Neil Gaiman
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.Collection: American Gods
You play your cards so close to your chest," said Shadow, "that I'm not even sure they're really cards at all.Collection: Play
The war had begun and nobody saw it. The storm was lowering and nobody knew it.Collection: War
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.Collection: Stars
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.Collection: Seems
Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.Collection: Kids
I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.Collection: Law
Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.Collection: Change
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?Collection: Giving
They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.Collection: Believe
It's easy, there's a trick to it, you do it or you die.Collection: Easy
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.Collection: Baseball
So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.Collection: Dream
All bookshelves are magical.Collection: Bookshelves
Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I've known dead men talk more than you do.Collection: Men
Watch out for that pedestrian!" "It's on the street, it knows the risks it's taking!Collection: Risk
It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will take a graveyard.Collection: Children
When you love something you just don't want to stop talking about it.Collection: Talking
If ever you get to be my age," said the old woman, "you will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run.Collection: Running
The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked...that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.Collection: Naked
American Gods was designed to be if not open-ended, at least a trilogy kind of shape, so there's definitely one more book, probably another couple of books there to get written.Collection: Couple
As a kid I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays and I would walk home at night. For several years I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them.Collection: Summer
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Men
The world is always ending, and the end is always being averted, by love or foolishness or just plain old dumb luck.Collection: Dumb
Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.Collection: Reality
Why do I have this imagination? It's the only one I've got!Collection: Imagination
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).Collection: Writing
I love religion. I could make up religions all day. I sort of think that in an ideal world I'd like to be a religion designer. I'd like people come up to me and say, I need a religion. I'd go talk to them for a while, and I'd design a religion for them. That would be a great job. There's a need for people like that. Fortunately, seeing that one can't actually do it, I get paid for sort of making them up anyway.Collection: Jobs
When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.Collection: Art
When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget.Collection: Dream
Identity can be so gelatinous sometimes.Collection: Identity
Suggestions? Put it aside for a few days, or longer, do other things, try not to think about it. Then sit down and read it (printouts are best I find, but that's just me) as if you've never seen it before. Start at the beginning. Scribble on the manuscript as you go if you see anything you want to change. And often, when you get to the end you'll be both enthusiastic about it and know what the next few words are. And you do it all one word at a time.Collection: Writing
Start telling the stories that only you can tell.Collection: Stories
All your tomorrows start here.Collection: Tomorrow
Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.Collection: Lying
Kim Newman's Anno Dracula is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it's still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious.Collection: Reading
A disturbing novel about dreams and wishes, a nightmarish distaff monkey's paw of a book that it's impossible to forget. Lisa Tuttle remains our preeminent chronicler of family madness and desire.Collection: Dream
Tools, of course, can be the subtlest of traps.Collection: Design
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.)Collection: Encyclopedia Britannica
Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on.Collection: Thinking
That doesn't happen," she explained. "Stars fall. They don't go back up again." "You could be the first," he told her.Collection: Stars
You know what the really scary thing about bad dreams? It's that something's going on in your head, and you can't control it. I mean, It's like there's these bad worlds inside you. But it's just you... it's like you're betraying yourself.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Wonder
It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise, in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real.Collection: Real
One cannot begin a new dream without abandoning the last [one].Collection: Dream
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...Collection: Woods
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.Collection: Book