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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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There Was A Tale

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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I Don't Know. I Had To Be Something, Didn't I?

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

Doing Fine, Thank You, I Would Say, Never Knowing How To Talk About What I Do. If I Could Talk About It, I Would Not Have To Do It. I Make Art, Sometimes I Make True Art, And Sometimes It Fills The Empty Places In My Heart. Some Of Them. Not All.

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I Would Feel Infinitely More Comfortable In Your Presence If You Would Agree To Treat Gravity As A Law, Rather Than One Of A Number Of Suggested Options.

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It's A Wonderful Thing, As A Writer, To Be Given Parameters And Walls And Barriers.

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I Do Not Miss Childhood, But I Miss The Way I Took Pleasure In Small Things, Even As Greater Things Crumbled.

"ocean" Is More About ... Powerlessness And Hopelessness. When We're Very Small We Can't Actually Do Anything - We Have No Say In What Happens, We Have No Money Or Resources, We Sometimes Have No Idea What's Going On.

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I Wondered How I Looked To Her, In That Place, And Knew That Even In A Place That Was Nothing But Knowledge That Was The One Thing I Could Not Know. That If I Look Inward I Would See Only Infinite Mirrors Staring Into Myself For Eternity.

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

England And America

I Will Be Brave, Thought Coraline. No, I Am Brave.

There Are Some Dogs Which, When You Meet Them, Remind You That, Despite Thousands Of Years Of Manmade Evolution, Every Dog Is Still Only Two Meals Away From Being A Wolf.

To Be A Good Writer... Read A Lot And Write Every Day.

Writing Imaginative Tales For The Young Is Like Sending Coals To Newcastle. For Coals.

Dreams Are Hopes, And Echoes Of Hope.

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.

Shadow Had Heard Too Many People Telling Each Other Not To Repress Their Feelings, To Let Their Emotions Out, Let The Pain Go. Shadow Thought There Was A Lot To Be Said For Bottling Up Emotions. If You Did It Long Enough And Deep Enough, He Suspected, Pretty Soon You Wouldn't Feel Anything At All.

If You Go To Space, You'll Look Down And See No National Boundaries. You'll Never See The Gods People Are Killing Each Other Over, But They're Incredibly Real.

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.

Are We Human Because We Gaze At The Stars Or Do We Gaze At The Stars Because We Are Human?

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

I Was A Reader. I Loved Reading. Reading Things Gave Me Pleasure. I Was Very Good At Most Subjects In School, Not Because I Had Any Particular Aptitude In Them, But Because Normally On The First Day Of School They'd Hand Out Schoolbooks, And I'd Read Them--which Would Mean That I'd Know What Was Coming Up, Because I'd Read It.

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

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.

The Best Advice I Can Give On This Is, Once It's Done, To Put It Away Until You Can Read It With New Eyes. Finish The Short Story, Print It Out, Then Put It In A Drawer And Write Other Things. When You're Ready, Pick It Up And Read It, As If You've Never Read It Before. If There Are Things You Aren't Satisfied With As A Reader, Go In And Fix Them As A Writer: That's Revision.

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.

I Always Say That If You're A Novelist, The Challenge Is Not Writing What You Think Ought To Happen, But Trying In Some Way To Write What Did Happen In A World That Doesn't Necessarily Exist.

Walk Any Path In Destiny's Garden, And You Will Be Forced To Choose, Not Once But Many Times.

A Piratical Ghost Story In Thirteen Ingenious But Potentially Disturbing Rhyming Couplets, Originally Conceived As A Confection Both To Amuse And To Entertain By Mr. Neil Gaiman, Scrivener, And Then Doodled, Elaborated Upon, Illustrated, And Beaten Soundly By Mr. Cris Grimly, Etcher And Illuminator, Featuring Two Brave Children, Their Diminutive But No Less Courageous Gazelle, And A Large Number Of Extremely Dangerous Trolls, Monsters, Bugbears, Creatures, And Other Such Nastiness, Many Of Which Have Perfectly Disgusting Eating Habits And Ought Not, Under Any Circumstances, To Be Encouraged.

My Ideal Reader Is Me. And Yes, My Ideal Reader Comes With Me And Is Forgiving.

I Like Reading. I Prefer Not Reading On My Computer, Because That Makes Whatever I Am Reading Feel Like Work. I Do Not Mind Reading On My Ipad.

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

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

Hey, That's Life, Flick It Off If You Can't Take A Joke.

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

So I Went Out And Bought Myself A Copy Of The Writer And Artist Yearbook, Bought Lots Of Magazines And Got On The Phone And Talked To Editors About Ideas For Stories. Pretty Soon I Found Myself Hired To Do Interviews And Articles And Went Off And Did Them.

I Remember Making That Vow, The One Not To Forget. Not To Remember What Happened, But To Remember Who I Was And How I Felt.

I've Never Known Anyone Who Was What He Or She Seemed; Or At Least, Was Only What He Or She Seemed. People Carry Worlds Within Them.

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.

My Wife, Amanda, Is Terribly Good At Warping Reality. She Is Like A Bowling Ball On A Rubber Sheet, And You Find Yourself Living In Her Universe, Doing Things That Are Completely Unexpected Or Unimaginable For You, But You Blink And You're Up On A Stage Singing, Or Wearing A Peculiar Wig, Or Writing A Book Filled With Feelings And Emotion, Or Doing Something Equally As Unlikely.

People Talk About Escapism As If It's A Bad Thing... Once You've Escaped, Once You Come Back, The World Is Not The Same As When You Left It. You Come Back To It With Skills, Weapons, Knowledge You Didn't Have Before. Then You Are Better Equipped To Deal With Your Current Reality.

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

It's Not Sipping Wine. It's A Mourning Wine. You Drain It. Like This.

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.

I Wanted To Put A Reference To Masturbation In One Of The Scripts For The Sandman. It Was Immediately Cut By The Editor [karen Berger]. She Told Me, "there's No Masturbation In The Dc Universe." To Which My Reaction Was, "well, That Explains A Lot About The Dc Universe."

You Know That I Love You." And Despite Herself, Coraline Nodded. It Was True. The Other Mother Loved Her. But She Loved Coraline As A Miser Loves Money, Or A Dragon Loves Its Gold. In The Other Mother's Button Eyes, Coraline Knew That She Was A Possession, Nothing More. A Tolerated Pet, Whose Behavior Was No Longer Amusing.

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.

I Was Always So Relieved That Anyone Wants To Publish Anything I've Written.

You Musn’t Be Afraid Of The Dark.’ ‘i’m Not,’ Said Shadow. ‘i’m Afraid Of The People In The Dark.

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