The myths are dead. The gods are dead. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms are dead. There is only the State, and the People.- No, Monsieur Robespierre. There is much more than that.

People tend to find books when they are ready for them.

Libraries are our friends.

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had...

You’ll think this is a bit silly, but I’m a bit–well, I have a thing about birds.””What, a phobia?””Sort of.””Well, that’s the common term for an irrational fear of birds.””What do they call a rational...

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.

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.

We have eyes and we have nervesesWe have tails we have teethYou’ll all get what you deservesesWhen we rise from underneath.

…Come home, Bod.’ ‘I think . . . I said things to Silas. He’ll be angry.’ ‘If he didn’t care about you, you couldn’t upset him,’ was all she said.

Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘… Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.

Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.

Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all...

Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I’d fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, ‘So this...

Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.

I walk across the dreaming sands under the pale moon: through the dreams of countries and cities, past dreams of places long gone and times beyond recall.

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. ‘Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.

You don’t get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd.

Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I’ve known dead men talk more than you do.

…Because a book is a little empathy machine. It puts you inside somebody else’s head. You see out of the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s very hard to hate people of a certain kind...

I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.

Evildoers beware!” and was thus much too silly ever to be sung out loud. She would hum it to herself sometimes though, in the shower, during the soapy bits.And that is, more or less, everything...

He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home...

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that...

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.

According to my daughters, my most irritating habit is asking for cups of tea.

It was a dark and stormy nightmare

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.

Coraline opened the box of chocolates. The dog looked at them longingly.”Would you like one?” she asked the little dog.”Yes, please,” whispered the dog. “Only not toffee ones. They make me drool.””I thought chocolates weren’t...

The burning point of paper was the moment where I knew that I would have to remember this. Because people would have to remember books, if other people burn them or forget them. We will...

Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I...

You get what anybody gets – you get a lifetime.

Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to spend his words.

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed....

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why...

Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.

Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)

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...

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...

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?””Easy,” said the cat. “Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming...

I am Desire, am I not? That is what I am; that is what I do. I make things want things. Where I touch, things want and need and love – drawn to their objects...

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; thatwitches are often betrayed by their appetites;dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;hearts can be well-hidden,and you betray them with...

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the...

The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. “There are those,” it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, “who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to...

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a...

She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.

Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?

Firstly, there is no such person as Death. Second, Death’s this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant...

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.

And why does he talk so funny? Doesn’t he mean squashed tomatoes?I don’t think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that’s just how they talk then.

As we write we summon little demons.