I’ve been too long absent from this place, waiting for the two things I tell my writing students never to wait for: Time and the Muse.

Time remains elusive. But the Muse visited today, demanding attention in the form of the wonderful Brain Pickings, which is one of the rare reasons to wade through the rest of the internet swamp (and yes, I subscribe). Today’s offering excerpted a lecture by Neil Gaiman. (And above quote is attributed to him.)

I am abashed to admit I wasn’t onto Gaiman until a few months ago. He’s a short fiction and graphic novel guy, and somehow escaped my notice. Now, true to the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, aka selective attention, I stumble across him frequently. Thank the story gods for that.

I could pull countless snippets from Gaiman’s lecture, which he apparently spent more than two years writing. (If true, I’m grateful to him for that. Makes me feel less sluggy and stupid.) And Gaiman’s comments are, at heart, about fiction – the stories that come from our human hearts, emotions and imaginations.

But his wisdom applies just as well to my world of literary nonfiction. As a lifelong fiction reader who has spent a career in journalism, I believe our best fiction is inspired by our hunger to make sense of the real world – even when we are trying to escape it. Our best journalism has the heart, emotion and imagination of fiction, as long as our facts are checked, and carries the same power to transform.

I’ve uttered similar sentiments in keynotes I’ve given over the past 30 years. Never as elegantly or eloquently, mine were usually the result of some last-minute scribbles on cocktail napkins, not thoughtful ruminations, drafting and crafting over months and months. Maybe I need to reconsider that time thing. Meanwhile, here’s a sampler tease from Neil Gaiman on How Stories Last.

“We will do an awful lot for stories — we will endure an awful lot for stories. And stories, in their turn — like some kind of symbiote — help us endure and make sense of our lives.”

“Stories should change you — good stories should change you.”

“There were sharks back when there were dinosaurs… And now, there are sharks. And the reason that there are still sharks — hundreds of millions of years after the first sharks turned up — is that nothing has turned up that is better at being a shark than a shark is… Ebooks are absolutely fantastic at being several books and a newspaper; they’re really good portable bookshelves, that’s why they’re great on trains. But books are much better at being books.”