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You Know What My Mum Once Said?’ Said Rosie… ‘she Said That If A Just-married Couple Put A Coin In A Jar Every Time They Make Love In Their First Year, And Take A Coin Out For Every Time That They Make Love In The Years That Follow, The Jar Will Never Be Emptied.’ And This Means…?’ Well’, She Said. ‘it’s Interesting, Isn’t It?

-Neil Gaiman

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You Know What My

Neil Gaiman

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You Know What My Mum Once Said?’ Said Rosie… ‘she Said That If A Just-married Couple Put A Coin In A Jar Every Time They Make Love In Their First Year, And Take A Coin Out For Every Time That They Make Love In The Years That Follow, The Jar Will Never Be Emptied.’ And This Means…?’ Well’, She Said. ‘it’s Interesting, Isn’t It?

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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.

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

I Know That The Way To Be A Really Successful Writer Is To Write The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again. Find The Kind Of Thing That People Like And Just Write One Of Those Over And Over Again. I Don't Do That. I Just Keep Doing Different Things.

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.

Short Stories Are Tiny Windows Into Other Worlds And Other Minds And Dreams. They Are Journeys You Can Make To The Far Side Of The Universe And Still Be Back In Time For Dinner.

Peas Baffled Me. I Could Not Understand Why Grown-ups Would Take Things That Tasted So Good Raw, And Then Put Them In Tins, And Make Them Revolting.

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.

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

Bitter Experience

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

Crowley Had Been Extremely Impressed With The Warranties Offered By The Computer Industry, And Had In Fact Sent A Bundle Below To The Department That Drew Up The Immortal Soul Agreements, With A Yellow Memo Form Attached Just Saying: "learn, Guys..."

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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.

When You Start Off, You Have To Deal With The Problems Of Failure. You Need To Be Thickskinned, To Learn That Not Every Project Will Survive.

It’s Not That They’re Small, The Fair Folk. Especially Not The Queen Of Them All, Mab Of The Flashing Eyes And The Slow Smile With Lips That Can Conjure Your Heart Under The Hills For A Hundred Years. It’s Not That They’re Small. It’s That We’re So Far Away.

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You See With Your Eyes. This Means You Can Be Misled By Charm, By Outward Appearance. By Webs Of Glamour, By Surface Pretences. I Do Not See With My Eyes. I See Good And I See Evil. Nothing Else.

There Was Something About Being In The Vicinity Of Grahame Coats That Always Made Fat Charlie (a) Speak In Cliches And (b) Begin To Daydream About Huge Black Helicopters First Opening Fire Upon, Then Dropping Buckets Of Flaming Napalm Onto The Offices Of The Grahame Coats Agency. Fat Charlie Would Not Be In The Office In Those Daydreams. He Would Be Sitting In A Chair Outside A Little Cafe On The Other Side Of Aldwych, Sipping A Frothy Coffee And Occasionally Cheering At An Exceptionally Well-flung Bucket Of Napalm.

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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.

We...we Could Be Friends.' We Could Be Rare Specimens Of An Exotic Breed Of Dancing African Elephants, But We're Not. At Least, I'm Not.

There Are Some As Are What They Are. And There Are Some As Aren't What They Seem To Be. And There Are Some As Only Seem To Be What They Seem To Be.

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.

Finish What You're Writing. Whatever You Have To Do To Finish It, Finish It.

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In Hollywood, Lying Is Something That People Do Like Breathing.

I Sat In The Dark And Thought: There’s No Big Apocalypse. Just An Endless Procession Of Little Ones.

So, If A City Has A Personality, Maybe It Also Has A Soul. Maybe It Dreams.

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Picking Five Favorite Books Is Like Picking The Five Body Parts You'd Most Like Not To Lose.

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There Are People You Do Not Want To Upset In The World - The Politically Disenfranchized Who Feel They Have Nothing To Lose, Those Who Feel That The Time Has Come For Revolution ... Then Out On The Edges Beyond Any Of Those Are Science Fiction Fans Whose Favorite Show Has Been Canceled In An Untimely Way.

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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.

The Doctor: Sorry, Do You Have A Name? Idris: Seven Hundred Years And Finally He Asks. The Doctor: But What Do I Call You? Idris: I Think You Call Me... Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only When We're Alone. Idris: We Are Alone. The Doctor: Oh. Come On Then, Sexy.

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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.

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And Weren't, When You Got Right Down To It, Particularly Evil. Human Beings Mostly Aren't. They Just Get Carried Away By New Ideas, Like Dressing Up In Jackboots And Shooting People, Or Dressing Up In White Sheets And Lynching People, Or Dressing Up In Tie-dye Jeans And And Playing Guitar At People. Offer People A New Creed With A Costume And Their Hearts And Minds Will Follow.

Truly, Life Is Wasted On The Living, Nobody Owens. For One Of Us Is Too Foolish To Live, And It Is Not I.

