There was a table laid with ...

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.
There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.
 Neil Gaiman

Quotes from the same author

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
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 Neil Gaiman
I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.
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 Neil Gaiman
I had started to feel that somewhere in the second half of the 20th century, the idea of page-turning as a good thing had been lost. You were getting books that were the equivalent of absolutely beautifully prepared dishes of food that didn't taste like anything much.
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 Neil Gaiman
Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian improving literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.
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 Neil Gaiman
How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline. "I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave." "Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline. "Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.
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 Neil Gaiman