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Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

-Neil Gaiman

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Words Can Wound, And

Neil Gaiman

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Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

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The Stuff You Bring Back From Dreams Is Free.

Libraries Are The Thin Red Line Between Civilization And Barbarism.

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.

She Was Witchy, Yes, And In Charge Of A Cauldron Roiling With Ideas And Stories, But She Always Gave The Impression That The Stories, The Ones She Wrote And Wrote So Very Well And So Wisely, Had Simply Happened, And That All She Had Done Was To Hold The Pen. (on Diana Wynne Jones)

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.

Where Magic Is Concerned, There Is Always An Initial Decision, An Initial Willingness To Let It Enter Your Life. If That Is Not There Neither Is Magic.

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

Books Make Great Gifts Because They Have Whole Worlds Inside Of Them.

I Don't Know Much More Than I Did When I Was Alive. Most Of The Stuff I Know Now That I Didn't Know Then I Can't Put Into Words.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

It Is Sometimes A Mistake To Climb; It Is Always A Mistake Never Even To Make The Attempt.

There Are So Many Places We Have Not Yet Seen. So Many People Still To Meet.

If You Are Pointing Out One Of The Things A Story Is About, Then You Are Very Probably Right; If You Are Pointing Out The Only Thing A Story Is About You Are Very Probably Wrong - Even If You're The Author.

I Think I Could Be A Perfectly Decent Cat. I've Been Around Cats Long Enough To Know What The Rules Of Being A Cat Are. When All Else Fails, Wash. And I Think I Could Master The Thing That Cats Do, Where They Stalk Away Pretending They Meant To Do Whatever It Was In The First Place; Showing Their Wounded Dignity.

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Tends To Be Really Good At Making Outlines And Sticking To Them. I'm Very Good At Doing That, But I Don't Like It. It Sort Of Takes A Lot Of The Fun Out.

If People Are Standing Up There Saying, My Football Team Just Won With Help From God, Then Obviously God Just Pissed Over The Other Team.

I Would Not Describe Myself As A Political Writer Except In The Sense That The Personal Is Political, Which Is Something That I Do Strongly Believe. And In That Sense American Gods Is A Very Personal Novel And A Political Novel. I Was Trying To Describe The Experience Of Coming To America As An Immigrant, The Experience Of Watching The Way That America Tends To Eat Other Cultures.

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.

Dreams Are Composed Of Many Things, My Son. Of Images And Hopes, Of Fears And Memories. Memories Of The Past, And Memories Of The Future.

I Don't Believe In "writer's Block". I Try And Deal With Getting Stuck By Having More Than One Thing To Work On At A Time. And By Knowing That Even A Hundred Bad Words That Didn't Exist Before Is Forward Progress.

She Was Also An Adult, And When Adults Fight Children, Adults Always Win.

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

What Do Stars Do? They Shine.

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

Things Bloosom In Their Time. They Bud And Bloom, Blossom And Fade. Everything In Its Time.

I'm Bored," She Said. "learn How To Tap-dance," He Suggested, Without Turning Around.

One Cannot Begin A New Dream Without Abandoning The Last [one].

I Only Have Two Kinds Of Dreams: The Bad And The Terrible. Bad Dreams I Can Cope With. They're Just Nightmares, And The End Eventually. I Wake Up. The Terrible Dreams Are The Good Dreams. In My Terrible Dreams, Everything Is Fine. I Am Still With The Company. I Still Look Like Me. None Of The Last Five Years Ever Happened. Sometimes I'm Married. Once I Even Had Kids. I Even Knew Their Names. Everything's Wonderful And Normal And Fine. And Then I Wake Up, And I'm Still Me. And I'm Still Here. And That Is Truly Terrible.

I Kept Starting 'anansi Boys' As A Movie And Stopping, And Eventually Wrote The Novel And Was Happy.

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.

The Strangest Part Of Being So Well Known Is Definitely Getting A New Yorker Profile. It's A Wonderful, Strange Process, Like Seeing Yourself Through A Distorting Mirror.

