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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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The Trouble With Everything,

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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

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The Future Had Suddenly Become Unknowable: Anything Could Happen: The Train Of My Life Had Jumped The Rails And Headed Off Across The Fields And Coming Down The Lane With Me, Then.

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.

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.

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He Stared Down At The Golden Curls Of The Adversary, Destroyer Of Kings, Angel Of The Bottomless Pit, Great Beast That Is Called Dragon, Prince Of This World, Father Of Lies, Spawn Of Satan, And Lord Of Darkness. "you Know," He Concluded, After A While, "i Think He Actually Looks Like An Adam.

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There Are Stories That Are True, In Which Each Individual's Tale Is Unique And Tragic, And The Worst Of The Tragedy Is That We Have Heard It Before, And We Cannot Allow Ourselves To Feel It To Deeply. 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 It Were To Touch Us It Would Cripple Us Or Make Saints Of Us; But, For The Most Part, It Does Not Touch Us. We Cannot Allow It To.

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If People Are Standing Up There Saying, My Football Team Just Won With Help From God, Then Obviously God Just Pissed Over The Other Team.

Picking Five Favorite Books Is Like Picking The Five Body Parts You'd Most Like Not To Lose.

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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.

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Often The Adult Book Is Not For You, Not Yet, Or Will Only Be For You When You're Ready. But Sometimes You Will Read It Anyway, And You Will Take From It Whatever You Can. Then, Perhaps, You Will Come Back To It When You're Older, And You Will Find The Book Has Changed Because You Have Changed As Well, And The Book Is Wiser, Or More Foolish, Because You Are Wiser Or More Foolish Than You Were As A Child.

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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.

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

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Mostly You Are What They Think You Are.

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

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I Suspect That Most Authors Don't Really Want Criticism, Not Even Constructive Criticism. They Want Straight-out, Unabashed, Unashamed, Fulsome, Informed, Naked Praise, Arriving By The Shipload Every Fifteen Minutes Or So.

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If It's True That Every Seven Years Each Cell In Your Body Dies And Is Replaced, Then I Have Truly Inherited My Life From A Dead Man; And The Misdeeds Of Those Times Have Been Forgiven, And Are Buried With His Bones.

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

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Every Hour Wounds. The Last One Kills.

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.

Books Were Safer Than Other People Anyway.

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I Think You're Doing Better Than You Were The Last Time We Saw You. You're Growing A New Heart, For A Start.

I Believe In Absolute Honesty And Sensible Social Lies.

If You Do Not Value Libraries Then You Do Not Value Information Or Culture Or Wisdom. You Are Silencing The Voices Of The Past And You Are Damaging The Future.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It. Sometimes All It Takes Is For Someone To Say That They're Scared For The Fear To Become Real. Mo Was Terrified, And Now Nick Was Too.

I Think I Could Be A Perfectly Decent Cat. I've Been Around Cats Long Enough To Know What The Rules Of Being A Cat Are. When All Else Fails, Wash. And I Think I Could Master The Thing That Cats Do, Where They Stalk Away Pretending They Meant To Do Whatever It Was In The First Place; Showing Their Wounded Dignity.

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.

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.

There Are Little Pockets Of Old Time In London, Where Things And Places Stay The Same, Like Bubble In Amber.

This Little Piggy Went To Hades This Little Piggy Stayed Home This Little Piggy Ate Raw And Steaming Human Flesh This Little Piggy Violated Virgins And This Little Piggy Clambered Over A Heap Of Dead Bodies To Get To The Top

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.

Rock And Roll Stars Have It Much Better Than Writers When They're On A Tour.

Suggestions? Put It Aside For A Few Days, Or Longer, Do Other Things, Try Not To Think About It. Then Sit Down And Read It (printouts Are Best I Find, But That's Just Me) As If You've Never Seen It Before. Start At The Beginning. Scribble On The Manuscript As You Go If You See Anything You Want To Change. And Often, When You Get To The End You'll Be Both Enthusiastic About It And Know What The Next Few Words Are. And You Do It All One Word At A Time.

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.

People Take On The Shapes Of The Songs And The Stories That Surround Them, Especially If They Don't Have Their Own Song.

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.

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

I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled. I Could Not Control The World I Was In, Could Not Walk Away From Things Or People Or Moments That Hurt, But I Took Joy In The Things That Made Me Happy.

I Sat In The Dark And Thought: There’s No Big Apocalypse. Just An Endless Procession Of Little Ones.

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.

The Only Advice I Can Give You Is What You're Telling Yourself. Only, Maybe You're Too Scared To Listen.

Too Soon, The Sun Will Rise.

There Was Nowhere They Could Have Gone And They Went There Anyway.

Short Stories Are Tiny Windows Into Other Worlds And Other Minds And Dreams. They Are Journeys You Can Make To The Far Side Of The Universe And Still Be Back In Time For Dinner.

I Started Writing When I Was About 20, 21 Maybe.

They Were Not My Friends, After All. They Were Just The People I Went To School With.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

When Writing A Novel, That's Pretty Much Entirely What Life Turns Into: 'house Burned Down. Car Stolen. Cat Exploded. Did 1500 Easy Words, So All In All It Was A Pretty Good Day.

Go Get Your Heart Broken.

