I’m a fan of much of Neil Gaiman’s work–for those of you not familiar with him, you could call him a science-fiction/fantasy/horror author/screenwriter/graphic novelist, if you don’t mind pigeonholing him too much–and have been ever since Neverwhere. His view of the world is very different from mine, but he’s a perceptive and thoughtful observer, a creative and powerful storyteller, and a gifted writer.
Anyway, it turns out Gaiman has a connection to the mass murder at Virginia Tech, which he noted in his blog last week, from which he drew one profoundly true and important point: “There are no Other People. It’s just us.”
Or, as the great poet/preacher John Donne put it in one of his sermons, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”