I Think That Pretty Much Every Form Of Fiction (i’d Include Fantasy, Obviously) Can Actually Be A Real Escape From Places Where You Feel Bad, And From Bad Places. It Can Be A Safe Place You Go, Like Going On Holiday, And It Can Be Somewhere That, While You’ve Escaped, Actually Teaches You Things You Need To Know When You Go Back, That Gives You Knowledge And Armour And Tools To Change The Bad Place You Were In. So No, They’re Not Escapist. They’re Escape.

It Seemed To Coraline That It Was Crouching, And Staring Down At Her, As If It Were Not Really A House But Only The Idea Of A House—and The Person Who Had Had The Idea, She Was Certain, Was Not A Good Person.

I Felt Very Much Like A Hooker Who Had Just Been Told She Was A Lady Of The Evening.

Everything Here Is So Weak, Little Girl. Everything Breaks So Easily. They Want Such Simple Things.

I Am Fascinated A) By Transgressive Art And B) What Happens Beyond The Boundaries.

I Don't Know Why People Would Want To Have Lunch With Writers. I've Eaten With Writers. We Have Appalling Table Manners, And Rarely Say Anything Other Than 'pass The Salt' Or 'if You're Not Going To Eat That, Can I Have It?'

I'm More Or Less Happily Writing Chapter Six Of The Graveyard Book. I Say More Or Less As I'm At That Place Where I Hope That The Book Knows What It's Doing Because Right Now I Don't Have A Clue - I'm Writing One Scene After Another Like A Man Walking Through A Valley In Thick Fog, Just Able To See The Path A Little Way Ahead, But With No Idea Where It's Actually Going To Lead Him.

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.

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.

None Of Us Know Where Our Stories Come From. That's Why Writers Make Fun Of People Who Ask Us Where We Get Our Ideas... Because We Don't Know.

It May Help To Understand Human Affairs To Be Clear That Most Of The Great Triumphs And Tragedies Of History Are Caused, Not By People Being Fundamentally Good Or Fundamentally Bad, But By People Being Fundamentally People.

There Is Something About Riding A Unicorn, For Those People Who Still Can, Which Is Unlike Any Other Experience: Exhilarating, And Intoxicating, And Fine.

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.

I Loved All Books That I Could Read, And I Never Knew If I Was Ready For It Until I Tried To Read It, So I Tried To Read Everything.

I Have A Feeling,’ He Said, ‘i Have A Feeling That We Were Meant To Be Together. That We Have Fought The Good Fight, Side By Side, In The Past Or In The Future, I Do Not Know. I Am A Rational Man, But I Have Learned The Value Of A Good Companion, And From The Moment I Clapped Eyes On You, I Knew I Trusted You As Well As I Do Myself. Yes, I Want You With Me.

You Hurt. It's Okay. I Hurt Too. Hold My Hand.

He..." Richard Began. "the Marquis. Well, You Know, To Be Honest, He Seems A Little Bit Dodgy To Me." Door Stopped. The Steps Dead-ended In A Rough Brick Wall. "mm," She Agreed. "he's A Little Bit Dodgy In The Same Way That Rats Are A Little Bit Covered In Fur.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

The Best Thing About Writing Fiction Is That Moment Where The Story Catches Fire And Comes To Life On The Page, And Suddenly It All Makes Sense And You Know What It's About And Why You're Doing It And What These People Are Saying And Doing, And You Get To Feel Like Both The Creator And The Audience. Everything Is Suddenly Both Obvious And Surprising ("but Of Course That's Why He Was Doing That, And That Means That...") And It's Magic And Wonderful And Strange.

I Decided That I Would Do My Best In The Future Not To Write Books Just For Money. If You Didn't Get The Money Then You Didn't Have Anything. If I Did The Work I Was Proud Of And I Didn't Get The Money, At Least I'd Have The Work.

I Believe In A Personal God Who Cares About Me And Worries And Oversees Everything I Do. I Believe In An Impersonal God Who Set The Universe In Motion And Went Off To Hang With Her Girlfriends And Doesn't Even Know That I'm Alive. I Believe In An Empty And Godless Universe Of Causal Chaos, Background Noise, And Sheer Blind Luck... 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.

