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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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There Are A Lot

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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But There Was A Kitten On My Pillow, And It Was Purring In My Face And Vibrating Gently With Every Purr, And, Very Soon, I Slept.

You Are Obvious, Boy. You Are Difficult To Miss. If You Came To Me In Company With A Purple Lion, A Green Elephant, And A Scarlet Unicorn Astride Which Was The King Of England In His Royal Robes, I Do Believe That It Is You And You Alone That People Would Stare At, Dismissing The Others As Minor Irrelevancies.

The Biggest Pitfall To Avoid Is Not Writing. Not Writing Is Really, Really Easy To Do, Especially If You're A Young Writer. The Hope That Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish It For You, Is A Very Common One To Have. That Is My Main Recommendation - You Have To Write, And You Have To Finish What You Write And Beyond That, It's All Detail.

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Human Beings Do Not Like Being Pushed About By Gods. They May Seem To, On The Surface, But Somewhere On The Inside, Underneath It All, They Sense It, And They Resent It.

If The Same Object From Two Different Times Touches Itself, One Of Two Things Will Happen. Either The Universe Will Cease To Exist. Or Three Remarkable Dwarfs Will Dance Through The Streets With Flowerpots On Their Heads.

Nothing I Did Where The Only Reason For Doing It Was The Money Was Ever Worth It, Except As Bitter Experience.

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The Biggest Difference Between England And America Is That England Has History, While America Has Geography.

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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

We Save Our Lives In Such Unlikely Ways.

You're Always You, And That Don't Change, And You're Always Changing, And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

I Don't Think You Should Ever Insult People Unintentionally: If You're Doing It, You Ought To Mean It.

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.

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

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

It Is Astonishing Just How Much Of What We Are Can Be Tied To The Beds We Wake Up In In The Morning, And It Is Astonishing How Fragile That Can Be.

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.

Classic Authors Should Be Older Than I Am, And Wiser, And On-top Of All Their Deadlines.

I Think The Short Story Is A Very Underrated Art Form. We Know That Novels Deserve Respect.

For The Record, I Don't Expect You To Believe Any Of This. Not Really. I'm A Liar By Trade, After All; Albeit, I Like To Think, An Honest Liar.

I Don't Think About Age Groups When I Write, Although I Think If I Know I'm Writing For Children I'll Be A Bit More Ambitious, And Think More About Every Word, Because I Know That They Pay Closer Attention When They Read Than Adults Do.

Actually I Didn't Shoot A Man In Reno Just To Watch Him Die, But He Could Tell I Was Extremely Cross.

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.

Continuity Isn't Actually Something That I Ever Worry About. You Use It Where You Need To, And You Don't Use It Where You Don't Need To.

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.

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.

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

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.

When You Start Off, You Have To Deal With The Problems Of Failure. You Need To Be Thickskinned, To Learn That Not Every Project Will Survive.

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.

I'm A Stranger," Pointed Out Bod. "you're Not," She Said, Definitely. "you're A Little Boy." And Then She Said, "and You're My Friend. So You Can't Be A Stranger.

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

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.

In Reality The World Is Made Of Thousands Of Groups Of About Five Hundred People, All Of Whom Will Spend Their Lives Bumping Into Each Other, Trying To Avoid Each Other, And Discovering Each Other In The Same Unlikely Teashop In Vancouver. There Is An Unavoidability To This Process. It's Not Even Coincidence. It's Just The Way The World Works, With No Regard For Individuals Or Propriety.

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I Had To Persuade A Dog To Swallow A Pill. I Twittered For Advice And I Got Suggestion After Suggestion. Most Of Them Didn't Work. 'put The Pill In The Sausage.' No - That Doesn't Work. 'cheese.' No. Then Someone Said: 'you Wrap It In Butter And It Will Slide Down.' I Tried It And It Worked! And I'd Learnt How To Give A Pill To A Dog Through The Magic Of Twitter.

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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.

