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.

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less...

Only the Gods are real.

Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure. Face your life, It’s pain, It’s pleasure, Leave no path untaken.

Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from...

I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer’s night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently,...

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.

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...

Darkness is happening,” said the leather woman, very quietly. “Night is happening. All the nightmares that have come out when the sun goes down, since the cave times, when we huddled together in fear for...

I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where you feel bad, and from bad places. It can be a safe place...

Jesus. Low-Key Lyesmith,” said Shadow. and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. “Loki,” he said. “Loki Lie-smith.””You’re slow,” said Loki, “but you get there in the end.” And his lips twisted...

Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there.It’s the magic of fiction: you...

People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghost,...

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.

In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I’d ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering,...

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song.

The ball of dark fur pressed itself into my chest, and I wished she was my kitten, and knew that she was not.

You are young, and in love,” said Primus. “Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.

The Doctor: Sorry, do you have a name?Idris: Seven hundred years and finally he asks. The Doctor: But what do I call you?Idris: I think you call me… Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only when we’re...

Can’t make an omelette without killing a few people.

is not a big, solid, serious book.

Life – and I don’t suppose I’m the first to make this comparison – is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl...

Oh … My twitchy witchy girl I think you are so nice, I give you bowls of porridge And I give you bowls of ice-cream.

How do I know you’ll keep your word?” asked Coraline.”I swear it,” said the other mother. “I swear it on my own mother’s grave.””Does she have a grave?” asked Coraline.”Oh yes,” said the other mother....

Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it – water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about...

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost...

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.

People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

Richard put away the Narnia books, convinced, sadly, that they were an allegory; that an author (whom he had trusted) had been attempting to slip something past him. He had had the same disgust with...

I watch with envious eyes and mind, the single-souled who dare not feelThe wind that blows beyond the moon, who do not hear the fairy reel

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.

It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation...

I think that there should have been some nice wumpires,” said my sister, wistfully. “Nice, handsome, misunderstood wumpires.””There were not,” said my father.

Believe,” said the rumbling voice. “If you are to survive, you must believe.””Believe what?” asked Shadow. “What should I believe?”He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes...

Hell is something you carry with you.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or...

After four days of flight, she had found a hiding place…

Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded...

I, on the other hand,

Up the narrow stairs and into the kitchen. Rosie’s mother looked around and made a face as if to indicate that it did not meet her standards of hygiene, containing as it did, edible foodstuffs....

Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.

There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.

The best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.

Bod shrugged. “So?” he said. “It’s only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing....

He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.**Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit...

So what I want to know is, when I’m asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?””When you dream, sometimes...