Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth10 November 1960
CityPortchester, England
What need, Dunstan wondered, could someone have of the storm-filled eggshells?
[I spent] much of my time reminding Matt Groening that I really need to be a head in a jar on Futurama.
When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive.
Continuity isn't actually something that I ever worry about. You use it where you need to, and you don't use it where you don't need to.
Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed.
I tend to think of fear and humour as very, very close together. And to be honest I think pornography completes the triangle, because they are things that to work need to evoke a certain reaction.
In film, a lot of the time you're not as engaged, it is all being given to you, and you're accepting it as it comes in, but in comics, as a reader, you are going to have to work, your imagination needs to do an awful lot.
Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.
The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
When I started doing Sandman, I could look at a group of people lined up to get my autograph, and I knew who was my fan and who was somebody's mum there to get a signature. It doesn't work that way anymore. They're people. They're us. That's what they look like.
Fat Charlie wasn't sure that he liked freedom, ... There was too much open air involved.
You are time. Foul time, who steals the gold from a maiden's hair and takes the sapphire from a child's eyes. Dark time, who has stolen from every thing there ever was all the things that it held precious and divine... And left nothing but ashes and memories and the grave.
The best thing I think about me and Dave as a creative team is, we don't have to work together. We both have individual careers,