She Sat Down On One Of Her Grandmother's Uncomfortable Armchairs, And The Cat Sprang Up Into Her Lap And Made Itself Comfortable. The Light That Came Through The Picture Window Was Daylight, Real Golden Late-afternoon Daylight, Not A White Mist Light. The Sky Was A Robin's-egg Blue, And Coraline Could See Trees And, Beyond The Trees, Green Hills, Which Faded On The Horizon Into Purples And Grays. The Sky Had Never Seemed So Sky, The World Had Never Seemed So World ... Nothing, She Thought, Had Ever Been So Interesting.

I Want To Write A Play. I'd Like To Do An Original Musical. I Should Probably Put Together A Poetry Collection.

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

No, Look, There's A Blue Box. It's Bigger On The Inside Than It Is On The Outside. It Can Go Anywhere In Time And Space And Sometimes Even Where It's Meant To Go. And When It Turns Up, There's A Bloke In It Called The Doctor And There Will Be Stuff Wrong And He Will Do His Best To Sort It Out And He Will Probably Succeed Cos He's Awesome. Now Sit Down, Shut Up, And Watch 'blink'.

Dreams Shape The World

It's Just I Might Get Distracted, And I Get Lost Kind Of Easily, And Sometimes I Have Really Bad Days...when, You Know, I Just Want To Hide Or Scream Or Bleed Or Something, And...all That...

I Love Learning. I Tend To Stop Doing Things Once I Get Good At Them, And To Try Something Else I'm Not As Good At, Leaving A Bunch Of Fans Going, "but He Was Really Good At That. Why Isn't He Still Doing It?"

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

You Are Young, And In Love. Every Young Man In Your Position Is The Most Miserable Young Man Who Ever Lived.

Miserable Person

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.

You're A Poem?' I Repeated. She Chewed Her Lower Lip. 'if You Want. I Am A Poem, Or I Am A Pattern, Or A Race Of People Whose Whose World Was Swallowed By The Sea.' 'isn't It Hard To Be Three Things At The Same Time?' 'what's Your Name?' 'enn.' 'so You Are Enn,' She Said. 'and You Are A Male. And You Are A Biped. Is It Hard To Be Three Things At The Same Time?

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

Whereas There Are Lots Of Good Novels Out There; There Are A Few Good Movies Out There. People Have Been Writing Great Poems For Years, But There Aren't A Lot Of Good Comics. I Like Trying To Write Them.

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.

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.

I'm Going To Go Home. Everything Is Going To Be Normal Again. Boring Again. Wonderful Again.

My Parents Would Frisk Me Before Family Events, And Find The Book, And Lock It In The Car. And Then Be Disappointed Where, Somewhere At The Event, I Would Find A Book And Sit Under A Table Where Nobody Could Get Me And Go Back Into Book Land.

Let's Start A New Tomorrow, Today.

Cherish Every Moment

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful.

I Personally Have A Great Deal Of Respect For Readers. I Have A Great Deal Of Respect For The Human Race. I Think Most People Can Tell The Difference Between Fiction And Fact. I Think That The Action Of Writing About Something Does Not Condone It. The Best Thing I Can Ever Hope To Do Is Provide Good Questions, And I Think I Do That. I Hope I Do.

You Think You're Being Given All Of These Things: Phones That Can Communicate With Other Devices, Car Service That's Better Than A Taxi, All Of These Amazing Things That Are Available To You At Any Time. It Isn't Until You've Swum Across The River That You Can Start To See The Negative Aspects Of It All.

Here Are Your Instructions, Crowley. And Suddenly He Knew. He Hated That. They Could Just As Easily Have Told Him, They Didn't Suddenly Have To Drop Chilly Knowledge Straight Into His Brain.

My Parents Would Frisk Me Before Family Events. Before Weddings, Funerals, Bar Mitzvahs, And What Have You. Because If They Didn't, Then The Book Would Be Hidden Inside Some Pocket Or Other And As Soon As Whatever It Was Got Under Way I'd Be Found In A Corner. That Was Who I Was...that Was What I Did. I Was The Kid With The Book.

I Think I Would Rather Be A Man Than A God. We Don’t Need Anyone To Believe In Us. We Just Keep Going Anyhow. It’s What We Do.

