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When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

-Neil Gaiman

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When I Was A

Neil Gaiman

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When I Was A Kid, We Actually Lived In A House That Had Been Divided In Two At One Point, Which Meant That One Room In Our House Opened Up Onto A Brick Wall. And I Was Convinced All I Had To Do Was Just Open It The Right Way And It Wouldn't Be A Brick Wall. So I'd Sidle Over To The Door And I'd Pull It Open.

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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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It’s An Artist’s Job To Show People The World They Live In. We Hold Up Mirrors.

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.

Sometimes Human Beings Are Very Much Like Bees. Bees Are Fiercely Protective Of Their Hive, Provided You Are Outside It. Once You’re In, The Workers Sort Of Assume That It Must Have Been Cleared By Management And Take No Notice; Various Freeloading Insects Have Evolved A Mellifluous Existence Because Of This Very Fact. Humans Act The Same Way.

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You Can't Trust Other People. If It's Important, You Have To Do It Yourself.

As Sure As Water's Wet And Days Are Long And A Friend Will Always Disappoint You In The End.

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Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

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And Life Is A Good Thing For A Writer. It's Where We Get Our Raw Material, For A Start. We Quite Like To Stop And Watch It.

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So The Day Became One Of Waiting, Which Was, He Knew, A Sin: Moments Were To Be Experienced; Waiting Was A Sin Against Both The Time That Was Still To Come And The Moments One Was Currently Disregarding.

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He Was Having More Fun Than A Barrelful Of Monkeys.* *several Years Earlier Spider Had Actually Been Tremendously Disappointed By A Barrelful Of Monkeys. It Had Done Nothing He Had Considered Particularly Entertaining, Apart From Emit Interesting Noises, And Eventually, Once The Noises Had Stopped And The Monkeys Were No Longer Doing Anything At All—except Possibly On An Organic Level—had Needed To Be Disposed Of In The Dead Of Night.

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

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Nobody Gets Through Life Without Losing A Few Things On The Way.

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The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky; The World Had Never Seemed So World.

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You Could Fire A Machine Gun Randomly Through The Pages Of Lord Of The Rings And Never Hit Any Women.

Why Do I Have This Imagination? It's The Only One I've Got!

Tristan And Yvaine Were Happy Together. Not Forever-after, For Time, The Thief, Eventually Takes All Things Into His Dusty Storehouse, But They Were Happy, As These Things Go, For A Long While

For A Moment He Thought She Was About To Hit Him, Which Would Have Been Bad, Or Even Start Crying, Which Would Have Been Much, Much Worse.

Because If You Don't Stand Up For The Stuff You Don't Like, When They Come For The Stuff You Do Like, You've Already Lost.

Freedom Of Speech

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

Bod Was Thrilled. He Imagined A Future In Which He Could Read Everything, In Which All Stories Could Be Opened And Discovered.

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Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell.

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The World Seemed To Shimmer A Little At The Edges.

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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?

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I Learned To Write By Writing.

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

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Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

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I Think That The Biggest, Quickest And Hardest Thing To Learn For A Writer Is That What We Think Of As The Unchanging Verities Of Story Are A Load Of Bollocks. Absolute Rubbish. There Are No Unchanging Verities.

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

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Tomorrow May Be Hell, But Today Was A Good Writing Day, And On The Good Writing Days Nothing Else Matters.

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

If There's One Thing That A Study Of History Has Taught Us, It Is That Things Can Always Get Worse.

Things Need Not Have Happened To Be True. Tales And Adventures Are The Shadow Truths That Will Endure When Mere Facts Are Dust And Ashes And Forgotten.

I Started Out Writing Much More Science Fictiony Stuff And Writing About Science Fiction.

Sometimes You Wake Up. Sometimes The Fall Kills You. And Sometimes, When You Fall, You Fly.

I've Been Blogging Since February Of 2001. When I Started Blogging, It Was A Dinosaur Blog. It Was Me And A Handful Of Tyrannosaurs. We'd Be Writing Blog Entries Like, 'the Tyrannosaurus Is Getting Grumpy.'

Entropy And Optimism: The Twin Forces That Make The World Go Around.

Stories Are Made Up By People Who Make Them Up. If They Work, They Get Retold. There's The Magic Of It.

Friday's A Free Day. A Woman's Day.

You See, The Outcome Of The Battle Is Unimportant. What Matters Is The Chaos, And The Slaughter.

It's Easy, There's A Trick To It, You Do It Or You Die.

I Will Write In Words Of Fire. I Will Write Them On Your Skin. I Will Write About Desire. Write Beginnings, Write Of Sin. You’re The Book I Love The Best, Your Skin Only Holds My Truth, You Will Be A Palimpsest Lines Of Age Rewriting Youth. You Will Not Burn Upon The Pyre. Or Be Buried On The Shelf. You’re My Letter To Desire: And You’ll Never Read Yourself. I Will Trace Each Word And Comma As The Final Dusk Descends, You’re My Tale Of Dreams And Drama, Let Us Find Out How It Ends.

Because There Are Mysteries. Because There Are Things That People Are Forbidden To Speak About. Because There Are Things They Do Not Remember.

I Believe That Anyone Who Claims To Know What's Going On Will Lie About The Little Things Too.

Never A Possession, Always The Possessor, With Skin As Pale As Smoke, And Eyes Tawny And Sharp As Yellow Wine: Desire Is Everything You Have Ever Wanted. Whoever You Are. Whatever You Are. Everything.

