Dorsa

“If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that that is all the story is about, they are probably wrong…It is about these things, yes. But it is about more than that. It is about what you find between its pages”
― Neil Gaiman

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

“I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don't sleep on a bed of bones.”
― Joss Whedon

“Still. Four words.

And I didn’t realize it until a couple of days ago, when someone wrote in to my blog:

Dear Neil,

If you could choose a quote - either by you or another author - to be inscribed on the wall of a public library children’s area, what would it be?

Thanks!

Lynn

I pondered a bit. I’d said a lot about books and kids’ reading over the years, and other people had said things pithier and wiser than I ever could. And then it hit me, and this is what I wrote:

I’m not sure I’d put a quote up, if it was me, and I had a library wall to deface. I think I’d just remind people of the power of stories, and why they exist in the first place. I’d put up the four words that anyone telling a story wants to hear. The ones that show that it’s working, and that pages will be turned:

“… and then w”
― Neil Gaiman, Stories: All-New Tales