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

I Would Not Wish To Marry Someone Who Had Already Been Married. It Would Be,' She Opined, 'like Having Someone Else Break In One's Own Pony.

With American Gods I Was Trying Very, Very Consciously - There Was A Level At Which It Was A Little Like Trying To Write A Novel In French - You Know, "this Novel Is To Be Written In American."

He Stared Up At The Stars: And It Seemed To Him Then That They Were Dancers, Stately And Graceful, Performing A Dance Almost Infinite In Its Complexity.

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.

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.

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?

I'd Love To Write Some Porn, But I Don't Know If I Have The Right Engines. When I Was A Young Man And I Was Tempted To Write Porn, Imaginary Parents Would Appear Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing; Just About The Point That I Managed To Banish The Imaginary Parents, Real Children Would Lean Over My Shoulder And Read What I Was Writing.

All Good Technology Should Be Used To Piss Off People's Parents.

There Was No Moon But The Night Sky Was A Riot Of Crisp And Glittering Autumn Stars. There Were Streetlights Too And Lights On Buildings And On Bridges Which Looked Like Earthbound Stars And They Glimmered Repeated As They Were Reflected With The City In The Night Water Of The Thames. It’s Fairyland Thought Richard.

Honestly, If You're Given The Choice Between Armageddon Or Tea, You Don't Say "what Kind Of Tea?"

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.

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.

Human Beings Do Not Relate To Written Words In The Same Way That They Will Relate To Spoken Words. They Do Not Relate To Music In The Same Way That They Do To Pictures. It's All Different Parts Of Our Head, Different Parts Of Our Minds Processing This.

Have You Ever Been In Love? Horrible Isn't It? It Makes You So Vulnerable. It Opens Your Chest And It Opens Up Your Heart And It Means That Someone Can Get Inside You And Mess You Up.

Not Knowing Everything Is All That Makes It Ok, Sometimes.

Knowing Everything

There's An Expression, Deja Vu, That Means That You Feel Like You've Been Somewhere Before, That You've Somehow Already Dreamed It Or Experienced It In Your Mind.

Daisy Looked Up At Him With The Kind Of Expression That Jesus Might Have Given Someone Who Had Just Explained That He Was Probably Allergic To Bread And Fishes, So Could He Possibly Do Him A Quick Chicken Salad.

For Me, I Would Rather Read A Good Book, From A Contented Author. I Don't Really Care What It Takes To Produce That.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

Be Boring, Knowing Everything. You Have To Give All That Stuff Up If You're Going To Muck About Here.

Knowing Everything

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.

You Don't Pass Or Fail At Being A Person, Dear.

Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell.

I Walk Across The Dreaming Sands Under The Pale Moon: Through The Dreams Of Countries And Cities, Past Dreams Of Places Long Gone And Times Beyond Recall.

I’m An Author. We Don’t Want To Lead. We Don’t Need To Follow. We Stay Home And Make Stuff Up And Write It Down And Send It Out Into The World, And Get Inside People’s Heads. Perhaps We Change The World And Perhaps We Don’t. We Never Know. We Just Make Stuff Up.

Soon Enough His Head Would Be Swimming With Tales Of Derring-do And High Adventure, Tales Of Beautiful Maidens Kissed, Of Evildoers Shot With Pistols Or Fought With Swords, Of Bags Of Gold, Of Diamonds As Big As The Tip Of Your Thumb, Of Lost Cities And Of Vast Mountains, Of Steam-trains And Clipper Ships, Of Pampas, Oceans, Deserts, Tundra.

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

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.

Yes. Growing Up Is Highly Overrated. Just Be An Author.

Sometimes The Way To Do What You Hope To Do Will Be Clear Cut, And Sometimes It Will Be Almost Impossible To Decide Whether Or Not You Are Doing The Correct Thing, Because You'll Have To Balance Your Goals And Hopes With Feeding Yourself, Paying Debts, Finding Work, Settling For What You Can Get.

Never Trust A Demon. He Has A Hundred Motives For Anything He Does... Ninety-nine Of Them, At Least, Are Malevolent.

