The Pope
This is my body, he said, two thousand years ago. This is my blood.
It was the only religion that delivered exactly what it promised: life eternal for its adherents.
There are some of us alive today who remember him. And some of us claim that he was a messiah, and some think that he was just a man with very special powers. But that misses the point. Whatever he was, he changed the world.
- Neil Gaiman, from Fifteen Painted Cards From a Vampire Tarot
I like Neil Gaiman, for the most part. I especially like some of his children’s books, like Coraline, The Graveyard Book, and The Wolves in the Walls, but also for books like The Anansi Boys. I find it interesting that Gaiman, who is a fairly outspoken atheist, has such a fascination with gods and the supernatural—with myth, actually. It seems that he is often unable to tell a story without it. He appears to understand the great power of myth—but perhaps fails to understand that sometimes it’s bigger than he is.
