 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. |
| I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I've written. |
| 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. |
| I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe. |
| 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'm a fairly undisciplined writer. |
| A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up. |
| 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. |
| Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal. |
| 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. |
| And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it. |
| 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. |
| We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable. |
| It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor. |
| I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it. |
| Also, I've already won all the awards. |
