Fragile Things

by Neil Gaiman

‘I think . . . that I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.’

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

(Writing’s a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won’t rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.)

‘Upsettling’ is what Humpty Dumpty called ‘a portmanteau word’, occupying the territory between ‘upsetting’ and ‘unsettling’.