Douglas Adams and me, October 1983, back when I was a 22-year old Journalist. This was a test Polaroid that Henry the photographer gave me, taken while he was testing shots. I’m glad I still have it.
(This was back when I wore colourful clothes and also back when I smoked. And I wore tinted glasses because I thought they made me look older.)
Douglas is playing Marvin the Paranoid Android’s “How I Hate The Night” song on the guitar, but you can no longer hear him singing. It was too long ago.
Q: What’s it like to be marrying Neil Gaiman? Yeah, so, I don’t fucking know. I mean, it’s like trying to explain a colour. It’s just… You know. I really love him. It’s an incredible relationship. I feel incredibly lucky that we found each other. And I’ve never been able to be so completely myself, you know. Inside of a relationship, where usually in a relationship there’s a lot of changing and adjusting and figuring out and compromising and endless talking about how to do what, and with Neil it’s just so easy. You know, we’re just so easy for each other, that it feels.. It sometimes scares the shit out of me, because it feels too easy. Like the work should be harder. But, you know, there’s almost no work. It’s just, I really understand him, and he really understands me, and there’s not much else to talk about, we get to just go and have fun.
I love her. Truthfully, there’s still “changing and adjusting and figuring out and compromising”. We bump into each other sometimes, or tread on each other’s toes or hearts. But it’s still the easiest relationship I have ever had, and it makes me very happy that she exists and that she loves me.
Hello. I’m Neil Gaiman, I’m a multi-award-winning author of lots and lots and lots of different things, lots of awards. So when I heard that I won the SFX Screenwriting Award for Excellence for my Doctor Who episode The Doctor’s Wife, my reaction was just… Actually, what I was really just trying to say, was, Thank You. So much.
When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
“Places where I was being pirated […] I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. And then they were going out and buying the real books”
“Nobody who would’ve bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free. What you’re actually doing is advertising, you’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness.”
Since I’ve heard numerous dumb things being said about censorship and SOPA, here is a video of one of my personal heroes being a genius (as per usual) and explaining the issue wonderfully.
I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing."
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life, Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever."
