Neil Gaiman

"Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down."

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it."

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something."

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard."

"Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's voices. But as quickly as you can start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there will always be better writers than you and there will always be smarter writers than you, but you are the only you."

"When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day."

"Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!"

"Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism."

"We owe it to each other to tell stories."

"If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist."

"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.)"

"My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say...''He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant."

"If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist."

"Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't."

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."

"Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read."

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something."

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

"If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist."