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Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

-Neil Gaiman

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Writing, And Especially Writing

Neil Gaiman

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Writing, And Especially Writing A Novel, Where You Get To Sit In A Room By Yourself With Either A Pen And A Paper Or A Computer For A Couple Of Years, Is A Very Solitary Occupation. You Can Read Sales Figures - A Hundred Thousand Books Sold, Half A Million Books Sold - But They Are Just Numbers.

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The Squirrel Has Not Yet Found The Acorn That Will Grow To The Oak That Will Be Cut To Form The Cradle Of The Babe That Will Grow To Slay Me.

We'll Win, Of Course," He Said. "you Don't Want That," Said The Demon. "why Not, Pray?“ “listen," Said Crowley Desperately, "how Many Musicians Do You Think Your Side Have Got, Eh? First Grade, I Mean." Aziraphale Looked Taken Aback. "well, I Should Think-" He Began. "two," Said Crowley. "elgar And Liszt. That's All. We've Got The Rest. Beethoven, Brahms, All The Bachs, Mozart, The Lot. Can You Imagine Eternity With Elgar?

There's A Tale In The Caballa That Suggests That The Angel Of Death Is So Beautiful That Upon Seeing It (or Him, Or Her) You Fall In Love So Hard, So Fast, That Your Soul Is Pulled Out Through Your Eyes. I Like That Story.

Falling In Love

Google Can Bring You Back 100,000 Answers. A Librarian Can Bring You Back The Right One.

Thought Provoking

Let Her Tell Stories And Dance In The Rain, Somersault, Tumble And Run, Her Joys Must Be High As Her Sorrows Are Deep, Let Her Grow Like A Weed In The Sun.

It Used To Be Thought That The Events That Changed The World Were Things Like Big Bombs, Maniac Politicians, Huge Earthquakes, Or Vast Population Movements, But It Has Now Been Realized That This Is A Very Old-fashioned View Held By People Totally Out Of Touch With Modern Thought. The Things That Really Change The World, According To Chaos Theory, Are The Tiny Things. A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings In The Amazonian Jungle, And Subsequently A Storm Ravages Half Of Europe.

They Also Held That The Way To Salvation Was To Give Way To Lust And Temptation In All Things. And No Greater Percentage Of Them Turned Up Here Than Of Any Other Religion. Amusing, Isn't It?

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.

I Liked Myths. They Weren't Adult Stories And They Weren't Children Stories. They Were Better Than That. They Just Were. Adult Stories Never Made Sense, And They Were Slow To Start. They Made Me Feel Like There Were Secrets, Masonic, Mythic Secrets, To Adulthood. Why Didn't Adults Want To Read About Narnia, About Secret Islands And Smugglers And Dangerous Fairies?

He Entertained These Thoughts Awkwardly, As A Man Entertains Unexpected Guests. Then, As He Reached His Objective, He Pushed These Thoughts Away, As A Man Apologizes To His Guests, And Leaves Them, Muttering Something About A Prior Engagement.

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

You See, Evil Always Contains The Seeds Of Its Own Destruction. It Is Ultimately Negative, And Therefore Encompasses Its Downfall Even At Its Moments Of Apparent Triumph. No Matter How Grandiose, How Well-planned, How Apparently Foolproof Of An Evil Plan, The Inherent Sinfulness Will By Definition Rebound Upon Its Instigators. No Matter How Apparently Successful It May Seem Upon The Way, At The End It Will Wreck Itself. It Will Founder Upon The Rocks Of Iniquity And Sink Headfirst To Vanish Without Trace Into The Seas Of Oblivion.

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.

I Knowed A Man In Paphlagonia Who'd Swallow A Live Snake Every Morning, When He Got Up. He Used To Say, He Was Certain Of One Thing, That Nothing Worse Would Happen To Him All Day. 'course They Made Him Eat A Bowlful Of Hairy Centipedes Before They Hung Him, So Maybe That Claim Was A Bit Presumptive.

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.

People Are Icebergs. So Much Of Us Is Underneath.

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

I've Known Ambitious People With No Aptitude For The Thing They Did. Most Of Whom, Rather Terrifyingly, Tended To Succeed.

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

I Think Hell Is Something You Carry Around With You, Not Somewhere You Go.

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.

Identity Can Be So Gelatinous Sometimes.

A Book Is A Dream That You Hold In Your Hands.

It's Still National Library Week. You Should Be Especially Nice To A Librarian Today, Or Tomorrow. Sometime This Week, Anyway. Probably The Librarians Would Like Tea. Or Chocolates. Or A Reliable Source Of Funding.

