Stories, Draw Your Own Pictures. Let Other People Follow You.

They Could Not Truly Look Dead, Because They Did Not Ever Look Alive.

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.

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

I Was A Scholarship Minor Public School Day Boy At Ardingly College And Later Whitgift School. Then, Straight Into Work As A Journalist - A Wonderful Thing For A Writer.

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.

Read. Read Anything. Read The Things They Say Are Good For You, And The Things They Claim Are Junk. You'll Find What You Need To Find. Just Read.

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

This Is The Only Country In The World, That Worries About What It Is. The Rest Of Them Know What They Are. No One Ever Needs To Go Searching For The Heart Of Norway. Or Looks For The Soul Of Mozambique. They Know What They Are.

It Was A Dream, And In Dreams You Have No Choices: Either There Are No Decisions To Be Made, Or They Were Made For You Long Before Ever The Dream Began.

When We Hold Each Other, In The Darkness, It Doesn't Make The Darkness Go Away. The Bad Things Are Still Out There. The Nightmares Still Walking. When We Hold Each Other We Feel Not Safe, But Better. "it's All Right" We Whisper, "i'm Here, I Love You." And We Lie: "i'll Never Leave You." For Just A Moment Or Two The Darkness Doesn't Seem So Bad.

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.

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

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

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

The Important Thing To Understand About American History, Wrote Mr. Ibis, In His Leather-bound Journal, Is That It Is Fictional, A Charcoal-sketched Simplicity For The Children, Or The Easily Bored.

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

Daisy Looked Up At Him With The Kind Of Expression That Jesus Might Have Given Someone Who Had Just Explained That He Was Probably Allergic To Bread And Fishes, So Could He Possibly Do Him A Quick Chicken Salad.

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

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

Life And Death Are Different Sides Of The Same Coin.

Nobody's Seen Jesus In Years.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Go, And Make Interesting Mistakes, Make Amazing Mistakes, Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes. Break Rules. Leave The World More Interesting For Your Being Here.

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.

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.

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.

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

I Want To Go Home. Then He Mentally Underlined The Last Sentence Three Times, Rewrote It In Huge Letters In Red Ink, And Circled It Before Putting A Number Of Exclamation Marks Next To It In His Mental Margin.

Exclamation Marks

I Don't Think You Get Perfect Couples. At Best You Get Two People Building Something, And Working At It, And Loving Each Other, And Doing Their Best To Communicate.

May Your Coming Year Be Filled With Magic And Dreams And Good Madness. I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful, And Don't Forget To Make Some Art -- Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

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.

My Bed Was Pushed Up Hard Against The Wall Just Below The Window. I Loved To Sleep With The Windows Open. Rainy Nights Were The Best Of All: I Would Open My Windows And Put My Head On My Pillow And Close My Eyes And Feel The Wind On My Face And Listen To The Trees Sway And Creak. There Would Be Raindrops Blown Onto My Face, Too, If I Was Lucky, And I Would Imagine That I Was In My Boat On The Ocean And That It Was Swaying With The Swell Of The Sea. I Did Not Imagine That I Was A Pirate, Or That I Was Going Anywhere. I Was Just On My Boat.

Any View Of Things That Is Not Strange, Is False.

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 Is A Fool's Prerogative To Utter Truths That No One Else Will Speak.

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.

Finish What You're Writing. Whatever You Have To Do To Finish It, Finish It.

Like Some Kind Of Particularly Tenacious Vampire The Short Story Refuses To Die, And Seems At This Point In Time To Be A Wonderful Length For Our Generation.

How Do I Know You'll Keep Your Word?" Asked Coraline. "i Swear It," Said The Other Mother. "i Swear It On My Own Mother's Grave." "does She Have A Grave?" Asked Coraline. "oh Yes," Said The Other Mother. "i Put Her In There Myself. And When I Found Her Trying To Crawl Out, I Put Her Back.

None Of Us Exist In A World That Is The Same World That Any Of The Rest Of Us Live In. The World That's Important Is The World Behind Each Of Our Eyes, Which Is Something That None Of The Rest Of Us Can Access.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

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.

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

She Had Such Unusual Eyes. They Made Me Think Of The Seaside, And So I Called Her Ocean, And Could Not Have Told You Why.

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

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

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

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

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

A Novel Seemed The Easiest Way To Get What I Had Had In My Head Into The Inside Of Other People's Heads. Books Are Good That Way.

I Think That Is Something That I Always Like In My Work - The Sense Of Inclusion Rather Than The Sense Of Otherness.

People Talk About Books That Write Themselves, And It's A Lie. Books Don't Write Themselves. It Takes Thought And Research And Backache And Notes And More Time And More Work Than You'd Believe.

Fiction Is The Lie That Tells The Truth, After All.

Telling The Truth

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.

Have You Ever Spent Days And Days And Days Making Up Flavors Of Ice Cream That No One's Ever Eaten Before? Like Chicken And Telepone Ice Cream? Green Mouse Ice Cream Was The Worst. I Didn't Like That At All.

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.

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.

Coraline Shivered. She Preferred Her Other Mother To Have A Location: If She Were Nowhere, Then She Could Be Anywhere. And, After All, It Is Always Easier To Be Afraid Of Something You Cannot See.

You're A Big One,[...] A Tall Drink Of Water, But I Got To Tell You, You Don't Look Too Bright. I Got A Son, Stupid As A Man Who Bought His Stupid At A Two-for-one Sale, And You Remind Me Of Him.

Mostly You Are What They Think You Are.

Trending Author

Richard Carmona

Category