I'm Just Going To Stay Here, In The Darkness Under The Arch. I Can Hear You All Out There, Trip-trapping, Trip-trapping Over My Bridge. Oh Yes, I Can Hear You. But I'm Not Coming Out.

To Absent Friends, Lost Loves, Old Gods, And The Season Of Mists; And May Each And Every One Of Us Always Give The Devil His Due.

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.

A Typical National World Weekly Would Tell The World How Jesus' Face Was Seen On A Big Mac Bun Bought By Someone From Des Moines, With An Artist's Impression Of The Bun; How Elvis Presley Was Recently Sighted Working In A Burger Lord In Des Moines; How Listening To Elvis Records Cured A Des Moines Housewife's Cancer; How The Spate Of Werewolves Infesting The Midwest Are The Offspring Of Noble Pioneer Women Raped By Bigfoot; And That Elvis Was Taken By Space Aliens In 1976 Because He Was Too Good For This World. Remarkably, One Of These Stories Is Indeed True.

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

Real Life Doesn't Have To Be Convincing, But Fiction Does.

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.

But How Can You Walk Away From Something And Still Come Back To It?

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

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.

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.

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.

The Marquis Sighed. "i Thought It Was Just A Legend," He Said. "like The Alligators In The Sewers Of New York City." Old Bailey Nodded, Sagely: "what, The Big White Buggers? They're Down There. I Had A Friend Lost A Head To One Of Them." A Moment Of Silence. Old Naeiley Handed The Statue Back To The Marquis. Then He Raised His Hand, And Snapped It, Like A Crocodile Hand, At The Carabas. "it Was Ok," Gurned Old Bailey With A Grin That Was Most Terrible To Behold. "he Had Another.

In Hollywood The Man Who Cleans Your Pool Is An Actor. The Man Who Sells You Your Copy Of Variety Is An Actor. I Don't Think There's A Real Person Left In The Place.

If You Were Close Enough To Her Ruby-red Lips You Would Hear Her Say, 'i Will Rise Now And Go About The City In The Streets, And In The Broad Ways I Will Seek The One I Love.' She Is Whispering That, And She Whispers, 'by Night On My Bed I Sought Him Whom My Soul Loveth. Let Him Kiss Me With The Kisses Of His Mouth. My Beloved Is Mine And I Am His.

Without Dreams, There Could Be No Despair.

I Watched My Life As If It Were Happening To Someone Else. My Son Died. And I Was Hurt, But I Watched My Hurt, And Even Relished It, A Little, For Now I Could Write A Real Death, A True Loss. My Heart Was Broken By My Dark Lady, And I Wept, In My Room, Alone; But While I Wept, Somewhere Inside I Smiled.

But I Have Always Thought That These Tulips Must Have Had Names. They Were Red, And Orange And Red, And Red And Orange And Yellow, Like The Ember In A Nursery Fire Of A Winter's Evening. I Remember Them.

Why Does She Want Me?" Coraline Asked The Cat. "why Does She Want Me To Stay Here With Her?" "she Wants Something To Love, I Think," Said The Cat. "something That Isn't Her. She Might Want Something To Eat As Well. It's Hard To Tell With Creatures Like That.

All Writers Have This Vague Hope That The Elves Will Come In The Night And Finish Any Stories.

Sometimes An Old Idea Gets Relegated To The Back Of The Line In The Mad Delight Of A New Idea, One You've Never Had Before, And That You Write Fast In The Thrill Of The New. No Rules. Just Stories, And You Tell As Many Of Them As You Can.

And Then It Went, And Time Passed Properly Once More, Every Second Following Every Other Second Just Like They're Meant To.

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.

Songs Remain. They Last...a Song Can Last Long After The Events And The People In It Are Dust And Dreams And Gone. That's The Power Of Songs.

Nice' In A Bodyguard Is About As Useful As The Ability To Regurgitate Whole Lobsters.

This Is A Roadside Attraction,' Said Wednesday. 'one Of The Finest. Which Means It Is A Place Of Power.

