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You're Alive, Bod. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything. If You Can Change The World, The World Will Change. Potential. Once You're Dead, It's Gone. Over. You've Made What You've Made, Dreamed Your Dream, Written Your Name. You May Be Buried Here, You May Even Walk. But That Potential Is Finished.

-Neil Gaiman

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You're Alive, Bod. That

Neil Gaiman

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You're Alive, Bod. That Means You Have Infinite Potential. You Can Do Anything, Make Anything, Dream Anything. If You Can Change The World, The World Will Change. Potential. Once You're Dead, It's Gone. Over. You've Made What You've Made, Dreamed Your Dream, Written Your Name. You May Be Buried Here, You May Even Walk. But That Potential Is Finished.

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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.

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It Is Said That Scattered Through Despair's Domain Are A Multitude Of Tiny Windows, Hanging In The Void. Each Window Looks Out Onto A Different Scene, Being, In Our World, A Mirror. Sometimes You Will Look Into A Mirror And Feel The Eyes Of Despair Upon You, Feel Her Hook Catch And Snag On Your Heart.

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It Was A Dream, And In Dreams You Have No Choices: Either There Are No Decisions To Be Made, Or They Were Made For You Long Before Ever The Dream Began.

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October Knew, Of Course, That The Action Of Turning A Page, Of Ending A Chapter Or Of Shutting A Book, Did Not End A Tale. Having Admitted That, He Would Also Avow That Happy Endings Were Never Difficult To Find: "it Is Simply A Matter," He Explained To April, "of Finding A Sunny Place In A Garden, Where The Light Is Golden And The Grass Is Soft; Somewhere To Rest, To Stop Reading, And To Be Content.

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

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

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How Can You Be Happy In This World? You Have A Hole In Your Heart. You Have A Gateway Inside You To Lands Beyond The World You Know. They Will Call You, As You Grow.

I Was A Book-y Child. I Was Much More Book-y Than Dark.

Love Isn't Quite Desire... Love Is Probably A Little Bit In The Sandman's Domain. Love Is Partly A Dream, It's Partly To Do With Desire, And Sometimes It's Partly To Do With Death, As Well. It's Also Very Often Something To Do With Delirium.

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

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.

And Then He'd Tried To Become An Official Atheist And Hadn't Got The Rock-hard Self-satisfied Strength Of Belief Even For That.

It Was A Perfectly Normal Gerbil. It Appeared To Be Living In An Exciting Construction Of Cylinders, Spheres And Treadmills, Such As The Spanish Inquisition Would Have Devised If They'd Had Access To A Plastics Molding Press.

Perfectly Normal

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

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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.

You've A Good Heart. Sometimes That's Enough To See You Safe Wherever You Go. But Mostly, It's Not.

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.

A World In Which There Are Monsters, And Ghosts, And Things That Want To Steal Your Heart Is A World In Which There Are Angels, And Dreams And A World In Which There Is Hope.

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

I Hope You Read Some Fine Books And Kiss Someone Who Thinks You're Wonderful.

There's Definitely A Feeling With A Short Story That It's Pure Story Telling. You're Not Really Worried About Theme. You're Not Going To Stay With The Characters Long Enough To Live Your Life With Them. And You Have Different Kinds Of Relationships With Them.

The Time Lords Really Didn't Like Genocide. I'm Not Too Keen On It Myself. It's The Potential You're Killing Off. What If, One Day, There Was A Good Dalek? What If...

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

I 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.

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

Words Save Our Lives, Sometimes.

Make Your Mistakes, Next Year And Forever.

If A Devil Is One Who Dares, When Others Hold Back, Then I Am Happy To Play The Devil In This Mystery, Boy.

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.

Write. Finish Things. Get Them Published. Write Something Else While You're Waiting For Someone To Publish The First Thing.

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

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.

What A Refreshing Mind You Have, Young Man. There Really Is Nothing Quite Like Total Ignorance, Is There?

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

Have You Ever Spent Days And Days And Days Making Up Flavors Of Ice Cream That No One's Ever Eaten Before? Like Chicken And Telepone Ice Cream? Green Mouse Ice Cream Was The Worst. I Didn't Like That At All.

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

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.

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.

I Hope You'll Make Mistakes. If You're Making Mistakes, It Means You're Out There Doing Something.

Do Not Lose Hope — What You Seek Will Be Found. Trust Ghosts. Trust Those That You Have Helped To Help You In Their Turn. Trust Dreams. Trust Your Heart, And Trust Your Story. (from 'instructions')

I Knew Enough About Adults To Know That If Did Tell Them What Had Happened, I Would Not Be Believed. Adults Rarely Seemed To Believe Me When I Told The Truth Anyway.

There Was Only One Guy In The Whole Bible Jesus Ever Personally Promised A Place With Him In Paradise. Not Peter, Not Paul, Not Any Of Those Guys. He Was A Convicted Thief, Being Executed. So Don't Knock The Guys On Death Row. Maybe They Know Something You Don't.

Virginia Is The Place, Where, Technologically Speaking, They Will Burn People At The Stake For Possessing Such Things As Toasters.

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.

It Has Occasionally Been Remarked Upon That It Is As Easy To Overlook Something Large And Obvious As It Is To Overlook Something Small And Niggling, And That The Large Things One Overlooks Often Cause Problems.

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.

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.

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.

In Every Way That Counted, I Was Dead. Inside Somewhere Maybe I Was Screaming And Weeping And Howling Like An Animal, But That Was Another Person Deep Inside, Another Person Who Had No Access To The Lips And Face And Mouth And Head, So On The Surface I Just Shrugged And Smile And Kept Moving. If I Could Have Physically Passed Away, Just Let It All Go, Like That, Without Doing Anything, Stepped Out Of Life As Easily As Walking Through A Door I Would Have Done. But I Was Going To Sleep At Night And Waking In The Morning, Disappointed To Be There And Resigned To Existence.

The Names Are The First Things To Go, After The Breath Has Gone, And The Beating Of The Heart. We Keep Our Memories Longer Than Our Names.

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.

The Boy Had The Towering Arrogance Only Seen In The Greatest Of Artists And All Nine-year-old Boys.

My Stuff Gets Published In Some Countries As Fiction And In Some Countries As Fantasy. It's Just Where They Think It Will Do Best In The Bookshops.

Her Other Mother Smiled Brightly And The Hair On Her Head Drifted Like Plants Under The Sea.

Fear Is Contagious. You Can Catch It.

This Is How You Can Tell A Real Photographer: Mostly, A Real Photographer Does Not Say 'i Wish I Had My Camera On Me Right Now'. Instead A Real Photographer Pulls Out Her Camera And Takes The Photograph.

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.

The Magic Of Comics Is That There Are Three People Involved In Any Comic. There's Whoever's Writing It And Whoever's Drawing It. And Then There's Whoever's Reading It Because They Are Creating The Movement. They Are Creating The Illusion Of Time Passing.

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

Knowing Everything

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.

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

Media. I Think I Have Heard Of Her. Isn't She The One Who Killed Her Children?

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.

I'm Writing. The Pages Are Starting To Stack Up. My Morale Is Improving The More I Feel Like A Writer.

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