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.

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.

People Seem To Think That They Can't Come Up With Ideas, And They're Wrong. They Can And They Do, But They Just Think Of It As Daydreaming, Or Wasting Time. Kids Get Told Not To Make Things Up, And In My Case, Nobody Told Me Long Enough, Or It Just Didn't Stick.

All Your Questions Can Be Answered, If That Is What You Want. But Once You Learn Your Answers, You Can Never Unlearn Them.

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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?

I Think Most Things Are Pretty Magical, And That It's Less A Matter Of Belief Than It Is One Of Just Stopping To Notice.

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

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Eyes As Black And As Shiny As Chips Of Obsidian Stared Back Into His. They Were Eyes Like Black Holes, Letting Nothing Out, Not Even Information.

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Lies And Half-truths Fall Like Snow, Covering The Things That I Remember, The Things I Saw. A Landscape, Unrecognizable After A Snowfall; That Is That She Has Made Of My Life.

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.

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We Look About In Puzzlement At Our World, With A Sense Of Unease And Disquiet. We Think Of Ourselves As Scholars In Arcane Liturgies, Single Men Trapped In Worlds Beyond Our Devising. The Truth Is Far Simpler: There Are Things In The Darkness Beneath Us That Wish Us Harm.

There's This Thing, They Have In French: L'espirit D'escalier. The Spirit Of The Stairway. I Don't Think We Have A Word For It In English. It Means, Well, The Clever Things To Say That You Only Think To Yourself When You're On The Way Out.

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

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

For Me, Closing Libraries Is The Equivalent Of Eating Your Seed Corn To Save A Little Money.

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People Take On The Shapes Of The Songs And The Stories That Surround Them, Especially If They Don't Have Their Own Song.

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

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Love Of My Life

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He Left The Drapes Open, Watched The Lights Of The Cars And Of The Fast Food Joints Through The Window Glass, Comforted To Know There Was Another World Out There, One He Could Walk To Anytime He Wanted.

Bod Said, 'i Want To See Life. I Want To Hold It In My Hands. I Want To Leave A Footprint On The Sand Of A Desert Island. I Want To Play Football With People. I Want,' He Said, And Then He Paused And He Thought. 'i Want Everything.

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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.

If You Are Protected From Dark Things Then You Have No Protection Of, Knowledge Of, Or Understanding Of Dark Things When They Show Up.

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.

Notoriety Wasn't As Good As Fame, But Was Heaps Better Than Obscurity.

Twitter Is Great And It's Glorious And It's Easy, But If Somebody Comes Up With Something Kind Of Like Twitter Tomorrow, That's Better Or Smarter Or More Useful, In Three Weeks Time, Twitter Could More Or Less Be History Because That's How Fast Things Go.

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Right," Said Fat Charlie Conversationally. "you Realize, Of Course, That This Means War." It Was The Traditional War Cry Of A Rabbit When Pushed Too Far.

If You Read Enough Lionel Fanthorpe, Your Brain Starts To Turn To Jelly And Just Dribbles Out Of Your Ears.

Every Ending Is A New Beginning. Your Lucky Number Is None. Your Lucky Colour Is Dead. Motto: Like Father, Like Son.

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

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Even If Your Goose Habitually Lays Golden Eggs, It Will Still Be Cooked.

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

I Still Love The Book-ness Of Books, The Smell Of Books: I Am A Book Fetishist—books To Me Are The Coolest And Sexiest And Most Wonderful Things There Are.

In A Novel, You Can Always Go Back And Make It Look Like You Knew What You Were Doing All Along Before The Thing Goes Out And Gets Published.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic: There Is Whoever Is Writing It, And Whoever Is Drawing It, And Then There's Whoever Is Reading It, Because The Really Important Things In Comics Are Occurring In The Panel Gutters, They're Occurring Between Panels As The Person Reading The Comics Is Moving You Through, Is Creating A Film In Their Heads.

I Have No Plans To Love You," Said Coraline. "no Matter What. You Can't Make Me Love You.

Most Of Us Only Find Our Own Voices After We've Sounded Like A Lot Of Other People.

And There Never Was An Apple, In Adam's Opinion, That Wasn't Worth The Trouble You Got Into For Eating It.

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.

What Power Would Hell Have If Those Imprisoned Were Not Able To Dream Of Heaven?

Now You People Have Names. That's Because You Don't Know Who You Are. We Know Who We Are, So We Don't Need Names.

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

Fairy Tales Are More Than True: Not Because They Tell Us That Dragons Exist, But Because They Tell Us That Dragons Can Be Beaten.

Actually I Didn't Shoot A Man In Reno Just To Watch Him Die, But He Could Tell I Was Extremely Cross.

Life Is Always Going To Be Stranger Than Fiction, Because Fiction Has To Be Convincing, And Life Doesn't.