Do The Stuff That Only You Can Do. The Urge, Starting Out, Is To Copy. And That's Not A Bad Thing. Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People. But The One Thing That You Have That Nobody Else Has Is You. Your Voice, Your Mind, Your Story, Your Vision. So Write And Draw And Build And Play And Dance And Live As Only You Can. The Moment That You Feel That, Just Possibly, You're Walking Down The Street Naked, Exposing Too Much Of Your Heart And Your Mind And What Exists On The Inside, Showing Too Much Of Yourself. That's The Moment You May Be Starting To Get It Right.

Stories Are Webs, Interconnected Strand To Strand, And You Follow Each Story To The Center, Because The Center Is The End. Each Person Is A Strand Of The Story.

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.

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

Start Telling The Stories That Only You Can Tell, Because There'll Always Be Better Writers Than You And There'll Always Be Smarter Writers Than You. There Will Always Be People Who Are Much Better At Doing This Or Doing That - But You Are The Only You.

Nobody Actually Looks Like What They Really Are On The Inside.

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

He Felt Her Heart Beating Against His Chest. The Moment Began To Transmute, And He Wondered If There Was Something He Should Do. He Wondered If He Should Kiss Her. He Wondered If He Wanted To Kiss Her, And He Realized That He Truly Didn't Know.

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.

You Don't Have To Stay Anywhere Forever.

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.

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

I Don't Just Randomly Kill People... I Kill People When It's Funny.

I Miss You', He Admitted. 'i'm Here', She Said. 'that's When I Miss You Most. When You're Here. When You Aren't Here, When You're Just A Ghost Of The Past Or A Dream From Another Life, It's Easier Then.

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.

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.

Traveling Through The Dragon's Den, It Has Just Been Explained That Haroun, The Ifrit, Has Been Caught In A Mirror Trap. Here Is The Passage That Follows: "so," Said Silas. "now There Are Only Three Of Us." "and A Pig," Said Kandar [the Mummy] "why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, With A Wolf-tongue, Through Wolf Teeth. "why The Pig?" "it's Lucky," Said Kandar. Miss Lupescu Growled, Unconvinced. "did Haroun Have A Pig?" Asked Kandar, Simply.

Any Way, Death Is So Final, Isn't It? "is It?" Asked Richard. "sometimes," Said The Marquis De Carabas. And They Went Down.

Write Or Draw Or Build Or Sing Or Live As Only You Can. And I Hope, Somewhere In The Next Year, You Surprise Yourself.

The Best Way To Show People True Things Is From A Direction That They Had Not Imagined The Truth Coming.

A Nice, Easy Place For Freedom Of Speech To Be Eroded Is Comics, Because Comics Are A Natural Target Whenever An Election Comes Up.

Freedom Of Speech

I Always Figure There Are Novels And Short Stories, And In Those, I'm God. No One Tells Me What To Do. I Don't Have To Lose A Page, Or Cut Anything, It's Just Mine. Then There Are Other Things Where You're Up Against Realities.

Nobody's American," Said Wednesday. "not Originally. That's My Point.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

It's Not Irrelevant, Those Moments Of Connection, Those Places Where Fiction Saves Your Life. It's The Most Important Thing There Is.

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

There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

The World Is Always Ending, For Someone.

I'm Never, I Hope, Stupid Enough To Believe That Twitter Or Blogging Or Any Of This Stuff Is A Substitute For Actually Doing The Work Or Writing A Book.

Nobody Died. How Can You Kill An Idea? How Can You Kill The Personification Of An Action?" "then What Died? Who Are You Mourning?" "a Point Of View.

We Make Choices. No One Else Can Live Our Lives For Us. And We Must Confront And Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

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

I Wish I Could Buy Time - Just Write A Cheque, And A Few Days Later A Brown Cardboard Box Would Arrive At The Door Containing Three Months (along With An Extra Bonus Sunny Weekend For Being A Good Customer).

My Bed Was Pushed Up Hard Against The Wall Just Below The Window. I Loved To Sleep With The Windows Open. Rainy Nights Were The Best Of All: I Would Open My Windows And Put My Head On My Pillow And Close My Eyes And Feel The Wind On My Face And Listen To The Trees Sway And Creak. There Would Be Raindrops Blown Onto My Face, Too, If I Was Lucky, And I Would Imagine That I Was In My Boat On The Ocean And That It Was Swaying With The Swell Of The Sea. I Did Not Imagine That I Was A Pirate, Or That I Was Going Anywhere. I Was Just On My Boat.