People Ask Me What My Predictions Are For Publishing And How Digital Is Changing Things And I Tell Them My Only Real Prediction Is That Is It's All Changing. Amazon, Google And All Of Those Things Probably Aren't The Enemy. The Enemy Right Now Is Simply Refusing To Understand That The World Is Changing.

Memory Is The Great Deceiver. Perhaps There Are Some Individuals Whose Memories Act Like Tape Recordings, Daily Records Of Their Lives Complete In Every Detail, But I Am Not One Of Them. My Memory Is A Patchwork Of Occurrences, Of Discontinuous Events Roughly Sewn Together: The Parts I Remember, I Remember Precisely, Whilst Other Sections Seemed To Have Vanished Completely.

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

I Believe We Have An Obligation To Read For Pleasure, In Private And In Public Places. If We Read For Pleasure, If Others See Us Reading, Then We Learn, We Exercise Our Imaginations. We Show Others That Reading Is A Good Thing.

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.

The Simplest Way To Make Sure That We Raise Literate Children Is To Teach Them To Read, And To Show Them That Reading Is A Pleasurable Activity.

I Started Writing When I Was About 20, 21 Maybe.

It Is A Fool's Prerogative To Utter Truths That No One Else Will Speak.

All Bookshelves Are Magical.

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

The World Is Always Ending For Someone. It’s A Good Line. I Give It To The Father Of The Child. He Says It To His Wife. ‘the World Is Always Ending For Someone,’ He Says. She Is Trying To Quieten The Baby, And Does Not Hear Him. I Doubt That It Would Matter If She Did.

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.

Well Meaning Adults Can Easily Destroy A Child's Love Of Reading - Do Not Discourage Children From Reading Because You Feel They're Reading The Wrong Thing. There Is No Such Thing As The Wrong Thing To Be Reading And No Bad Fiction For Kids.

I Was Bright, And I Could Use That As A Weapon: Words Can Wound, Whatever Those Sticks And Stones Sayings Claim About Them Never Hurting, And I Could Use Them If I Had To.

First Rule Of Magic: Don't Let Anyone Know Your Real Name. Names Have Power.

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

I Must Confess, I Have Always Wondered What Lay Beyond Life, My Dear. Yeah, Everybody Wonders. And Sooner Or Later Everybody Gets To Find Out.

I Love Cgi If It's Invisible. I Don't Like It When It's There And Obvious.

Just Remember, What The French Say. No, Probably Not The French, They've Got A President Or Something. The Brits, Maybe, Or The Swedes. You Know What I Mean?" "no, Matthew. What Do They Say?" "the King Is Dead, That's What They Say. The King Is Dead. Long Live The King.

The Truth Is, It's Not The Idea, It's Never The Idea, It's Always What You Do With It.

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.

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.

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.

Truly Life Is Wasted On The Living.

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called.

There's Nothing For Getting You Good Fast Like Having To Be Good Fast, If That Makes Any Sense.

There Are A Number Of Paths That Lead To This Place. I Have Been Avoiding Them For Some Small Time, Now.

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

Yes. We Both Have A Bad Feeling. Tonight We Shall Take Our Bad Feelings And Share Them, And Face Them. We Shall Mourn. We Shall Drain The Bitter Dregs Of Mortality. Pain Shared, My Brother, Is Pain Not Doubled, But Halved. No Man Is An Island.

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."

They Kissed For The First Time Then In The Cold Spring Rain, Though Neither One Of Them Now Knew That It Was Raining. Tristran's Heart Pounded In His Chest As If It Was Not Big Enough To Contain All The Joy That It Held. He Opened His Eyes As He Kissed The Star. Her Sky-blue Eyes Stared Back Into His, And In Her Eyes He Could See No Parting From Her.

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.

In Film, A Lot Of The Time You're Not As Engaged, It Is All Being Given To You, And You're Accepting It As It Comes In, But In Comics, As A Reader, You Are Going To Have To Work, Your Imagination Needs To Do An Awful Lot.

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.

When You Reach The Little House, The Place Your Journey Started, You Will Recognize It, Although It Will Seem Much Smaller Than You Remember. Walk Up The Path, And Through The Garden Gate You Never Saw Before But Once. And Then Go Home. Or Make A Home. And Rest.

