Shadow could not decide whether he was looking at a moon the size of a dollar, a foot above his head, or whether he was looking at a moon the size of the Pacific Ocean, many thousands of miles away. Nor whether there was any difference between the two ideas. Perhaps it was all a matter of the way you looked at it.
We never went in for that sort of thing. You only need men if you want to breed more men.
The finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn’t see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, ‘I know. But it’s the only game in town.’ And he went back to the game.
He dreamed of ghosts, and of the moon and stars.
This was not simply cold: this was science fiction. This was a story set on the dark side of Mercury, back when they thought Mercury had a dark side. This was somewhere out on rocky Pluto, where the sun is just another star, shining only a little more brightly in the darkness.
I don’t think home’s a place anymore. I think it’s a state of mind.
Always good to remember when you’re making art. You don’t have to like it, just be ready to do the next thing.
There are a handful of poems, which perhaps might need their own warning for the people who are frightened, disturbed, or terminally puzzled by poetry.
I didn’t mean to write this as a poem, but the meter turned up in my head and after that I simply had no say in the matter.
Okay,” she said. “Good question. I’m the idiot box. I’m the TV. I’m the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I’m the boob tube. I’m the little shrine the family gathers to adore.” “You’re the television? Or someone in the television?” “The TV’s the altar. I’m what people are sacrificing to.” “What do they sacrifice?” asked Shadow. “Their time, mostly,” said Lucy. “Sometimes each other.
The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is YOU. Your voice, your mind your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
It’s good to know where you are, but it’s better to know where you’re going.
DREAM ! Dreams shape the world. Dreams create the world anew, every night. Do not dream the world the way it is now, in thrall to our feline masters and mistresses.
It’s easier to say true things in the dark.
Approaching the state of Delaware, the dreamer is a small dog, dreaming impatiently of a past life, long forgotten, when he sailed tall ships across uncharted. The salt spray of the ocean stings my face.
There was something he wanted to say to Laura, and he was prepared to wait until he knew what it was.
Some skills can be attained by education, and some by practice, and some by time. Those skills will come if you study. Soon enough you will master Fading and Sliding and Dreamwalking. But some skills cannot be mastered by the living, and for those you must wait a little longer.
There’s no Hell to spite the sinners. There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.
Welcome to the world,” he said wearily. “You get used to it after a while.
I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult. Today they gave me comfort of a kind. I was wearing the right clothes for a hard day.