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

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 Libraries Are About Freedom. Freedom To Read, Freedom Of Ideas, Freedom Of Communication. They Are About Education (which Is Not A Process That Finishes The Day We Leave School Or University), About Entertainment, About Making Safe Spaces, And About Access To Information.

The Tv's The Altar. I'm What People Are Sacrificing To.' 'what Do They Sacrifice?' Asked Shadow. 'their Time, Mostly,' Said Lucy. 'sometimes Each Other.

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

I Went Away In My Head, Into A Book. That Was Where I Went Whenever Real Life Was Too Hard Or Too Inflexible.

Books Are Defensive, Not Offensive (unless You're The Puzzled Adult Trying To Make The Kid With The Book Interact).

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

You Can't Run Away From Home Without Destroying Somebody's World.

I Can Get Away Before The Storm Hits. Away From A World In Which Opiates Have Become The Religion Of The Masses.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

Birds Are The Last Of The Dinosaurs. Tiny Velociraptors With Wings. Devouring Defenseless Wiggly Things And, And Nuts, And Fish, And, And Other Birds. They Get The Early Worms. And Have You Ever Watched A Chicken Eat? They May Look Innocent, But Birds Are, Well, They're Vicious.

I Do Not Permit Affection Or Lack Thereof To Influence My Actions. There Is Good, And There Is Evil. The Good Must Be Protected, The Evil Eradicated. I Have Shown You The Triumph Of Evil As A Caution.

It's Easier To Believe In Aliens Than In Gods.

Any View Of Things That Is Not Strange, Is False.

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.

We Are Always Living In The Final Days. What Have You Got? A Hundred Years Or Much, Much Less Until The End Of Your World.

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

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.

I Looked At The World Of Books And Just Went, Oh My Gosh, If I'm Writing Novels, I'm On The Same Shelves As Jane Austen And Charles Dickens And Petronius - Whereas With Comics, They've Only Been Doing Them For A Hundred Years, And There's Stuff That Nobody's Done Before. I Think I'll Go Off And Do Some Of The Stuff No One's Ever Done Before.

China Was The Most Optimistic Place I'd Ever Been. Everybody I Met Was Pretty Much Convinced That Their Children Would Have It Better Than Their Parents Had Had It. It Was Like Being In America In The 1950's, With This Deep Optimism About The Future Because Everything Was Getting Better, And That Fascinated Me.

It's An America With Strange Mythic Depths. I See It As A Distorting Mirror; A Book Of Danger And Secrets, Of Romance And Magic. It's About The Soul Of America, Really. What People Brought To America; What Found Them When They Came; And The Things That Lie Sleeping Beneath It All.

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

Bitter Experience

I Took Delight In Hurling Books Across The Room If I Knew I Would Not Be Reading The Second Chapter. Then I’d Go And Pick Them Up Again, Because They Are Books, After All, And We Are Not Savages.

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.

The Cat Looked As If It Were About To Say Something Sarcastic. Then It Flicked Its Whiskers And Said, "challenge Her. There's No Guarantee She'll Play Fair, But Her Kind Of Thing Loves Games And Challenges.

The Young Woman Was Crying, In The Way That Grownups Cry, Keeping It Inside As Much As They Can, And Hating It When It Still Pushes Out At The Edges, Making Them Ugly And Funny-looking On The Way.

People Think Dreams Aren't Real Just Because They Aren't Made Of Matter, Of Particles. Dreams Are Real. But They Are Made Of Viewpoints, Of Images, Of Memories And Puns And Lost Hopes.

The Secret To Writing Is Just To Write. Write Every Day. Never Stop Writing. Write On Every Surface You See; Write On People On The Street. When The Cops Come To Arrest You, Write On The Cops. Write On The Police Car. Write On The Judge. I'm In Jail Forever Now, And The Prison Cell Walls Are Completely Covered With My Writing, And I Keep Writing On The Writing I Wrote. That's My Method.

Put One Word After Another. Find The Right Word, Put It Down.

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Anthony Minghella

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