You Wouldn't Die In Here, Nothing Ever Dies In Here, But If You Stayed Here For Too Long, After A While Just A Little Of You Would Exist Everywhere, All Spread Out. And That's Not A Good Thing. Never Enough Of You All Together In One Place, So T Here Wouldn't Be Anything Left That Would Think Of Itself As An 'i.' No Point Of View Any Longer, Because You'd Be An Infinite Sequence Of Views And Of Points.

Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

Freedom Of Speech

There Are Stories Within Stories, Whispered In The Quiet Of The Night, Shouted Above The Roar Of The Day, And Played Out Between Lovers And Enemies, Strangers And Friends. But All Are Fragile Things Made Of Just Twenty-six Letters Arranged And Re-arranged To Form Tales And Imaginings Which Will Dazzle Your Senses, Haunt Your Imagination And Move You To The Very Depths Of Your Soul.

Strangers And Friends

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.

You Can't Just Boss Bacteria Around Like That," Said The Younger Mrs. Hempstock. "they Don't Like It." "stuff And Silliness," Said The Old Lady. "you Leave Wigglers Alone And They'll Be Carrying On Like Anything. Show Them Who's Boss And They Can't Do Enough For You. You've Tasted My Cheese.

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

I Love Mythic Stuff. I Love Playing With Gods, I Love Playing With Myths. A Lot Of It Has To Do With That They're The Basic Places Stories Come From. They're The Clay That You Make The Bricks Out Of.

Dreams Shape The World

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.

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.

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.

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.

Style Is Made Up Of Whatever An Author Can't Avoid Doing.

You Don't Have To Test Everything To Destruction Just To See If You Made It Right.

We Often Confuse What We Wish For With What Is.

It's Not Hard To Own Something. Or Everything. You Just Have To Know That It's Yours, And Then Be Willing To Let It Go.

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.

The Only Water In The Forest Is The River.

Whatever's Happening," She Said, Eventually, "it Can All Be Sorted Out." She Saw The Expression On My Face Then, Worried. Scared Even. And She Said, "after Pancakes.

To Be Despair. It Is A Portrait. Only Close Your Eyes And Feel.

You Get What Anybody Gets - You Get A Lifetime.

Inspirational Life

Everybody Going To Be Dead One Day, Just Give Them Time.

Of Course You Don't Believe In Fairies. You're Fifteen. You Think I Believed In Fairies At Fifteen? Took Me Until I Was At Least A Hundred And Forty. Hundred And Fifty, Maybe. Anyway, He Wasn't A Fairy. He Was A Librarian. All Right?

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

Monsters Come In All Shapes And Sizes, Some Of Them Are Things People Are Scared Of. Some Of Them Are Things That Look Like Things People Used To Be Scared Of A Long Time Ago. Sometimes Monsters Are Things People Should Be Scared Of, But They Aren't.

There Is A Madness, Yes, This Is True. Few Mortals Possess It, The Willingness To Step Away From The Protection Of Sanity. To Walk Into The Wild Wood Of Madness...

Biting's Excellent. It's Like Kissing - Only There Is A Winner.

She Really Was Pretty, For A Grown-up Person, But When You Are Seven, Beauty Is An Abstraction, Not An Imperative. I Wonder What I Would Have Done If She Had Smiled At Me Like That Now: Whether I Would Have Handed My Mind Or My Heart Or My Identify To Her For The Asking, As My Father Did.

The Ties Of Blood," Said Spider, "are Stronger Than Water." Water's Not Strong," Objected Fat Charlie.

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.

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.

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

It's Certainly Not Too Late To Change To The Winning Side. But You Know, You Also Have The Freedom To Stay Just Where You Are. That's What It Means To Be An American. That's The Miracle Of America. Freedom To Believe Means The Freedom To Believe The Wrong Thing, After All. Just As Freedom Of Speech Gives You The Right To Stay Silent.

A Story Only Matters, I Suspect, To The Extent That The People In The Story Change.

You Are An Analog Girl, Living In A Digital World.

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.

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.

25 And The Lord Spake Unto The Angel That Guarded The Eastern Gate, Saying 'where Is The Flaming Sword That Was Given Unto Thee?' 26 And The Angel Said, 'i Had It Here Only A Moment Ago, I Must Have Put It Down Some Where, Forget My Own Head Next.' 27 And The Lord Did Not Ask Him Again.

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 You Want To Call It That. But It Is A Very Specific Sort Of Magic. There's A Magic You Take From Death. Something Leaves The World, Something Else Comes Into It.

On The Whole, Anything That Gets You Writing And Keeps You Writing Is A Good Thing. Anything That Stops You Writing Is A Bad Thing.

