Life & Wisdom Quote by Neil Gaiman

A small act of heresy against the modern cult of optimization, Gaiman’s confession turns bloat into a kind of aesthetic principle. In an era when writers are trained to defend every paragraph like a budget request, he shrugs and admits: sometimes the reason is pleasure. Not “world-building,” not “theme,” not “arc” - just the private thrill of a word doing what words can do. It’s disarmingly candid, but also quietly strategic: by lowering the authorial mask, he builds trust. The reader is invited into the workshop, not the lecture hall.

The subtext is a pushback against the idea that novels must justify themselves the way products do. American Gods is famously baggy on purpose: road novel, myth anthology, Americana postcard rack, grief story, con game. Saying he “couldn’t justify each and every one” is less an apology than a refusal to litigate imagination. It protects the book’s dream logic: gods thrive on excess, on stories told past the point of necessity. A lean, perfectly defensible version of American Gods would arguably betray its subject.

Context matters, too: Gaiman came up in comics and genre spaces where readers can be both devoted and pedantic, demanding airtight mechanics. He answers that scrutiny with charm instead of combat. The line also smuggles in a deeper truth about revision: even highly crafted books retain a residue of whim. Those “because I like them” words are the fingerprints that keep a long novel from reading like a well-behaved assignment.