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.
Longer Version:
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. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.
Will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down.
I wanted to shout down to him, to warn him that he was giving flowers to a monster, but I did not.
When I was four I believed everything, accepted everything, and was scared of nothing. Now I was eight, and I believed in what I could see and was scared of anything I couldn't. Scared of things in the darkness, of things invisible to see.
You shone like a star. The funniest, wisest writer and the finest friend.
Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisers.
It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning, and it is astonishing how fragile that can be.
Everything had been going so well, he'd had it really under his thumb
these few centuries. That's how it goes, you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring
Armageddon on you.
But that's how it goes; you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you.
We get to experience the same thing in very different ways with different parts of ourselves.
I started blogging a decade ago because I like blogging. Writing's a kind of lonely thing to do and I liked the idea of demystifying the process because I loved it as a kid and teenager and as somebody who wanted desperately to write.
There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.
The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: Where do you get your ideas?
And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!
The cafe door opened. A young man in dusty white leathers entered, and the wind blew in empty crisp packets and newspapers and ice cream wrappers in with him. They danced around his feet like excited children, then fell exhausted to the floor.
I hate dreams. I don't want any more dreams. I don't want any more anything.
I'm sure there's an alternate universe where I got to become a pulpy science fiction writer.
For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.
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.
There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now.
Inside the pub, Richard's friends continued to celebrate his forthcoming departure with an enthusiasm that, to Richard, was beginning to border on the sinister.
There were dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. Tall stones, bigger than either of the boys, and small ones, just the right size for sitting on. There were some broken stones. The Runt knew what sort of place this was, but it did not scare him. It was a loved place.
I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies.
Mister whoever-the-fuck you are, said Shadow, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the engines, there isn't enough money in the world.
Anything electronic seemed fundamentally magical to Shadow, and liable to evaporate at any moment.
Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored.
So you all remember: just because you're small, doesn't mean you got no power.
You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you can not have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color.
One thing that I get from a lot of people with American Gods is people saying that they would love some kind of glossary with a list of all the Gods and who they are, so that they can look them up.
I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.
I once read that you die because you see the Angel of Death, and you fall in love. And you fall in love so hard your soul is sucked out through your eyes, and that's the moment of death. It's a lovely, strange old Jewish legend.
They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.
The comic convention itself tends to come second to the giant announcements in Hall H and the movies and the TV. So I think it's always good to remind people that there is a wonderful comic convention going on.
People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.
It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.
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.
Nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience.
I think you're doing better than you were the last time we saw you. You're growing a new heart, for a start.
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.
Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed.
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).
I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.
Going to Comic-Con for me is always hard and weird, so it just makes me feel guilty. There's always a hundre thousand people out there who have copies of things that I've written and they really want signed and they're not going to get them signed.
You can buy a book new, buy it in hardback or wait for the paperback, find it used or as a collectible. I don't mind. What I care about most is that people are reading.
We are small but we are many We are many we are small We were here before you rose We will be here when you fall.
It won't hurt, said her other father. Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn't hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.
On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.
Being a writer of fiction isn't like being a compulsive liar, honestly.
The converse held reassuringly true: daylight was safe. Daylight was always safe.
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.
Stories are in one way or another mirrors. We use them to explain to ourselves how the world works or how it doesn't work. Like mirrors stories prepare us for the day to come. They distract us from the things in darkness.
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.
Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I've known dead men talk more than you do.
If you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.
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.
The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck.
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.
What need, Dunstan wondered, could someone have of the storm-filled eggshells?
You are not dead, until every person who knew you is dead as well. Where did I hear that? It doesn't matter. There is a village in my head.
Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.
Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.
There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.
When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.
This was beyond a joke. This had moved beyond foolishness, slipped over the line into genuine 24 karat Jesus-Christ-I-fucked-up-bigtime territory.
Honesty matters. Vulnerability matters. Being open about who you were at a moment in time when you were in a difficult or an impossible place matters more than anything.
You don't want to ask after the health of anyone, if you're a funeral director. They think maybe you're scouting for business.
The cartoon me writes the books cartoon people read in the cartoon world, because they need things to read there too.
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.
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.
Even if your goose habitually lays golden eggs, it will still be cooked.
And all the ghouls around the coffin-wood fire howled at this statement, and growled and sang and exclaimed at how wise they were, and how mighty, and how fine it was to be scared of nothing.
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.
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.
Longer Version:
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. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time.
And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.
Take one, and you cannot take the other. But neither path is safe. Which way would you walk -- the way of hard truths or the way of fine lies?