Most Of What I Want To Try To Do Is Continue To Go Places With Fiction That I've Never Gone Before, And Tell Stories I've Never Told Before, And One Of The Problems You Rapidly Discover About Fans Is What Fans Want Is The Last Thing They Liked. They Want More Of That.

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

You're Sick. Sick And Evil And Weird.

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

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.

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.

The Problems With Success, Frankly, Are Infinitely Preferable To The Problems Of Failure.

When I Was Very Young, I Would Occasionally Stick 'f****' Where I Knew Something Contentious Might Happen So That The Editor Could Remove The Word 'f***' Very Proudly And Leave Whatever Else Was Around It.

He Had Read Books, Newspapers And Magazines. He Knew That If You Ran Away You Sometimes Met Bad People Who Did Bad Things To You; But He Had Also Read Fairy Tales, So He Knew That There Were Kind People Out There, Side By Side With The Monsters.

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.

Words Can Wound, And Wounds Can Heal.

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

There Aren't Any Good Guys, And There Aren't Any Bad Guys. There's Just Us. People. Doing Our Best To Get By.

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

Sleep My Little Baby-oh Sleep Until You Waken When You Wake You'll See The World If I'm Not Mistaken... Kiss A Lover Dance A Measure, Find Your Name And Buried Treasure... Face Your Life Its Pain, Its Pleasure, Leave No Path Untaken.

The Magic And The Danger Of Fiction Is This: It Allows Us To See Through Other Eyes. It Takes Us To Places We Have Never Been, Allows Us To Care About, Worry About, Laugh With, And Cry For People Who Do Not, Outside Of The Story, Exist. There Are People Who Think That Things That Happen In Fiction Do Not Really Happen. These People Are Wrong.

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.

I Think There Are Several Aspects Of Our Marraige We're Going To Have To Work On." "babes," He Told Her. "you're Dead." "that's One Of Those Aspects, Obviously.

Set Your Fantasies In The Here And Now And Then, If Challenged, Claim To Be Writing Magical Realism.

The Best Thing About Doing A Signing Tour Is That Numbers Become Faces. I Got To Sign Books For Six Or Seven Thousand People, All Of Whom Were Dreadfully Nice. Everything Else, The Interviews, The Hotels, The Plane Travel, The Best-seller Lists, Even The Sushi, Gets Old Awfully Fast. Well, Maybe Not The Sushi.

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.

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

I Think I Love My Dreaming Process Because One Of The Things That My Dreaming Process Does Is Sort Out Stories For Me.

She Had The Feeling That The Door Was Looking At Her, Which She Knew Was Silly, And Knew On A Deeper Level Was Somehow True.

I Think Radio Plays Are My Favourite Medium, As They Make The Listener Work And Create And Contribute In A Way That Tv And Film Can Never Do, And They Have An Immediacy That Written Prose Often Lacks.

There Was A Hand In The Darkness, And It Held A Knife.

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.

Nobody's Seen Jesus In Years.

Stories You Read When You're The Right Age Never Quite Leave You. You May Forget Who Wrote Them Or What The Story Was Called. Sometimes You'll Forget Precisely What Happened, But If A Story Touches You It Will Stay With You, Haunting The Places In Your Mind That You Rarely Ever Visit.

You Know I Love You,' Said The Other Mother Flatly. 'you Have A Very Funny Way Of Showing It,' Said Coraline.

Libraries Really Are The Gates To The Future.

I Think I've Got Fear Down, But How Do I Take It All The Way Up To Terror?

The Search For The Word Gets No Easier But Nobody Else Is Going To Write Your Novel For You.

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

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 Believe That Stories Are Incredibly Important, Possibly In Ways We Don't Understand, In Allowing Us To Make Sense Of Our Lives, In Allowing Us To Escape Our Lives, In Giving Us Empathy And In Creating The World That We Live In.

I Found English To Be A Sort Of Thomas Hardy Aversion Therapy.

The Cat Dropped The Rat Between Its Two Front Paws. "there Are Those," It Said With A Sigh, In Tones As Smooth As Oiled Silk, "who Have Suggested That The Tendency Of A Cat To Play With Its Prey Is A Merciful One - After All, It Permits The Occasional Funny Little Running Snack To Escape, From Time To Time. How Often Does Your Dinner Get To Escape?

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

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

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

So, You Figure They Won't Notice You're Back?" Sneered The Marquis. "just, 'oh Look, There's Another Angel, Here, Grab A Harp And On With The Hosannas'?

