3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman As far as I’m concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman 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.
3 December 2020 Neil Gaiman It’s not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers – we’re much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.
