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Home
Authors
Neil Gaiman
British
Author
About the author
So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Freedom
#First
#Fighting
#Defense
#Fight
#Winning
#Losing
#Legal
#Speech
#Rights
I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Time
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#World
So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Pretty
#Ideas
#Editors
#Writer
#Artist
I'll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you're trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different voices in the book.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Trying
I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Work
#Children
#Parents
I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Freedom
#Old
#Sense
#Comedy
#Jokes
#Folk
#African
I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Writing
I think of myself as a very lazy author.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Right
#Word
#Flaws
Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Battle
#Awards
#Funny
Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Right
#Today
#Writing
#Prose
#Effort
#Beauty
As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Reason
#Writer
And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Eating
#Trouble
#Worth
#Opinion
American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Words
#American
#Gods
Also, I've already won all the awards.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Awards
A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Freedom
#Speech
I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#People
#Sense
#Comedy
I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of rules about what you can do and what you can't do.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Writing
#Rules
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Will
#Facts
#Shadow
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Time
#People
#Being
#Ideas
#Writers
#Difference
This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Work
#Fiction
#Existence
#Folk
We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#World
#Freedom
#First
#Speech
#Countries
I'm one of those writers who tends to be really good at making outlines and sticking to them. I'm very good at doing that, but I don't like it. It sort of takes a lot of the fun out.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Fun
#Writers
In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#People
#First
#Trust
#Learning
Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#People
#Reason
#Dogs
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Children
#Clothes
It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Will
#Fool
Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Life
#First
Partly because I get such astonishingly nice fans.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Fans
Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Writers
#Stars
I'm a fairly undisciplined writer.
Neil Gaiman,
British
Author
#Writer