"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.)"
"Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism."
"But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it."(Online journal entry for January 31, 2009)"
"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 like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff."
"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."