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15f4ab1
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Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realizing that they are, quite literally, stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.
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Neil Gaiman |
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26483ad
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You're weird,' she said. 'You don't have any friends.' 'I didn't come here for friends,' said Bod truthfully. "i came here to learn.' Mo's nose twitched. "Do you know how weird that is?' she asked. "Nobody comes to school to learn. I mean, you come because you have to."
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Neil Gaiman |
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293b1c4
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It must be a real betrayal, when your body turns against you. I wonder if she likes flowers. All the bits of you that can go wrong... I don't like flowers, not really. I like growing them, but that's only because I like seeing them blossom, and seeing them die... But oh, how I love to play God.
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god
flowers
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Neil Gaiman |
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1d9a3f7
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Bod tried to smile, but he could not find a smile inside himself.
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Neil Gaiman |
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2358046
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Como tomas el cafe? Negro como la noche y dulce como un pecado.
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Neil Gaiman |
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1dda984
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How old are you?" said the girl. "What are you doing here? Do you live here? What's your name?" "I don't know," said Bod. "You don't know your name?" said the girl. "Course you do. Everybody knows their own name. Fibber." "I know my name," said Bod. "And I know what I'm doing here. But I don't know the other things you said."
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Neil Gaiman |
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556693b
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No two readers can or will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author.
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reading
fiction
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Neil Gaiman |
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048d6db
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Oh, monsters are scared," said Lettie. "That's why they're monsters. And as for grown-ups . . ." She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, "I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, t..
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Neil Gaiman |
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cb4ea29
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I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.
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Neil Gaiman |
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7c5426c
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So this is your library, huh, Lucien? It's a big place What's so special about it, then?" "Oh, it's a very unusual library, Matthew. Somewhere in here is every story that has every been dreamed. " "They're just books." "Oh yes. But unusual books. You'll find none of them on Earth. In this section, for example, are novels their authors never wrote, or never finished, except in dreams."
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lucien-from-sandman
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Neil Gaiman |
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42a9b13
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The ocean was back in the pond, and the only knowledge I was left with, as if I had woken from a dream on a summer's day, was that it had not been long ago since I had known everything. I looked at Lettie in the moonlight. "Is that how it is for you? I asked. "Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" ...She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And y..
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universe
reality
spiritual
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Neil Gaiman |
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5cc9388
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The gods we prayed to when we were young used up their time so long ago. They cannot answer anymore. They never liked us, did they? Gods don't "like". They love, they hate, they ignore..."
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Neil Gaiman |
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4410ac2
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Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke.
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fat-charlie
meter
quotient
neil-gaiman
weirdness
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Neil Gaiman |
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4cf6eba
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A ghost-memory rises, here: a phantom moment, a shaky reflection in the pool of remembrance. I know how it felt when the scavengers took my heart. How it felt as the hunger birds, all mouth, tore into my chest and snatched out my heart, still pumping, and devoured it to get at what was hidden inside it. I know how that feels, as if it was truly a part of my life, of my death. And then the memory snips and rips, neatly, and -
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Neil Gaiman |
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ba4215d
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I love the word 'fantasy'... but I love it for the almost infinite room it gives an author to play: an infinite playroom, of a sort, in which the only boundaries are those of the imagination. I do not love it for the idea of commercial fantasy. Commercial fantasy, for good or for ill, tends to drag itself through already existing furrows, furrows dug by J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, leaving a world of stories behind it, excluding so..
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writing
fantasy
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Neil Gaiman |
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26ef634
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I was not scared, though, and I could not have told you why I was not scared. I trusted Lettie, just as I had trusted her when we had gone in search of the flapping thing beneath the orange sky. I believed in her, and that meant I would come to no harm while I was with her. I knew it in a way that I knew that grass was green, the roses had sharp, woody thorns, that breakfast cereal was sweet.
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Neil Gaiman |
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a53a1a6
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She hoped it wasn't a spider. Spiders made Coraline intensely uncomfortable.
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Neil Gaiman |
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0da65b8
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The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the Equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgement.
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Neil Gaiman |
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fc3f169
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Being dead is probably just like everything else in life: you pick some of it up as you go along, and you just make up the rest.
