Author

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

I'm one of those writers who tends to be really good at making outlines and sticking to them. I'm very good at doing that, but I don't like it. It sort of takes a lot of the fun out.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.

With 'Stardust', I hope what I was doing is giving 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 60-year-olds a chance to get the same sense of wonder, the same feeling, the same magic, that they got in reading the classic fairy tales as children.

A good writer should be able to write comedic work that made you laugh, and scary stuff that made you scared, and fantasy or science fiction that imbued you with a sense of wonder, and mainstream journalism that gave you clear and concise information in a way that you wanted it.

One thing that I get from a lot of people with 'American Gods' is people saying that they would love some kind of glossary with a list of all the Gods and who they are, so that they can look them up.

I had started to feel that somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of page-turning as a good thing had been lost. You were getting books that were the equivalent of absolutely beautifully prepared dishes of food that didn't taste like anything much.

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

I like reading. I prefer not reading on my computer, because that makes whatever I am reading feel like work. I do not mind reading on my iPad.

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

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

I've never known anyone who was what he or she seemed; or at least, was only what he or she seemed. People carry worlds within them.

I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of rules about what you can do and what you can't do.

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.

The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.

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.

Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?

I think of myself as a very lazy author.

The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.