Spider Venom Comes In Many Forms. It Can Often Take A Long While To Discover The Full Effects Of The Bite. Naturalists Have Pondered This For Years: There Are Spiders Whose Bite Can Cause The Place Bitten To Rot And To Die, Sometimes More Than A Year After It Was Bitten. As To Why Spiders Do This, The Answer Is Simple. It's Because Spiders Think This Is Funny, And They Don't Want You Ever To Forget Them.

You Shine Like A Beacon In A Dark World.

What Would Be The Fun In Doing Things You Know Are Going To Work?

I Tweet, Therefore My Entire Life Has Shrunk To 140 Character Chunks Of Instant Event And Predigested Gnomic Wisdom. And Swearing.

He Goes His Way. We Travel A Spiral. The Quickest Way Is Sometimes The Longest.

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

When We Consider That Each Of Us Has Only One Life To Live, Isn’t It Rather Tragic To Find Men And Women, With Brains Capable Of Comprehending The Stars And The Planets, Talking About The Weather; Men And Women, With Hands Capable Of Creating Works Of Art, Using Those Hands Only For Routine Tasks; Men And Women, Capable Of Independent Thought, Using Their Minds As A Bowling-alley For Popular Ideas; Men And Women, Capable Of Greatness, Wallowing In Mediocrity; Men And Women, Capable Of Self-expression, Slowly Dying A Mental Death While They Babble The Confused Monotone Of The Mob?

Coming Over From England, I Was Awe-struck By What Americans Do At Halloween. I Find It Magnificent. In England, You Get The Occasional Fancy Dress Party.

I Think That Is Something That I Always Like In My Work - The Sense Of Inclusion Rather Than The Sense Of Otherness.

There Are A Lot Of Artists Who've Said They'd Like To Work With Me. To Be Honest, I'm Not Sure There Is Such A Thing As An Inappropriate Artist. The Trick Is Matching The Artist With A Story.

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.

Fictions Are Merely Frozen Dreams, Linked Images With Some Semblance Of Structure. They Are Not To Be Trusted, No More Than The People Who Create Them.

My Guiltiest Pleasure Is Harry Stephen Keeler. He May Have Been The Greatest Bad Writer America Has Ever Produced. Or Perhaps The Worst Great Writer. I Do Not Know. There Are Few Faults You Can Accuse Him Of That He Is Not Guilty Of. But I Love Him.

From Meetings And Partings None Can Ever Escape. Nor From Magic.

According To My Daughters, My Most Irritating Habit Is Asking For Cups Of Tea.

We Do What We Do, Because Of Who We Are. If We Did Otherwise, We Would Not Be Ourselves.

I'm Never Quite Sure If I'm Me When I'm Dressed Up.

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.

When I Was About Ten My Favourite Article In The Huge And Mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica We Owned (the Ninth Edition) Was The One On Lycanthropy. (yes, I Had A Favourite 1890s Britannica Article When I Was Ten. I Am Now Aware This Is Not Entirely Usual.)

Encyclopedia Britannica

It's Always Too Late For Sorries, But I Appreciate The Sentiment.

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

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

He Was No Longer Scared Of What Tomorrow Might Bring Because Yesterday Has Brought It.

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

Anywhere That I Can't Check My Email Is A Good Place To Write!

Well-meaning Adults Can Easily Destroy A Child’s Love Of Reading: Stop Them Reading What They Enjoy, Or Give Them Worthy-but-dull Books That You Like, The 21st-century Equivalents Of Victorian “improving” Literature. You’ll Wind Up With A Generation Convinced That Reading Is Uncool And Worse, Unpleasant.

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

When You Die, They Can Make You Into Diamonds Now. It’s Scientific. That’s How I Want To Be Remembered. I Want To Shine.

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.

She Had Forgotten Them All; Forgotten Richard Down In The Mud, And The Marquis And His Foolish Crossbow, And The World. She Was Delighted And Transported, In A Perfect Place, The World She Lived For. Her World Contained Two Things: Hunter, And The Beast. The Beast Knew That Too. It Was The Perfect Match, The Hunter And The Hunted. And Who Was Who, And Which Was Which, Only Time Would Reveal; Time And The Dance.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It. Sometimes All It Takes Is For Someone To Say That They're Scared For The Fear To Become Real. Mo Was Terrified, And Now Nick Was Too.

I Used To Get My Best Ideas From Being Bored, And Now, If I Even Think I'm Being Faintly Bored, I Have Two Million Twitter Followers I Can Engage With. It's Great, But I Also Think It's Important To Be Able To Let Your Thoughts Flow And Percolate.

You Need More Than A Beginning If You're Going To Start A Book. If All You Have Is A Beginning, Then Once You've Written That Beginning, You Have Nowhere To Go.

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Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.

Juan Manuel Santos

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