Someone Killed My Mother And My Father And My Sister?" "yes, Someone Did." "a Man?" "a Man." "which Means," Said Bod, "you're Asking The Wrong Question." Silas Raised An Eyebrow. "how So?" "well," Said Bod. "if I Go Outside In The World, The Question Isn't Who Will Keep Me Safe From Him?" "no?" "no. It's Who Will Keep Him Safe From Me?

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Touched By Her Fingers, The Two Surviving Chocolate People Copulate Desperately, Losing Themselves In A Melting Frenzy Of Lust, Spending The Last Of Their Brief Borrowed Lives In A Spasm Of Raspberry Cream And Fear.

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You Need More Than A Beginning If You're Going To Start A Book. If All You Have Is A Beginning, Then Once You've Written That Beginning, You Have Nowhere To Go.

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

Even Nothing Cannot Last Forever.

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

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.

It Stared At Them, And It Paused For A Hundred Years, Which Transpired In A Dozen Heart Beats.

The Cat Wrinkled Its Nose And Managed To Look Unimpressed. "calling Cats," It Confided, "tends To Be A Rather Overrated Activity. Might As Well Call A Whirlwind.

Everything Has To Be Intrinsic Plot-wise In The Same Way, To Use The Linda Williams Analogy But To Move It On A Bit, As Musicals - In Old Musicals, Like In An Old Cole Porter Musical, You Get The Action, Then They Do A Song, Which Reflects A Moment - Everything Stops While That Is Being Sung - And Then You Restart. These Days In Most Musicals, The Plot Keeps Moving Through The Song. I Think It Would Be Nice If Someone Constructed Some Pornography Where The Sex Continues To Propel You Through The Story.

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.

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?

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

American Gods Is About 200,000 Words Long, And I'm Sure There Are Words That Are Simply In There 'cause I Like Them. I Know I Couldn't Justify Each And Every One Of Them.

I Loved The Fact That I Was Suddenly No Longer Dependent On Whether A Store Took Out An Ad In The Right Place, Or On The Word On The Street.

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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.

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.

I Don't Want Whatever I Want. Nobody Does. Not Really. What Kind Of Fun Would It Be If I Just Got Everything I Ever Wanted Just Like That, And It Didn't Mean Anything? What Then?

There Are Four Simple Ways For The Observant To Tell Mr. Croup And Mr. Vandemar Apart: First, Mr. Vandemar Is Two And A Half Heads Taller Than Mr. Croup; Second, Mr. Croup Has Eyes Of A Faded China Blue, While Mr. Vandemar's Eyes Are Brown; Third, While Mr. Vandemar Fashioned The Rings He Wears On His Right Hand Out Of The Skulls Of Four Ravens, Mr. Croup Has No Obvious Jewelery; Fourth, Mr. Croup Likes Words, While Mr. Vandemar Is Always Hungry. Also, They Look Nothing At All Alike.

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

Ultimate Freedom

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.

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

He Couldn’t See Why People Made Such A Fuss About People Eating Their Silly Old Fruit Anyway, But Life Would Be A Lot Less Fun If They Didn’t. And There Was Never An Apple, In Adam’s Opinion, That Wasn’t Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

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.

When You Dream, Sometimes You Remember. When You Wake, You Always Forget.

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.

And Sometimes When You Fall... You Fly...

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes, Then You Are Making New Things, Trying New Things, Learning, Living, Pushing Yourself, Changing Yourself, Changing Your World. You're Doing Things You've Never Done Before, And More Importantly, You're Doing Something.

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.

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

Chow^tm Contained Spun, Plaited, And Woven Protein Molecules, Capped And Coded, Carefully Designed To Be Ignored By Even The Most Ravenous Digestive Tract Enzymes; No-cal Sweeteners; Mineral Oils Replacing Vegetable Oils; Fibrous Materials, Colorings, And Flavorings. The End Result Was A Foodstuff Almost Indistinguishable From Any Other Except For Two Things. Firstly, The Price, Which Was Slightly Higher, And Secondly, The Nutritional Content, Which Was Roughly Equivalent To That Of A Sony Walkman.

