It's always too late for sorries, but I appreciate the sentiment.

I like airplanes. I like anywhere that isn't a proper place. I like in betweens.

I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.

And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.

Nothing [the demon] could think up was half as bad as the stuff [people] thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into their design somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse.

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.