A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.
Also, I've already won all the awards.
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 there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.
As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.
Authors know that you should never really write a funny book because funny books do not get awards. Comic novels will not get awards.
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.
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.
I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.
I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it.
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 started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe.
I think of myself as a very lazy author.
I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.
I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written.
I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.
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.
I'm a fairly undisciplined writer.
I'm not a signer, I'm a writer. Although through years of practice I'm getting to be quite a good signer. I really am.
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.
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.
Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?
It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
One of the things so far that's been so very apparent to me as a writer, is that normally when I write a book, half of the people who read it enjoy it, and half of them don't, and if they're smart they'll go on and read something else I've done because they're all completely different.
Partly because I get such astonishingly nice fans.
Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.
So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them.
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.
Strategy number one is that I always, or almost always, have at least two or three different things that I'm writing at any one time.
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.
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.
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.
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.
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.
We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.
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.
Neil's story, How To Talk To Girls At Parties was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2007.
Neil wrote the screenplay and also acted as executive producer for the movie Beowolf, to be released in 2007, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, and Angelina Jolie.
His Chinese astrological sign is the Rat.
Neil appeared at the Nebula Awards dinner in Tempe, Arizona on May 6, 2006, to present the Grand Master Award to Harlan Ellison.
Neil's novel, Anansi Boys was placed on the Washington Post's Best Books of 2005 list.
His illustrated book, The Dream Hunters, won the Bram Stoker Award for "Best Illustrated Book" in 1999. The book was illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano.
Actress
"My child, I'm sorry that your time on earth was too short, but you got as long as everyone else. You lived a lifetime." Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman.
In late-September and early-October of 2005, Neil did a cross-country tour in both the US and Canada to promote the release of his most recent book, Anansi Boys. In late-October, he did a similar tour in the U.K.
Neil wrote an episode of Babylon 5, titled
The Dictionary of Literary Biography, published with yearly updates by The Gale Research Company, lists Neil Gaiman as one of the top 10 living post-modern writers.
In 1992, Neil Gaiman was voted "Favourite Guest" and received a Ricky Award from the Canadian television show
Gaiman wrote the English script for Hayao Miyazaki's Japanese blockbuster animated film, Mononokehime (Princess Mononoke). It was released in North America by Miramax in 1999, and was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Script with both Gaiman and Miyazaki sharing the nomination.
Neil Gaiman was co-creator and co-editor for the "Utterly Comic Comic Relief Comic", which, in 1991, raised over ?40,000 for the UK Comic Relief charity.
Gaiman received the Eagle for Best Writer of American Comics in 1990. The Eagle awards are comic's longest standing awards, established in 1976.
Signal To Noise, a graphic novella written by Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean, was the winner of an Eisner award for Best Graphic Album. It was broadcast as a radio play on BBC Radio Three in October, 1996. The script for the radio play was written by Gaiman and was nominated for a SONY Radio Award.
The Sandman won the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for best writer (1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994), best continuing series (1991, 1992 and 1993), best graphic album (reprint) (1991), and the Best Graphic Album (new) (1993).
Neil has three children: Mike, Holly and Maddy.
After a long absence, he returned to comics in 2004, publishing a series for Marvel called 1602. It was the best-selling comic in 2004.
Wolves In The Walls, written by Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean, published in 2003, was named one of the best illustrated books of the year by the New York Times.
His novel American Gods, published in 2001, won the Hugo, Nebula, SFX, Bram Stoker, and Locus Awards for Best Novel of the Year. It was also nominated in the category of "Best Novel" by the BSFA.
He is definitely most well-known for his work in comics on his original Vertigo/DC series called The Sandman.
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