“I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it.”

English author, contemporary

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays. He is known for works that move easily between page and screen, including The Sandman and novels such as Good Omens, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. His career spans comics, fiction, and adaptation work. Several of his stories were brought to the screen, including Coraline and American Gods, and he co-created the television versions of Good Omens and The Sandman. His writing ranges across fantasy, myth, and modern storytelling in different forms.