[b]Neil Gaiman
Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.[/b]
You can imagine my problem with that. Or, I suppose, maybe not.
He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it was an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.
What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn’t look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. Say goodbye to your friend, he’d say to them. He just couldn’t cut it. . .
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.
For some, no doubt, a true story.
Not only are there no happy endings, she told him, there aren’t even any endings.
Well, not counting that one of course.
You don’t have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.
Anyone here ever actually done that?
You musn’t be afraid of the dark.
I’m not, said Shadow. I’m afraid of the people in the dark.
Them and the monsters. When for example, you can tell them apart.
We often confuse what we wish for with what is.
And not just the faithful.