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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.

-Neil Gaiman

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We Do Not Always

Neil Gaiman

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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.

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Don't Start Anything You're Not Prepared To Finish.

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

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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.

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.

It Occurs To Me That The Peculiarity Of Most Things We Think Of As Fragile Is How Tough They Truly Are. There Were Tricks We Did With Eggs, As Children, To Show How They Were, In Reality, Tiny Load-bearing Marble Halls; While The Beat Of The Wings Of A Butterfly In The Right Place, We Are Told, Can Create A Hurricane Across An Ocean. Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkable Difficult To Kill.

The Best Thing—in Shadow's Opinion, Perhaps The Only Good Thing—about Being In Prison Was A Feeling Of Relief. The Feeling That He'd Plunged As Low As He Could Plunge And He'd Hit Bottom. He Didn't Worry That The Man Was Going To Get Him, Because The Man Had Got Him. He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring, Because Yesterday Had Brought It.

Bod Quite Liked Crows. He Thought They Were Funny And He Liked The Way They Helped To Keep The Graveyard Tidy.

I Have Heard The Languages Of Apocalypse, And Now I Shall Embrace The Silence.

Dahling, When God Put Teeth In Your Mouth, He Ruined A Perfectly Good Arsehole.

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

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.

You Got To Understand The God Thing. It’s Not Magic. It’s About Being You, But The You That People Believe In. It’s About Being The Concentrated, Magnified, Essence Of You. It’s About Becoming Thunder, Or The Power Of A Running Horse, Or Wisdom. You Take All The Belief And Become Bigger, Cooler, More Than Human. You Crystallize.” He Paused. “and Then One Day They Forget About You, And They Don’t Believe In You, And They Don’t Sacrifice, And They Don’t Care, And The Next Thing You Know You’re Running A Three-card Monte Game On The Corner Of Broadway And Forty-third.

You Don't Get Explanations In Real Life. You Just Get Moments That Are Absolutely, Utterly, Inexplicably Odd.

It Sounded Like A Piece Of Blackboard Being Dragged Over The Nails Of A Wall Of Severed Fingers.

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

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

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

How Big Are Souls Anyway?" Asked Coraline. The Other Mother Sat Down At The Kitchen Table And Leaned Against The Back Wall, Saying Nothing. She Picked At Her Teeth With A Long Crimson-varnished Fingernail, Then She Tapped The Finger, Gently, Tap-tap-tap Against The Polished Black Surface Of Her Black Button Eyes.

Amy: This Time Can We... Lose The Bunk Beds? The Doctor: No Bunk Beds Are Cool, A Bed With A Ladder, You Can't Beat That!

However You Must Have Sensed A Lurking 'but' Skulking Beneath My Happy, Blithe, And Chipper Exterior. A Minuscule Vexation, Like The Teeniest Lump Of Raw Liver Sticking To The Inside Of My Boot.

I See Libraries And Librarians As Frontline Soldiers In The War Against Illiteracy And The Lack Of Imagination.

Richard Wondered How The Marquis Managed To Make Being Pushed Around In A Wheelchair Look Like A Romantic And Swashbuckling Thing To Do.

So, Having Found A Lady, Could You Not Have Come To Her Aid, Or Left Her Alone? Why Drag Her Into Your Foolishness?' 'love,' He Explained. She Looked At Him With Eyes The Blue Of The Sky. 'i Hope You Choke On It,' She Said, Flatly.

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

Reading Is Important. Books Are Important. Librarians Are Important. (also, Libraries Are Not Child-care Facilities, But Sometimes Feral Children Raise Themselves Among The Stacks.)

We Were Never Lovers, And We Never Will Be, Now. I Do Not Regret That, However. I Regret The Conversations We Never Had, The Time We Did Not Spend Together. I Regret That I Never Told Him That He Made Me Happy, When I Was In His Company. The World Was The Better For His Being In It. These Things Alone Do I Now Regret: Things Left Unsaid. And He Is Gone, And I Am Old.

Names Come And Names Go.

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

I Wondered If That Was True: If They Were All Really Children Wrapped Up In Adult Bodies, Like Children's Books Hidden In The Middle Of Dull, Long Adult Books, The Kind With No Pictures Or Conversations.

That Doesn't Happen," She Explained. "stars Fall. They Don't Go Back Up Again." "you Could Be The First," He Told Her.

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.

As Far As I'm Concerned, The World Is Composed Of Stories. For Architects, The World Is Composed Of Buildings, For Actors The World Is Composed Of Theatres, Or Whatever... For Me, The World Is Simply Composed Of Stories, When I Look, That's What I See.

There Are A Hundred Things She Has Tried To Chase Away The Things She Won't Remember And That She Can't Even Let Herself Think About Because That's When The Birds Scream And The Worms Crawl And Somewhere In Her Mind It's Always Raining A Slow Endless Drizzle.

A God's Relationship To The World, Even A World In Which He Was Walking, Was About As Emotionally Connected As That Of A Computer Gamer Playing With Knowledge Of The Overall Shape Of The Game And Armed With A Complete Set Of Cheat Codes.

I Loved The Sound Of The Words, Even If I Was Not Entirely Sure What All Of Them Meant.

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.

For Some, It Was Easier To Take The Leap From The Leafless Tree And Dance On Nothing Until Dancing Was Done.

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.

That Which Is Dreamed Can Never Be Lost, Can Never Be Undreamed.

Short Stories Are Tiny Windows Into Other Worlds And Other Minds And Other Dreams

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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