I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.
Neil GaimanThere are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.
Neil GaimanThe main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, youโre allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But itโs definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. Iโm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Neil GaimanI toyed briefly with an image someone once mentioned to me, of a village in the shadow of a twin-peaked mountain. In the morning the sun rises. At lunch it sets behind the mountain. In the early afternoon it rises once more. The cocks crow for the second time, and later the sun sets again. No. One peak. Metaphors should not be belaboured.
Neil Gaiman