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Neil Gaiman |
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9a1b7f2
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We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time. We
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Neil Gaiman |
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afdc2de
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khly khtb w mjlh w rwznmh khwndh bwd. my dnst gr z khnh frr khnd mmkhn st bfrd nbb rwbrw shwd khh mmkhn bwd blyy srsh bywrnd. m z Trfy fsnh hy pryn r nyz khwndh bwd, ps my dnst adm hy khwb hm dr khnr hywl h wjwd drnd.
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Neil Gaiman |
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9ff1f38
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1. Write. 2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. 3. Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. 4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is. 5. Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly..
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writing
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Neil Gaiman |
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fce4846
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The old religion is what gets the crops up and keeps your cock hard and makes sure that nobody builds a bloody great motorway through an area of outstanding natural beauty. The Gateway stands, and the hill stands, and the place stands. It's well, well over two thousand years old. You don't go mucking about with anything that powerful.
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Neil Gaiman |
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1e41859
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Even in dreams and in death, a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay
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Neil Gaiman |
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60bacd7
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You made peace," said the buffalo man. "You took our words and made them your own. They never understood that they were here--and the people who worshiped them were here--because it suits us that they are here. But we can change our minds. And perhaps we will." --
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Neil Gaiman |
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bf87a4f
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There was something empty at the bottom of all her words.
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Neil Gaiman |
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680d15b
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They were waiting for me in the books and in stories, after all, hiding inside the twenty six characters and a handful of punctuation marks. These letters and words, when placed in the right order, would conjure all manner of exotic beasts and people from the shadows, would reveal the motives and minds of insects and of cats. They were spells, spelled with words to make worlds, waiting for me, in the pages of books.
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Neil Gaiman |
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cfe2500
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Because," announced Tristran, "every lover is in his heart a madman, and in his head a minstrel."
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Neil Gaiman |
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1d13578
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I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pret..
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Neil Gaiman |
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55909f7
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In the beginning - before the beginning - was the word. And the word was
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Neil Gaiman |
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6ef456f
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The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.' 'I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn's rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close. 'Says he will see you in Kay-ro.' tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin's ravens t..
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mysteries
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Neil Gaiman |
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12b1cf8
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I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters.
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leprechaun
fighting
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Neil Gaiman |
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f626a1b
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A song can last long after the events and people in it are dust and dreams and gone.
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Neil Gaiman |
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b87a33f
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Richard had met Jessica in France, on a weekend trip to Paris two years earlier; had in fact discovered her in the Louvre, trying to find the group of his office friends who had organized the trip. Staring up at an immense sculpture, he had stepped backwards into Jessica, who was admiring an extremely large and historically important diamond. He tried to apologize to her in French, which he did not speak, gave up, and began to apologize in ..
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language-barrier
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Neil Gaiman |
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1446ff5
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He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.
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Neil Gaiman |
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2477e9a
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For as soon as something becomes impossible it slipslides out of belief entirely, whether it's true or not.
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impossibility
possibility
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Neil Gaiman |
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7ee52af
|
It's a way of talking about lust without talking about lust, he told them. It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about?
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sex
vampires
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Neil Gaiman |
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4b7ee97
|
If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art.
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artists
communication
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Neil Gaiman |
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6e9a385
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He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize how much he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man has been called.
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love
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Neil Gaiman |
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9f880cc
|
The Marquis de Carabas liked being who he was, and when he took risks he liked them to be calculated risks, and he was someone who double-and triple-checked his calculations. He
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Neil Gaiman |
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faea5ec
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Value's in what people think. Not in what's real. Value's in dreams, boy.
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Neil Gaiman |
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0592b4f
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You shouldn't trust the storyteller; only trust the story.
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Neil Gaiman |
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59d9155
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Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while.
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Neil Gaiman |
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0cd9c79
|
This will be the age of cruel winds, the age of people who become as wolves, who prey upon each other, who are no better than wild beasts. Twilight will come to the world, and the places where the humans live will fall into ruins, flaming briefly, then crashing down and crumbling into ash and devastation.
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Neil Gaiman |