#sandmanat

[netflix]

What’s it like to be on tumblr and observe everyone talking the Sandman?

Astonishingly reminiscent of what it was like to be on Tumblr and having everyone talking about Good Omens, only without the arguments about whether or not various occult and/or ethereal entities were gay.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

What advice would you give to young or beginning writers?

Read everything. Read the stuff you like and read the stuff you don't think you'll like. Read the things that people think it's good for you to read and read the things they seem worried about you reading. Read prose and poetry and fiction and non-fiction. Get off your phone and read books without interruption. Read the classics and read the cutting edge. Read everything you can get your hands on.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

Out of all the Endless, which one would be your dream roommate and which one would be a nightmare to live with?

I wouldn't want to live with Dream or Desire – both too self-centered and likely to use your stuff (Desire) or transmute it into the vastness of half-remembered antiquities (Dream). Death would tidy up after herself, Destiny would remind me where I had put my keys, phone or wallet, and Delirium would be the kind of roommate who is never there, because she'd get distracted and wander the world and might remember me a couple of time over the decades and come home but probably wouldn't.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

if you could be any sandman character, who would you be and why?

Well, Merv Pumpkinhead was all too often my way of commenting on the action. I mean, he's right, much of the time, but fortunately nobody listens to him or there wouldn't be a plot.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

You once said: "People always attribute things to me that sound nothing like anything I've said."

Do you think people falsely attribute quotes to you because of how clever they consider you? Or maybe as a roundabout way of complimenting you?

Did I say that? Mostly it seems to be by accident. The quotes are real, they just turned up on someone's webpage and I wrote the second thing on the page, but people thought I wrote the first thing. But also, as Alexander the Great once said, it's not just on the Internet that people gain authority by writing something and attributing it to someone else. People have been doing that for millennia.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

How did you decide to film Dream of a Thousand Cats, which I suppose isn't part of the main plotline of the series?

Everything is part of the main plotline of the series. There isn't a story and side-trips.There's one long journey, like a huge painting cut up into a hundred scraps. Just because the subject of the painting isn't in the bit you're holding doesn't mean it's not important to the painting. You learn a lot of things about dreams and reality from Dream of a Thousand Cats, and you are reminded that not only is Dream not human, he's everyone's Dream: cats and dogs and fish and aliens and octopuses and all...

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

Do you have a cat? And if so, do you think they would like to grow huge and eat you?

Not currently, although several dozen cats have ordered me around when they wanted to be fed and lived in my house over the decades, and sooner or later there will be another (the biggest difference between New York State and The Midwest seems to be that there's no Cat Hobo signs on my door, so cats do not randomly appear, needing board and lodging). And I have no doubt that if I were small and scurrying, they would find me fun to hunt and quite possibly delicious.

– @neil-gaiman

[netflix]

What was it about Tom Sturridge in those first 10 auditions that made you keep him on the list all the way through casting?

We loved Tom in the first audition. The others were getting him to perform scenes with other people (not the actual cast, but other humans) and to get across to Warner TV (who got it immediately) and Netflix (who got it eventually) why we felt Tom would be perfect as Morpheus.

– @neil-gaiman