The Moonlight Was Enough. It Would Do.

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

Sometimes I Think That Ideas Float Through The Atmosphere Like Huge Squishy Pumpkins, Waiting For Heads To Drop On.

Picking One Of Your Favorite Creation Or Character Is Like Picking The Best One Of Your Children! I'm Not Sure It Really Works. My Very Favorite Characters Tend To Be Ones I Can Go Back To And Look At, And Have No Idea How They Popped Out Of My Head.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

It Always Felt Like The Price Of Being A Writer Was That You Would - Even In The Most Terrible Moments, There Was A Little Phantom Version Of You Sitting On Your Shoulder With A Notebook Going, I Can Use This. Ok, Look At The Way That The Light Is Glinting Off The Broken Plastic On The Road Next To The Blood. You Can Use This. And It Was Always A Very Strange Feeling.

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.

The Only Thing That Kept Me Going Was Stories. Stories Are Hope. They Take You Out Of Yourself For A Bit, And When You Get Dropped Back In, You're Different- You're Stronger, You've Seen More, You've Felt More. Stories Are Like Spiritual Currency.

There Were Faces At The Windows And Words Written In Blood; Deep In The Crypt A Lonely Ghoul Crunched On Something That Might Once Have Been Alive; Forked Lightnings Slashed The Ebony Night; The Faceless Were Walking; All Was Right With The World

It Seems Like Every Time I Agree To Work With A Video Game Company They Go Out Of Business. I Stopped Because I Was Starting To Feel Guilty.

Dinner With Steven Moffat In Bar Shu, Spent Mostly In Enthusiastic Dr Who Neepery. I Love My Life....as A Side Note, Running Windows Vista On The Panasonic W7 Is Making Me Really Nostalgic For 1986. Whoever Thought I'd Get To Type Things Then Stare At A Blank Screen For A Bit And One-by-one Watch The Letters Appear? Cory And Mike's 'why Don't You Run Linux?' Talks Are Staring To Seem Much More Sensible.

Love Of My Life

Sometimes I Suspect That We Build Our Traps Ourselves, Then We Back Into Them, Pretending Amazement The While.

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

None Of This Is Truly Happening," He Said To Shadow. He Sounded Miserable. "it's All In Your Head. Best Not To Think Of It.

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

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

Know That Diamonds And Roses Are As Uncomfortable When They Tumble From One's Lips As Toads And Frogs: Colder, Too, And Sharper, And They Cut.

Richard Did Not Believe In Angels, He Never Had. He Was Damned If He Was Going To Start Now. Still, It Was Much Easier Not To Believe In Something When It Was Not Actually Looking Directly At You And Saying Your Name.

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

Adult Helplessness Destroys Children. Or It Forces Them To Become Tiny Adults Of Their Own.

There's A Glorious Sense Of Freedom In Comedy, Just Allowing Myself To Tell Jokes, Allowing Myself To Interrupt Myself And Tell Old African Folk Stories That I Made Up - Or Didn't - And Jamaican Stories.

Nothing [the Demon] Could Think Up Was Half As Bad As The Stuff [people] Thought Up Themselves. They Seemed To Have A Talent For It. It Was Built Into Their Design Somehow. They Were Born Into A World That Was Against Them In A Thousand Little Ways, And Then Devoted Most Of Their Energies To Making It Worse.

If Ever You Get To Be My Age," Said The Old Woman, "you Will Know All There Is To Know About Regrets, And You Will Know That One More, Here Or There, Will Make No Difference In The Long Run.

If I'm Writing A Novel, I'll Probably Get Up In The Morning, Do Email, Perhaps Blog, Deal With Emergencies, And Then Be Off Novel-writing Around 1.00pm And Stop Around 6.00pm. And I'll Be Writing In Longhand, A Safe Distance From My Computer. If I'm Not Writing A Novel, There Is No Schedule, And Scripts And Introductions And Whatnot Can Find Themselves Being Written At Any Time And On Anything.

