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4b90552
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There are accounts that, if we open our hearts to them, will cut us too deeply.
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Neil Gaiman |
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c5d559b
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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 ..
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Neil Gaiman |
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b97b7ef
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Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
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Neil Gaiman |
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fb943a7
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She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin's-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world h..
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Neil Gaiman |
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a258759
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Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.
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Neil Gaiman |
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3d1f65f
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The cat looked as if it were about to say something sarcastic. Then it flicked its whiskers and said, "Challenge her. There's no guarantee she'll play fair, but her kind of thing loves games and challenges."
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Neil Gaiman |
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103f0f6
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If you only write when you're inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist because you're going to have to make your word count today and those words aren't going to wait for you whether you're inspired or not.
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poetry
writing
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Neil Gaiman |
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2f4820a
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On the whole, stories don't write themselves.
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Neil Gaiman |
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0ccad9c
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I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and the end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And t..
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Neil Gaiman |
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a37d136
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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.
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Neil Gaiman |
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68837ac
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At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune teller. "Now," said Wednesday, "at the start of any quest or enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns." He dropped a coin into the slot. With jagged, mechanical motions, the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more. A slip of paper chunked out of the slot. Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up and put it in his..
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Neil Gaiman |
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ef28105
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If you have something specific and visible to fear, rather than something that could be anything, it is easier.
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Neil Gaiman |
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57f61e0
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There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.
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life
paths
moving-forward
smile
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Neil Gaiman |
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2bfd8c9
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I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.
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silence
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Neil Gaiman |
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ee4762a
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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.
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childhood
children-s-books
illustrated-books
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Neil Gaiman |
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cae1645
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It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best.
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Neil Gaiman |
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596a0c7
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Some of us claim that he was a messiah, and some think that he was just a man with very special powers. But that misses the point. Whatever he was, he changed the world.
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Neil Gaiman |
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b5ea773
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Dreams shape the world
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Neil Gaiman |
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1a9af19
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You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.
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sad
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Neil Gaiman |
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0425edb
|
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.
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humour
humor
geography
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Neil Gaiman |
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06f0d7b
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If you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
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humor
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Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett |
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1c68682
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Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.
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temptation
elephants
loyalty
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Neil Gaiman |
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bb958d4
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He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.
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Neil Gaiman |
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235538e
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We save our lives in such unlikely ways.
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Neil Gaiman |
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7ef8b1e
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I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?
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sandman
tattoo
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Neil Gaiman |
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91179ed
|
What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?" The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, "Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself."
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Neil Gaiman |
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28de360
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When you are scared, but you do it anyway, that's brave.
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Neil Gaiman |
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2c56b72
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He stared down at the golden curls of the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness. "You know," he concluded, after a while, "I think he actually looks like an Adam."
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Neil Gaiman |
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ef5fb9d
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It begins, as most things begin, with a song. In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world. They were sung. The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and t..
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Neil Gaiman |
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8ee6381
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Love belongs to Desire. And Desire is always Cruel. -Old Man
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Neil Gaiman |
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c8b80de
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There must be a Hell. A place for demons. A place for the damned. Hell is Heaven's reflection. Heaven's shadow. They define each other. There must be a Hell for without Hell, Heaven has no meaning. --Remiel
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Neil Gaiman |
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b934af3
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I couldn't get you to the ocean, but there was nothing stopping me bringing the ocean to you.
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Neil Gaiman |
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de0a76f
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Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however... People stay the same."
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Neil Gaiman |
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1a5d2e4
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He was walking into Faerie, in search of a fallen star, with no idea how he would find the star, nor how to keep himself safe and whole as he tried. He looked back and fancied that he could see the lights of Wall behind him, wavering and glimmering as if in a heat-haze, but still inviting.
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fairy-tales
fantasy
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Neil Gaiman |
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6d69bba
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Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way.
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Neil Gaiman |
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caaae97
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It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.
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Neil Gaiman |
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b6bed09
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I like stories where women save themselves.
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Neil gaiman |
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c3390a7
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Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brillian..
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responsibility
dream
the-dreaming
the-endless
the-kindly-ones
the-sandman
neil-gaiman
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Neil Gaiman |
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4ffe6b2
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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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sex
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Neil Gaiman |
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2a8948b
|
So you used to know everything?" She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This," she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and the shawls and clusters of bright stars."
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Neil Gaiman |
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c4f64e9
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Loki was not evil, although he was certainly not a force for good. Loki was . . . complicated.
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Neil Gaiman |
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3923d29
|
For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
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death
sandman
gaiman
postmodernism
graphic-novel
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Neil Gaiman |
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8be8e16
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Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine.
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Neil Gaiman |
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f072e54
|
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 s..
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chaos-theory
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Neil Gaiman |