I Hope You Will Have A Wonderful Year, That You'll Dream Dangerously And Outrageously, That You'll Make Something That Didn't Exist Before You Made It, That You Will Be Loved And That You Will Be Liked, And That You Will Have People To Love And To Like In Return. And, Most Importantly (because I Think There Should Be More Kindness And More Wisdom In The World Right Now), That You Will, When You Need To Be, Be Wise, And That You Will Always Be Kind.

The Lovely Thing About Writing Comics For So Many Years Is That Comics Is A Medium That Is Mistaken For A Genre. It's Not That There Are Not Genres Within Comics, But Because Comics Tend To Be Regarded As A Genre In Itself, Content Becomes Secondary; As Long As I Was Doing A Comic, People Would Pick It Up.

Like Some Kind Of Particularly Tenacious Vampire The Short Story Refuses To Die, And Seems At This Point In Time To Be A Wonderful Length For Our Generation.

There Was Once A Young Man Who Wished To Gain His Heart’s Desire.

I Remembered That, And, Remembering That, I Remembered Everything.

When I Was A Kid And A Young Man I Read Everything. When I Was About 23, I Was Incredibly Lucky In That I Wound Up With Several Book Review Columns, Which Meant That I Had To Read Huge Amounts Of Stuff That Was Outside My Experience And Outside My Comfort Zone. I Think Every Young Writer Should Be Forced To Read The Kind Of Stuff They Would Not Normally Read For Pleasure.

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.

Going To Comic-con For Me Is Always Hard And Weird, So It Just Makes Me Feel Guilty. There's Always A Hundre Thousand People Out There Who Have Copies Of Things That I've Written And They Really Want Signed And They're Not Going To Get Them Signed.

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.

It Felt Like A Small Forever.

I Loved Writing A Book In Which, In Some Ways, It's Very, Very Classical, And In Some Ways I'm Breaking Lots Of Rules About What You Can Do And What You Can't Do.

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's Not The Fish You Catch, It's The Peace Of Mind You Take Home At The End Of The Day.

Everything That Is,casts A Shadow

Really, He Thought, If You Couldn't Trust A Poet To Offer Sensible Advice, Who Could You Trust?

The Ducks In St James's Park Are So Used To Being Fed Bread By Secret Agents Meeting Clandestinely That They Have Developed Their Own Pavlovian Reaction. Put A St James's Park Duck In A Laboratory Cage And Show It A Picture Of Two Men -- One Usually Wearing A Coat With A Fur Collar, The Other Something Sombre With A Scarf -- And It'll Look Up Expectantly.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

I Want To Go Home. Then He Mentally Underlined The Last Sentence Three Times, Rewrote It In Huge Letters In Red Ink, And Circled It Before Putting A Number Of Exclamation Marks Next To It In His Mental Margin.

Exclamation Marks

Something Feels Weird," He Told Laura. That Wasn't The First Thing He Said To Her. The First Thing Was "i Love You," Because It's A Good Thing To Say If You Can Mean It, And Shadow Did.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Don't Worry About Trying To Develop A Style. Style Is What You Can't Help Doing. If You Write Enough, You Draw Enough, You'll Have A Style, Whether You Want It Or Not. Don't Worry About Whether You're "commercial". Tell Your Own Stories, Draw Your Own Pictures. Let Other People Follow You.

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.

A Good Writer Should Be Able To Write Comedic Work That Made You Laugh, And Scary Stuff That Made You Scared, And Fantasy Or Science Fiction That Imbued You With A Sense Of Wonder, And Mainstream Journalism That Gave You Clear And Concise Information In A Way That You Wanted It.

Somebody Said That Writers Are Like Otters... Otters, If They Do A Trick And You Give Them A Fish, The Next Time They'll Do A Better Trick Or A Different Trick Because They'd Already Done That One. And Writers Tend To Be Otters. Most Of Us Get Pretty Bored Doing The Same Trick. We've Done It, So Let's Do Something Different.

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

I Was Not Scared Of Anything, When I Read My Book.

Each Person Who Ever Was Or Is Or Will Be Has A Song. It Isn't A Song That Anybody Else Wrote. It Has Its Own Melody, It Has Its Own Words. Very Few People Get To Sing Their Song. Most Of Us Fear That We Cannot Do It Justice With Our Voices, Or That Our Words Are Too Foolish Or Too Honest, Or Too Odd. So People Live Their Song Instead.

It Would Have Been Hard For Fat Charlie To Say Exactly When The Accumulation Of Birds On The Wire Mesh Moved From Interesting To Terrifying. It Was Somewhere In The First Hundred Or So, Anyway. And It Was In The Way They Didn't Coo, Or Caw, Or Trill, Or Song. They Simply Landed On The Wire, And They Watched Him.

When You're Starting Off As A Young Writer, You Look At All The Stuff That's Gone Before And The Stuff That's Influenced You, And You Reach The Ladle Of Your Imagination Into This Bubbling Stew Pot Of All Of This Stuff, And You Pour It Out. And That's Where You Start From.

Because, If One Is Writing Novels Today, Concentrating On The Beauty Of The Prose Is Right Up There With Concentrating On Your Semi-colons, For Wasted Effort.

I Would Read. I Would Explore

The World Always Seems Brighter When You've Just Made Something That Wasn't There Before.

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Brent Scowcroft

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