I noticed a long time ago that the Universe rewards belief systems. It doesn't really matter what you believe - it'll be there and waiting for you if you go and look for it. Decide the universe is, say, run by secret enormous teddy bears, and I can guarantee you'll immediately start running across evidence that this is true.

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

With American Gods I was trying very, very consciously - there was a level at which it was a little like trying to write a novel in French - you know, "this novel is to be written in American."

The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing 'I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,' was C.S. Lewis and the 'Narnia' books.

Death is the second oldest of the Endless. It's hard not to love her. She loves you, after all.

What need, Dunstan wondered, could someone have of the storm-filled eggshells?

One of the great things about humor is, you can slip things past people with humor, you can use it as a sweetener. So you can actually tell them things, give them messages, get terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly dark, and because there are jokes in there, they'll go along with you, and they'll travel a lot further along with you than they would otherwise.