Neil Gaiman, Quotable Guy

Politicians love to give soundbytes, catchy phrases that stick. They don’t care if it’s just talk, doesn’t mean anything and will never be fulfilled anyway. And then there’s Neil Gaiman, author of science fiction, fantasy and children’s literature who is such a good speaker that “he has millions of devoted fans who eat his every word like air”. He doesn’t do soundbytes, he enthralls you with entire paragraphs!

Back in 2012, at a keynote address at the University of the Arts, Gaiman said:
“The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.”
I was curious about the second line, the problems of success. In another interview, he elaborated based on his own experience:
“This (success as an author) has huge problems, which are mostly about writing. I’m currently dealing with how to go back to being a writer. Rather than whatever it is that I am. A traveller, a signer, a promoter, a talker, a lecturer. I’m building new ways to get back to being a writer, because there are lots of things that are more fun than sitting in a room, on your own, writing stuff, that have to do with actually interacting with other human beings. And going out and doing stuff.”
I guess this is what Gaiman described in his keynote as:
“The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful.”

In his keynote address, he had also said:
“(The) problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you.”
That line I did not understand at all. Maybe a few feel that way, but surely, most people feel they earned it. Then why say it in a public talk meant for the majority? The interview provided the answer:
“There is a weird danger zone you get into where [editors] have no power, because what they want is your name on their book, or whatever. So, you write a short story and you hand it in, and you’re not sure if it’s any good or not. And everybody goes, ‘Oh this is wonderful, thank you so much.’”
Then I understood. Gaiman is one of those guys who doesn’t get carried away by his success or fame. He realizes there will be sycophants and there will be people who know his name will sell anything and hence won’t give him honest feedback. Hence that nagging feeling. Which is also why he values his pre-fame days:
“It was much, much more fun being absolutely unknown, and have people go, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s good’.”
Because then it was sincere, then they mean what they say.

This guy is definitely worth Google’ing for more of his quotes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more