What win I if I gain the thing I seek?
A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.
Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?
Tags: sandman neil-gaiman tempest
Here comes a candle to light you to bed, and here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
Neil GaimanTags: neil-gaiman
Look. I brought you here to give you a choice-"
"You didn't bring us here," said Nick.
"You're here," said Bod. "I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.
Tags: neil-gaiman
Elegantly accomplished," said Nehemiah Trot. "I shall compose an Ode. Would you like to stay and listen?
Neil GaimanTags: neil-gaiman
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
Neil GaimanTags: neil-gaiman blog george-r-r-martin
Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting.
Neil GaimanTags: neil-gaiman adults peas revolting
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.
Neil GaimanTags: fear neil-gaiman adults
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.
Neil GaimanTags: weirdness neil-gaiman anansi-boys meter quotient fat-charlie
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.
Neil GaimanTags: books writing creativity authors writing-advice gaiman neil-gaiman writing-life writing-books tumblr
Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.
And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.
If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.
As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.
Tags: reading books fantasy fiction escapism neil-gaiman
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