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.

I Very Rarely Want To Go Back And Fix Things, Because I'm Much More Interested In The Next Thing, And In Taking What I Learned From The Things That Don't Work, And Applying Them To New Things That May Work.

Making Fiction For Children, Making Books For Children, Isn't Something You Do For Money. It's Something You Do Because What Children Read And Learn And See And Take In Changes Them And Forms Them, And They Make The Future. They Make The World We're Going To Wind Up In, The World That Will Be Here When We're Gone. Which Sounds Preachy (and Is More Than You Need For A Quotebyte) But It's True. I Want To Tell Kids Important Things, And I Want Them To Love Stories And Love Reading And Love Finding Things Out. I Want Them To Be Brave And Wise. So I Write For Them.

I'm A Fairly Undisciplined Writer.

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

Hunchbacks Danced At My Wedding For Luck. It's A Thing You Don't See Nowadays.

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.

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.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic. There's Whoever's Writing It And Whoever's Drawing It. And Then There's Whoever's Reading It Because They Are Creating The Movement. They Are Creating The Illusion Of Time Passing.

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.

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

Goodbyes Are Overrated.

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.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic: There Is Whoever Is Writing It, And Whoever Is Drawing It, And Then There's Whoever Is Reading It, Because The Really Important Things In Comics Are Occurring In The Panel Gutters, They're Occurring Between Panels As The Person Reading The Comics Is Moving You Through, Is Creating A Film In Their Heads.

Right," Said Fat Charlie Conversationally. "you Realize, Of Course, That This Means War." It Was The Traditional War Cry Of A Rabbit When Pushed Too Far.

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.

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.

He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring Because Yesterday Has Brought It.

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

It Has Always Been The Prerogative Of Children And Half-wits To Point Out That The Emperor Has No Clothes. But The Half-wit Remains A Half-wit, And The Emperor Remains An Emperor.

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

It Seems To Me That One Of The Most Interesting Things About God As A Concept, If You Decide To Believe In God, Is That God's Ways Are Unknowable. And God Obviously, Look At The World Around You, Does Or Is Responsible For Some Terrible, Terrible, Awful Things. A Young Girl Kidnapped And Kept In The Darkness And Sexually Abused. The Deaths Of Six Million Jews. A Mudslide That Buries A Village. All Of These Things. If God Is Doing The Good Stuff, He's Got To Be Doing That Stuff Too.

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them. And It's Much Cheaper To Buy Somebody A Book Than It Is To Buy Them The Whole World!

We Have To Get The... The Thing I Got... To The Angel. And Then He'll Tell Door About Her Family, And He'll Tell Me How To Get Home." Lamia Looked At Hunter With Delight. "and He Can Give You Brains," She Said, Cheerfully, "and Me A Heart.

Truly, Life Is Wasted On The Living, Nobody Owens. For One Of Us Is Too Foolish To Live, And It Is Not I.

Chicago Happened Slowly, Like A Migraine. First They Were Driving Through Countryside, Then, Imperceptibly, The Occasional Town Became A Low Suburban Sprawl, And The Sprawl Became The City.

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.

Make Glorious And Fantastic Mistakes.

I Enjoy Writing Scripts. I Can Find Out What Happens. With An Outline, I Feel Like I'm Doing An Architectural Diagram Of Something.

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.

I Suppose The Point You Grow Up Is The Point You Let The Dreams Go.

The Short Story Is Still Like The Novel's Wayward Younger Brother, We Know That It's Not Respectable - But I Think That Can Also Add To The Glory Of It.

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.

Only The Phoenix Rises And Does Not Descend. And Everything Changes. And Nothing Is Truly Lost.

Not Only Are There No Happy Endings,' She Told Him, 'there Aren't Even Any Endings.

Even The Proudest Spirit Can Be Broken With Love.

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

The World Is Always Ending, For Someone.

I Really Don't Know What "i Love You" Means. I Think It Means "don't Leave Me Here Alone.

