Great Throughts Treasury

"All that I did, she said, everything I tried to do. All for nothing. Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what you have learned, and move on."

"All monsters are scared. That's why they're monsters."

"All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories."

"Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: 'Learn, guys."

"Also, in my bedroom, nobody minded if I kept the hall door half-open, allowing in enough light that I was not scared of the dark, and, just as important, allowing me to read secretly, after my bedtime, using the dim hallway light to read by, if I needed to. I always needed to."

"America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America."

"'American Gods' was designed to be, if not open-ended, at least a trilogy kind of shape, so there's definitely one more book, probably another couple of books there to get written."

"Although I was an imaginative child, prone to nightmares, I had persuaded my parents to take me to Madame Tussauds waxworks in London, when I was six, because I had wanted to visit the Chamber of Horrors, expecting the movie-monster Chambers of Horrors I'd read about in my comics. I had wanted to thrill to waxworks of Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf-man. Instead I was walked through a seemingly endless sequence of dioramas of unremarkable, glum-looking men and women who had murdered people - usually lodgers and members of their own families - and who were then murdered in turn: by handing, by the electric chair, in gas chambers. Most of them were depicted with their victims in awkward social situations - seated about a dinner table, perhaps, as their poisoned family members expired. The plaques that explained who they were also told me that the majority of them had murdered their families and sold the bodies to anatomy. It was then that the word anatomy garnered its own edge of horror for me. I did not know what anatomy was. I knew only that anatomy made people kill their children."

"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."

"And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live."

"An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards."

"AMY: This time can we... lose the bunk beds? THE DOCTOR: No Bunk beds are cool, a bed with a ladder, you can't beat that!"

"And did I pass? The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left the younger woman said, You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear."

"And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever."

"And he still thinks, in the little bit of his head that's still him, that he's not a zombie. That he's not dead, that there's a threshold he hasn't stepped over. But he crossed it long time ago."

"And books are real places, make no mistake about that."

"And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet."

"And I would try and walk far enough away that people would not assume I was with him."

"And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold chamomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right."

"And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved. It was this free-will thing, of course. It was a bugger."

"And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would."

"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."

"And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally translated, apparently means that thing over there. (Quick, brave Himalayan Guide - what's that thing over there? Yeti. I see.)"

"And the state of his bathroom -- I'm not one to gossip, but there are things crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life, but have in all probability by now envolved their own political systems."

"And that life is what happens when you?re alive, and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

"And then he looked her full in the face, and her heart leapt and sank, as the eyes the dangerous blue of the summer sky before a storm gazed back into hers."

"And then he said, Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn?t she the one who killed her children? Different woman, said Mr. Nancy. Same deal."

"And then, in a skittering, chittering rush, it came. The hand, running high on its fingertips, scrabbled through the tall grass and up onto a tree stump. It stood there for a moment, like crab tasting the air, and then it made one triumphant, nail-clacking leap onto the center of the tablecloth. Time slowed for Coraline. The white fingers closed around the black key."

"And then it went, and time passed properly once more, every second following every other second just like they're meant to."

"And then they were at Tristran's old home, where his sister waited for him, and there was a steaming breakfast on the stove and on the table, prepared for him, lovingly, by the woman he had always believed to be his mother."

"And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard self-satisfied strength of belief even for that."

"And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it."

"And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.' 'They kill themselves, you mean?' said Bod... 'Indeed.' 'Does it work? Are they happier dead?' 'Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you."

"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."

"And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow"

"And there was a voice, a high clear, female voice, which said Ow, and then, very quietly, it said Fuck, and then it said Ow, once more."

"And without those three writers, I would not be here today. And nor, of course, would any of you. I thank you."

"And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give."

"And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristan Thorn traveled beyond the fields we know."

"Any way, death is so final, isn't it?"

"Any view of things that is not strange, is false."

"Anything electronic seemed fundamentally magical to Shadow, and liable to evaporate at any moment."

"Anyone who calls you little lady has already excluded you from the set of people worth listening to."

"Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets."

"Are there any ponies in this? asked my sister. I thought there would be ponies by now."

"Apocatastasis. What it means: 1) Restoration, re-establishment, renovation 2) Return to a previous condition 3) (Astronomy) Return to the same apparent position, completion of a period of revolution."

"Anything that keeps you happy and writing is part of my writing ritual: I like music, so I tend to have it playing in the background. But if I'm interested, I can write in an airport waiting areas."

"Are you going to do it? Go on. You have to do it. I bet you won?t be any crapper than I was. Fat Charlie shrugged, in a way that, he hoped, indicated that he contained within him depths of crap as yet unplumbed."

"Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human."

"Are you scared?? asked Mr. Ibis. ?Not really.? ?Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand."