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The Young Man Shivered. He Rolled The Stock Themes Of Fantasy Over In His Mind: Cars And Stockbrokers And Commuters, Housewives And Police, Agony Columns And Commercials For Soap, Income Tax And Cheap Restaurants, Magazines And Credit Cards And Streetlights And Computers... 'it Is Escapism, True,' He Said, Aloud. 'but Is Not The Highest Impulse In Mankind The Urge Toward Freedom, The Drive To Escape?

-Neil Gaiman

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The Young Man Shivered.

Neil Gaiman

...

The Young Man Shivered. He Rolled The Stock Themes Of Fantasy Over In His Mind: Cars And Stockbrokers And Commuters, Housewives And Police, Agony Columns And Commercials For Soap, Income Tax And Cheap Restaurants, Magazines And Credit Cards And Streetlights And Computers... 'it Is Escapism, True,' He Said, Aloud. 'but Is Not The Highest Impulse In Mankind The Urge Toward Freedom, The Drive To Escape?

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Lucifer Protests He Was Never To Blame For Inducing Anyone To Sin, And That He’s Never Had An Interest In Owning Souls: 'they Die, And They Come Here – Having Transgressed Against What They Believed To Be Right – And Expect Us To Fulfill Their Desire For Pain And Retribution. I Don’t Make Them Come Here… I Need No Souls. And How Can Anyone Own A Soul? No, They Belong To Themselves. They Just Hate To Have To Face Up To It.

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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.

Jesus. Low-key Lyesmith," Said Shadow. And Then He Heard What He Was Saying And He Understood. "loki," He Said. "loki Lie-smith." "you're Slow," Said Loki, "but You Get There In The End." And His Lips Twisted Into A Scarred Smile And The Embers Danced In The Shadows Of His Eyes.

Talk Is Free But The Wise Man Chooses When To Spend His Words.

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Dreams Are Hopes, And Echoes Of Hope.

It's Not A Bad Thing For A Writer Not To Feel At Home. Writers - We're Much More Comfortable At Parties Standing In The Corner Watching Everybody Else Having A Good Time Than We Are Mingling.

So Many Things To See, People To Do.

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

We Are Small But We Are Many We Are Many We Are Small We Were Here Before You Rose We Will Be Here When You Fall

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've Been Making A List Of The Things They Don't Teach You At School. They Don't Teach You How To Love Somebody. They Don't Teach You How To Be Famous. They Don't Teach You How To Be Rich Or How To Be Poor. They Don't Teach You How To Walk Away From Someone You Don't Love Any Longer. They Don't Teach You How To Know What's Going On In Someone Else's Mind. They Don't Teach You What To Say To Someone Who's Dying. They Don't Teach You Anything Worth Knowing.

The Stuff You Bring Back From Dreams Is Free.

When The First Living Thing Existed, I Was There Waiting. When The Last Living Thing Dies, My Job Will Be Finished. I'll Put The Chairs On The Tables, Turn Out The Lights And Lock The Universe Behind Me When I Leave.

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

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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.

I Would Read. I Would Explore

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There Was A Hysteria In There, Certainly, But There Was Also The Exhaustion Of Someone Who Had Managed, Somehow, To Believe Several Dozen Impossible Things In The Last Twenty-four Hours, Without Ever Getting A Proper Breakfast.

Impossible Things

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.

You Know The Best Thing About Aeroplanes? Apart From The Peanuts In Little Silver Bags, I Mean. It's Looking Out Of The Windows At The Clouds And Thinking Maybe I Could Go Walking In There. Maybe It's A Special Place Where Everything's Okay. Sometimes I Do Go Walking In The Clouds But It's Just Cold And Wet And Empty. But When You Look Out Of A Plane It's A Special World... And I Like It.

But Surely "argh" Is The Sound Of A Sort Of Strangulated Scream. "aargh" Is The Sound Of A Stabbing, Or A Falling Off A Cliff. "arr" Is, I Think, The Noise You're Looking For. It's The Noise Pirates Make When They Don't Have Anything Better To Do. "arr, Jim Lad" = Pirate Noise. "aargh, Jim Lad" = Sound Of Pirate Falling Off A Cliff.

Oh, Monsters Are Scared. That's Why They're Monsters.

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

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.

It's Like You Said The Other Day," Said Adam. "you Grow Up Readin' About Pirates And Cowboys And Spacemen And Stuff, And Jus' When You Think The World's Full Of Amazin' Things, They Tell You It's Really All Dead Whales And Chopped-down Forests And Nucular Waste Hangin' About For Millions Of Years. 'snot Worth Growin' Up For, If You Ask My Opinion.

A Philosopher Once Asked, "are We Human Because We Gaze At The Stars, Or Do We Gaze At Them Because We Are Human?" Pointless, Really..."do The Stars Gaze Back?" Now That's A Question.

The Only Reason People Die, Is Because Everyone Does It. You All Just Go Along With It. It's Rubbish, Death. It's Stupid. I Don't Want Nothing To Do With It.

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

Bod Shrugged. "so?" He Said. "it's Only Death. I Mean, All Of My Best Friends Are Dead.

You Can Tell The Date Of An Old Science Fiction Novel By Every Word On The Page. Nothing Dates Harder And Faster And More Strangely Than The Future.

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.

It’s Part Of Growing Up, I Suppose…you Always Have To Leave Something Behind You.

Nobody Will Ever Hurt Her. She’ll Just Smile Her Faint Vague Wonderful Smile And Walk Away.

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.

If I Were Only Allowed To Read Or Enjoy Art Or Listen To Music Made By People Whose Opinions And Beliefs Were The Same As Mine, I Think The World Would Be A Pretty Dismal Sort Of A Place.

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

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.

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

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

Some Of Us Claim That He Was A Messiah, And Some Think That He Was Just A Man With Very Special Powers. But That Misses The Point. Whatever He Was, He Changed The World.

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

Books Are The Way That We Communicate With The Dead. The Way That We Learn Lessons From Those Who Are No Longer With Us, That Humanity Has Built On Itself, Progressed, Made Knowledge Incremental Rather Than Something That Has To Be Relearned, Over And Over. There Are Tales That Are Older Than Most Countries, Tales That Have Long Outlasted The Cultures And The Buildings In Which They Were First Told.

I Remembered Something Somebody Had Once Said To Me. It's Okay. Everyday Is Freshly Ground.

You Were Her Way Here, And It's A Dangerous Thing To Be A Door.

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.

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

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

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.

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.

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

I Was Thinking One Of The Great Things About Fiction Is We, As A Race, Only Get To Look Out Of Our Own Eyes At The World. And Fiction Is A Fantastic Way Of Looking Out Through Somebody Else's Eyes.

I Like Airplanes. I Like Anywhere That Isn't A Proper Place. I Like In Betweens.

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.

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.

That Is The Eternal Folly Of Man. To Be Chasing After The Sweet Flesh, Without Realizing That It Is Simply A Pretty Cover For The Bones.

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Georges Bernanos

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