The Right Song Can Turn An Emperor Into A Laughingstock, Can Bring Down Dynasties.

The Real Problem With Stories - If You Keep Them Going Long Enough, They Always End In Death.

Tools, Of Course, Can Be The Subtlest Of Traps.

You Attend The Funeral, You Bid The Dead Farewell. You Grieve. Then You Continue With Your Life. And At Times The Fact Of Her Absence Will Hit You Like A Blow To The Chest, And You Will Weep. But This Will Happen Less And Less As Time Goes On. She Is Dead. You Are Alive. So Live.

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?

They Were Not My Friends, After All. They Were Just The People I Went To School With.

When Angels Go Bad They Are Worse Than Anyone Else. Remember Lucifer Used To Be An Angel.

The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What Once You Wanted.

Getting What You Want

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

It Is Your Differences That Make You Glorious.

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

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.

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

It's Just Harder Out There In The World Of The Living, And We Cannot Protect You Out There As Easily. I Wanted To Keep You Perfectly Safe...but There Is Only One Perfectly Safe Place For Your Kind, And You Will Not Reach It Until All Your Adventures Are Over And None Of Them Matter Any Longer.

Of Course, Everyone's Parents Are Embarrassing. It Goes With The Territory. The Nature Of Parents Is To Embarrass Merely By Existing, Just As It Is The Nature Of Children Of A Certain Age To Cringe With Embarrassment, Shame, And Mortification Should Their Parents So Much As Speak To Them On The Street.

If He Didn't Care About You, You Couldn't Upset Him.

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

But He Did Not Understand The Price. Mortals Never Do. They Only See The Prize, Their Heart's Desire, Their Dream... But The Price Of Getting What You Want, Is Getting What You Once Wanted.

You Shone Like A Star. The Funniest, Wisest Writer & The Finest Friend

Many Phenomena - Wars, Plagues, Sudden Audits - Have Been Advanced As Evidence For The Hidden Hand Of Satan In The Affairs Of Man, But Whenever Students Of Demonology Get Together The M25 London Orbital Motorway Is Generally Agreed To Be Among The Top Contenders For Exhibit A.

Because,' She Said, 'when You're Scared But You Still Do It Anyway, That's Brave.

It Doth Not Hurt", Whispered A Faint Voice, "she Will Take You Life And All You Are And All You Care'st For, And She Will Leave You With Nothing But Mist And Fog. She'll Take Your Joy. And One Day You'll Wake And Your Heart And Soul Will Have Gone. A Husk You'll Be, A Wisp You'll Be, And A Thing No More Than A Dream On Waking, Or A Memory Of Something Forgotten.

Look. I Brought You Here To Give You A Choice-" "you Didn't Bring Us Here," Said Nick. "you're Here," Said Bod. "i Wanted You Here. I Came Here. You Followed Me. Same Thing.

You Play Your Cards So Close To Your Chest," Said Shadow, "that I'm Not Even Sure They're Really Cards At All.

You Mourn, For It Is Proper To Mourn. But Your Grief Serves You; You Do Not Become A Slave To Grief. You Bid The Dead Farewell, And You Continue.

As A Journalist, I Would Talk To Writers, Directors, Creative People, And Discover That For An Awful Lot Of Them, The Moment They Became Successful, That Was All They Were Allowed To Do. So You End Up Talking To The Bestselling Science-fiction Author Who Wrote A Historical-fiction Novel That Everybody Loved, But No One Would Publish.

There Are Characters In Some Short Stories Who Exist As People, And There Are Other Characters In Different Short Stories Who Exist As Purely Literary Constructs. You Know, The Young Man In "forbidden Brides Of The Faceless Slaves In The Secret House Of The Night Of Dread Desire" - I Probably Got That Right - Is A Literary Construct, And Enjoys Being A Literary Construct. He Has No Life Off Stage, Whereas The Young Men In "how To Talk To Girls At Parties" Were As Near To Being Real Human Beings As I Could Possibly Get Them.

And There Are Always People Who Find Their Lives Have Become So Unsupportable They Believe The Best Thing They Could Do Would Be To Hasten Their Transition To Another Plane Of Existence.' 'they Kill Themselves, You Mean?' Said Bod. [...] 'indeed.' 'does It Work? Are They Happier Dead?' 'sometimes. Mostly, No. It's Like The People Who Believe They'll Be Happy If They Go And Live Somewhere Else, But Who Learn It Doesn't Work That Way. Wherever You Go, You Take Yourself With You.