They Believe Themselves Lucifer's Equals, Cain, All These Pitiful Little Gnats. But There Is Only One That We Have Ever Owned To Be Our Superior. There Is But One Greater Than Us, And To Him... To Him We No Longer Speak.

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

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.

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.

My Parents Would Frisk Me Before Family Events, And Find The Book, And Lock It In The Car. And Then Be Disappointed Where, Somewhere At The Event, I Would Find A Book And Sit Under A Table Where Nobody Could Get Me And Go Back Into Book Land.

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He Wondered Whether Home Was A Thing That Happened To A Place After A While, Or If It Was Something That You Found In The End, If You Simply Walked And Waited And Willed It Long Enough.

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.

Libraries Are Our Friends.

Thought Provoking

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

So, If A City Has A Personality, Maybe It Also Has A Soul. Maybe It Dreams.

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

I Kept Starting 'anansi Boys' As A Movie And Stopping, And Eventually Wrote The Novel And Was Happy.

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 Looked At The World Of Books And Just Went, Oh My Gosh, If I'm Writing Novels, I'm On The Same Shelves As Jane Austen And Charles Dickens And Petronius - Whereas With Comics, They've Only Been Doing Them For A Hundred Years, And There's Stuff That Nobody's Done Before. I Think I'll Go Off And Do Some Of The Stuff No One's Ever Done Before.

If You Want To Imagine The Future, Imagine A Boy And His Dog And His Friends. And A Summer That Never Ends.

I Mean, Maybe I Am Crazy. I Mean, Maybe. But If This Is All There Is, Then I Don't Want To Be Sane.

In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.

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

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.

Have Been Unavoidably Detained By The World. Expect Us When You See Us.

Nobody Died. How Can You Kill An Idea? How Can You Kill The Personification Of An Action?" "then What Died? Who Are You Mourning?" "a Point Of View.

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

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

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.

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.

Anywhere That I Can't Check My Email Is A Good Place To Write!

On The Whole, Stories Don't Write Themselves.

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.

She Had The Feeling That The Door Was Looking At Her, Which She Knew Was Silly, And Knew On A Deeper Level Was Somehow True.

What's Your Name,' Coraline Asked The Cat. 'look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'cats Don't Have Names,' It Said. 'no?' Said Coraline. 'no,' Said The Cat. 'now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

Life Is A Rock, But The Radio Rolled Me Over.

I Realized The Other Day That About The Only Author I Genuinely Read For Pure Pleasure Is One Of The Worst Authors In The World, A Guy Called Harry Stephen Keeler, A Long Dead American Mystery Writer. He Was Probably The Greatest Bad Writer America Ever Produced.

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.

Libraries Really Are The Gates To The Future.

I Have A Feeling,’ He Said, ‘i Have A Feeling That We Were Meant To Be Together. That We Have Fought The Good Fight, Side By Side, In The Past Or In The Future, I Do Not Know. I Am A Rational Man, But I Have Learned The Value Of A Good Companion, And From The Moment I Clapped Eyes On You, I Knew I Trusted You As Well As I Do Myself. Yes, I Want You With Me.

I Am Anti-life, The Beast Of Judgment. I Am The Dark At The End Of Everything. The End Of Universes, Gods, Worlds…of Everything. And What Will You Be Then, Dreamlord?" "i Am Hope.

I Don't Know If Any Single Book Made Me Want To Write. C.s. Lewis Was The First Writer To Make Me Aware That Somebody Was Writing The Book I Was Reading - These Wonderful Parenthetical Asides To The Reader.

What Makes You Think I'm Giving You A Ride?” “because I'm A Damsel In Distress,” She Said. “and You Are A Knight In Whatever. A Really Dirty Car.

I Would Like To See Anyone, Prophet, King Or God, Convince A Thousand Cats To Do The Same Thing At The Same Time.

There's None So Blind As Those Who Will Not Listen.

Going Off The Grid Is Always Good For Me. It's The Way That I've Started Books And Finished Books And Gotten Myself Out Of Deadline Dooms And Things.

That's The Trouble With Living Things. Don't Last Very Long. Kittens One Day, Old Cats The Next. And Then Just Memories. And The Memories Fade And Blend And Smudge Together.

Perhaps This Is The Ultimate Freedom, Eh, Dreamlord? The Freedom To Leave.

Ultimate Freedom

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.

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.

Remember That, Sooner Or Later, Before It Ever Reaches Perfection, You Will Have To Let It Go And Move On And Start To Write The Next Thing. Perfection Is Like Chasing The Horizon. Keep Moving.

It’s A New Year And With It Comes A Fresh Opportunity To Shape Our World. So This Is My Wish, A Wish For Me As Much As It Is A Wish For You: In The World To Come, Let Us Be Brave – Let Us Walk Into The Dark Without Fear, And Step Into The Unknown With Smiles On Our Faces, Even If We’re Faking Them. And Whatever Happens To Us, Whatever We Make, Whatever We Learn, Let Us Take Joy In It. We Can Find Joy In The World If It’s Joy We’re Looking For, We Can Take Joy In The Act Of Creation. So That Is My Wish For You, And For Me. Bravery And Joy.

The Lord Of Dreams Learns That One Must Change Or Die, And Makes His Decision

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