neil-gaiman:

Shaun Tan and I in conversation in The Guardian today.

NG: That is often the answer to “where do you get your ideas from” – two unrelated things come together and suddenly it produces something new. Two or more things …

ST: Yes, a minimum of two. It seems that they have to be unrelated, because otherwise your brain forms an existing association that’s very hard to get away from. It’s almost like you have to displace the emotion to examine it. If it’s in its nice little gift-wrapped box, if it’s packaged in the way that emotions in everyday life are so often packaged, we can file it away. But when emotion is attached to something that is completely outside of experience, it makes you examine it, as though it has no wrapper on it.