Note For Americans And Other Aliens: Milton Keynes Is A New City Approximately Halfway Between London And Birmingham. It Was Built To Be Modern, Efficient, Healthy, And, All In All, A Pleasant Place To Live. Many Britons Find This Amusing.

Not Gay, Just Never Met The Right Woman.

It Is Going To Take More Than Just A Couple Of Good-hearted Souls To Raise This Child. It Will Take A Graveyard.

I Know That This Is The Internet, And We're All Anonymous And All That, But Really. It Doesn't Hurt To Try To Be Nice.

Call No Man Happy, Said Shadow, Until He Is Dead

People Populate The Darkness; With Ghosts, With Gods, With Electrons, With Tales.

The House Smelled Musty And Damp, And A Little Sweet, As If It Were Haunted By The Ghosts Of Long-dead Cookies.

Partly Because I Get Such Astonishingly Nice Fans.

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

I Toyed Briefly With An Image Someone Once Mentioned To Me, Of A Village In The Shadow Of A Twin-peaked Mountain. In The Morning The Sun Rises. At Lunch It Sets Behind The Mountain. In The Early Afternoon It Rises Once More. The Cocks Crow For The Second Time, And Later The Sun Sets Again. No. One Peak. Metaphors Should Not Be Belaboured.

If You, As A Parent, Raise Your Children Well, They Won't Need You Anymore. If You Did It Properly, They Go Away.

I Couldn't Get You To The Ocean, But There Was Nothing Stopping Me Bringing The Ocean To You.

Nothing’s Changed. You’ll Go Home. You’ll Be Bored. You’ll Be Ignored. No One Will Listen To You, Really Listen To You. You’re Too Clever And Too Quiet For Them To Understand. They Don’t Even Get Your Name Right.

It’s Part Of Growing Up, I Suppose…you Always Have To Leave Something Behind You.

People Kill What They Fear. They Burned, And Drowned, And Hanged Those They Saw As Witches, The Devil's Servants: The Wise Women And The Cunning Men, The Unfortunate, The Lost And The Strange

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.

Is There Any Person In The World Who Does Not Dream? Who Does Not Contain Within Them Worlds Unimagined?

Never Use Five Words If You Can Get Away With One, Eh? I've Known Dead Men Talk More Than You Do.

I'll Find You. Don't Worry. Just Be On Your Own And I'll Find You.

I Know Not Whether You Came To Me Or I To You. Not Whether It Was A Dream, Asleep Or Awake. I Am Lost In The Darkness Of A Downcast Heart. Dream Or Reality. Let It Be Decided Tonight.

I Fell For Her Like A Suicide From A Bridge.

Sometimes I Wish That Just Solving The Plot Problems Was Enough. And Then Elves Would Go And Do All The Actual Work Moving The Words Around.

She Took My Hands In Her, Then, And Squeezed Them. 'but You Stayed Where You Were Meant To Be, And You Didn't Listen To Them. Well Done. That's Quality, That Is,' And She Sounded Proud. In That Moment I Forgot My Hunger And I Forgot My Fear.

I Was One Of Those Kids Who Had Books On Them. Before Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Funerals And Anything Else Where You're Actually Meant To Not Be Reading, My Family Would Frisk Me And Take The Book Away. If They Didn't Find It By This Point In The Procedure, I Would Be Sitting Over In That Corner Completely Unnoticed Just Reading My Book.

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.

I Love Writing In Longhand. Writing In Longhand, I Think, Is A Marvelous Thing To Do For A Writer These Days. If You Have A Notebook And A Nice Pen You Can Go Off Somewhere, You Can Write That's Solar Powered. You Can Drop It Or Get It Wet And Pretty Much All Of Your Work Will Continue To Be There. If You Suddenly Decide To Look Up A Word Or Check A Reference You Will Not Look Up Four Hours Later, Blinking, Finding Yourself Somehow In The Middle Of An Ebay Auction You Never Had Any Plans To Be Part Of.

Remember Your Name. Do Not Lose Hope ---what You Seek Will Be Found.

Following Instructions

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

Then One Stupid Person, No Different From Any Other Stupid Person, Wanders Into Your Stupid Life... You Give Them A Piece Of You. They Don't Ask For It. They Do Something Dumb One Day, Like Kiss You Or Smile At You, And Then Your Life Isn't Your Own Anymore.

I Don't Think I'm Mainstream. I Think What I Am Is Lots And Lots Of Different Cults. And When You Get Lots And Lots Of Small Groups Who Like You A Lot, They Add Up To A Big Group Without Ever Actually Becoming Mainstream.

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