"[I]t occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas--abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken--and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created."
--Neil Gaiman
Monday, December 04, 2006
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12 comments:
I love love love Neil Gaiman. And the fact that I just got this comment form to work for me. Great quote belledame.
thanks! welcome, pinko julie!
why are people having trouble with the comment form?? i hate blogger...
Beautiful quote. Thank you.
Can I assume this means you have a copy of this book? Color me green if so. (Got it earmarked for my Xmas money, though.)
Well and unfortunately, probably the reason why so many young boys go to war is the fragile notion of heroism, which weaves its thick red line of bloody streamlets through the lives of generations to come.
dan, i do; actually got it when Kristin & antip were visiting, at the Strand. worth the anticipation, especially the American Gods follow-up.
Another Neil fan here.
LOVE HIM.
I think part of The Himlayan's/Little Girl's voice I used to use for here had some of it's root in Delerium's speech.
"used to use for here" -- I'm really not expressing myself well these days.
The voice I used for her on the old blog, I meant. All that "To be" way of talking, etc.
BD, is that "Monarch of the Glen?" If so, it's one of the few in this collection I've already seen; but, yeah, worth the price of admission.
BTW, I love how the Publisher's Weekly review posted on Amazon has the line, "most of these stories rely too heavily on the stock-in-trade of horror, sci-fi and fantasy." Whiskey, tango, foxtrot, over? Too much genre in my genre fiction! Nerd cooties! Abort! Abort!
It has struck me that fragility and survival can go together.
I love that man so, so hard.
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