16:

2010-05-13T01:15:00.000+01:00

"This is a roadside attraction," said Wednesday. "One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power."

"Come again?"

"It's perfectly simple," said Wednesday. "In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or... well, you get the idea."

"There are churches all across the States, though," said Shadow.

"In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that."

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T01:00:00.000+01:00

""Lady Liberty," said Wednesday. "Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty," he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste—"Someone could slip on that. Break his neck" he muttered, interrupting himself. "Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in." He pushed open the door, and the sunlight hit them. "Liberty," boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, "is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses."

"Yeah?" said Shadow.

"Quoting," said Wednesday. "Quoting someone French. That's who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbril. Hold your torch as high as you want to, m'dear, there's still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg.""

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:56:00.002+01:00

"Shadow inserted his coin. The drunk in the graveyard raised his bottle to his lips. One of the gravestones flipped over, revealing a grasping corpse; a headstone turned around, flowers replaced by a grinning skull. A wraith appeared on the right of the church, while on the left of the church something with a half-glimpsed, pointed, unset-tlingly birdlike face, a pale, Boschian nightmare, glided smoothly from a headstone into the shadows and was gone. Then the church door opened, a priest came out, and the ghosts, haunts, and corpses vanished, and only the priest and the drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own.

The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be."

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:51:00.001+01:00

"'You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the water hole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I'll look after your balls for you. He was so proud of his balls. So he got into the water hole for a swim, and I put his balls on, and left him my own little spider balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran away, fast as my legs would take me.

'I didn't stop till I got to the next town. And I saw Old Monkey there. You lookin' mighty fine, Anansi, said Old Monkey. I said to him, You know what they all singin' in the town over there? What are they singin'? he asks me. They singin' the runniest song, I told him. Then I did a dance, and I sings,

Tiger's balls, yeah,
I ate Tiger's balls
Now ain't nobody gonna stop me ever at all
Nobody put me up against the big black wall
'Cos I ate that Tiger's testimonials
I ate Tiger's balls.

'Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and shakin', and stampin', then he starts singin' Tiger's balls, I ate Tiger's balls, snappin' his fingers, spinnin' around on his two feet. That's a fine song, he says, I'm goin' to sing it to all my friends. You do that, I tell him, and I head back to the water hole.
'There's Tiger, down by the water hole, walkin' up and down, with his tail switchin' and swishin' and his ears and the fur on his neck up as far as they can go, and he's snap-pin' at every insect comes by with his huge: old saber teeth, and his eyes flashin' orange fire. He looks mean' and scary and big, but danglin' between his legs, the»Vthe littlest balls in the littlest blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see.
'Hey, Anansi, he says, when he sees me.You were supposed to be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I'm wearing.
'I done my best, I tells him, but it was those monkeys, they come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away.
'You a liar, Anansi, says Tiger. I'm going to eat your liver. But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the water hole. A dozen happy monkeys, boppin' down the path, clickin' their fingers and singin' as loud as they could sing,

Tiger's balls, yeah,
I ate Tiger's balls
Now ain't nobody gonna stop me ever at all
Nobody put me up against the big black wall
'Cos I ate that Tiger's testimonials
I ate Tiger's balls.

'And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he's off into the forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin' between my skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin' monkeys. So you all remember: just because you're small, doesn't mean you got no power."

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:45:00.000+01:00

""Do you know me, Shadow?" said Wednesday. He rode his wolf with his head high. His right eye glittered and flashed, his left eye was dull. He wore a cloak with a deep, monklike cowl, and his face stared out from the shadows. "I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I am called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows." Two ghostly-gray ravens, like transparent skins of birds, landed on Wednesday's shoulders, pushed their beaks into the side of Wednesday's head as if tasting his mind, and flapped out into the world once more.

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything."

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:41:00.000+01:00

"I don't really believe, Shadow thought. I don't believe any of this. Maybe I'm still fifteen. Mom's still alive and I haven't even met Laura yet. Everything that's happened so far has been some kind of especially vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end."

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:36:00.000+01:00

"'How do you ride him?'
'It's easy,' she said. 'If you don't fall. Like riding the lightning.'"

Shadow and Easter, in "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-13T00:34:00.000+01:00

"Once he was dressed, he looked more normal. Grave, though. She wondered how far he had traveled, and what it had cost him to return. He was not the first whose return she had initiated, and she knew that, soon enough, the million-year stare would fade, and the memories and the dreams that he had brought back from the tree would be elided by the world of things you could touch. That was the way it always went."

Easter thoughts on Shadow, in "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2010-03-02T22:25:00.003Z

"Evil comes in shades of grey."

"Dracula - The Undead" - Ian Holt, Dacre Stoker

2010-03-02T22:24:00.002Z

"What you do not see will kill you."

Van Helsing in "Dracula - The Undead" by Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker

2010-02-05T05:22:00.004Z

"The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo."

Terry Pratchett - "Wyrd Sisters"

2010-02-05T05:21:00.001Z

"Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody."

Terry Pratchett, "Wyrd Sisters"

2010-02-05T05:20:00.000Z

"In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs."

Terry Pratchett, "Wyrd Sisters"

2010-02-05T05:19:00.000Z

"On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end..."

Terry Pratchett, "Wyrd Sisters"

2010-02-05T05:18:00.001Z

"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

Terry Pratchett, "Wyrd Sisters"

2009-09-13T19:47:00.000+01:00

"Gods are great," said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. "But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return..."

Neil Gaiman, "American Gods"

2009-09-13T19:46:00.001+01:00

"People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen."

Neil Gaiman, "American Gods"

2009-09-13T19:42:00.003+01:00

'"It's not easy to believe."
"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."
"Really?"
"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.
Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut."
"Maybe," she said. "Try me."'

Girl Sam, in "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2009-09-13T19:40:00.000+01:00

"It's easier to kill people, when you're dead yourself ... I mean, it's not such a big deal. You're not so prejudiced anymore."

Laura, in "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman

2009-09-13T19:39:00.000+01:00

"Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end."