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.

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.

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

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.

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'm Intrigued With Figuring Out The Places [where] The Horrible And The Beautiful Meet - That Aesthetic Fascinates Me.

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.

We Don't Have A Clue What's Really Going Down, We Just Kid Ourselves That We're In Control Of Our Lives While A Paper's Thickness Away Things That Would Drive Us Mad If We Thought About Them For Too Long Play With Us, And Move Us Around From Room To Room, And Put Us Away At Night When They're Tired, Or Bored.

I Believe That Life Is A Game, That Life Is A Cruel Joke, And That Life Is What Happens When You're Alive And That You Might As Well Lie Back And Enjoy It.

For Some Folks Death Is Release, And For Others Death Is An Abomination, A Terrible Thing. But In The End, I'm There For All Of Them.

In My Dream, It Was The Tongue Of What Is, And Anything Spoken In It Becomes Real, Because Nothing Said In That Language Can Be A Lie. It Is The Most Basic Building Brick Of Everything.

Dreams Are Hopes, And Echoes Of Hope.

All Your Questions Can Be Answered, If That Is What You Want. But Once You Learn Your Answers, You Can Never Unlearn Them.

Unanswered Questions

We Wrapped Our Dreams In Words And Patterned The Words So That They Would Live Forever, Unforgettable.

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?

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.

The Greatest Satisfaction You Can Obtain From Life Is Your Pleasure In Producing, In Your Own Individual Way, Something Of Value To Your Fellowmen. That Is Creative Living! For You, Life Can Be A Succession Of Glorious Adventures. Or It Can Be A Monotonous Bore. Take Your Choice!

I Was Always Aware, Reading Chesterton, That There Was Someone Writing This Who Rejoiced In Words, Who Deployed Them On The Page As An Artist Deploys His Paints Upon His Palette. Behind Every Chesterton Sentence There Was Someone Painting With Words, And It Seemed To Me That At The End Of Any Particularly Good Sentence Or Any Perfectly-put Paradox, You Could Hear The Author, Somewhere Behind The Scenes, Giggling With Delight.

I Do Not Believe That All Books Will Or Should Migrate Onto Screens: As Douglas Adams Once Pointed Out To Me, More Than 20 Years Before The Kindle Turned Up, A Physical Book Is Like A Shark. Sharks Are Old: There Were Sharks In The Ocean Before The Dinosaurs. And The Reason There Are Still Sharks Around Is That Sharks Are Better At Being Sharks Than Anything Else Is.

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.

Also, I've Already Won All The Awards.

I Think You Have To Accept That An Artist Also Has A Relationship With His Or Her Art And His Or Her Fans: You Are In An Open Relationship Whether You Like It Or Not. Give The Artist Room To Go Into The Place They Create (literally Or Metaphorically) . And Love Them When They Can't Remember Where They Put Their Keys.

But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?" "easy," Said The Cat. "think Of Somebody Walking Around The World. You Start Out Walking Away From Something And End Up Coming Back To It." "small World," Said Coraline. "it's Big Enough For Her," Said The Cat. "spiders' Webs Only Have To Be Large Enough To Catch Flies." Coraline Shivered.

When I Was A Child, Adults Would Tell Me Not To Make Things Up, Warning Me Of What Would Happen If I Did. As Far As I Can Tell So Far, It Seems To Involve Lots Of Foreign Travel And Not Having To Get Up Too Early In The Morning.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

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

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

Telling The Truth

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

One Of Those Days

I Can Believe Things That Are True And Things That Aren't True And I Can Believe Things Where Nobody Knows If They're True Or Not.

I Hope That In This Year To Come, You Make Mistakes. Because If You Are Making Mistakes...you're Doing Something.

Never Trust The Storyteller. Only Trust The Story.

It Goes Without Saying That All Of The People, Living, Dead, And Otherwise, In This Story Are Fictional Or Used In A Fictional Context. Only The Gods Are Real.

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

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