Wolfe/Gaiman

"Gaiman got his start as a journalist-for-hire, in England. He didn’t go to college. His first book was a Duran Duran biography he finished in three months, using a clip file from the BBC; next, he wrote a biography of Douglas Adams, in the style of Douglas Adams. Gaiman says that, especially in the early stages of his career, “I was very, very good at taking a voice that already existed and just parodying it.” He describes his short piece “We Can Get Them for You Wholesale” as him doing John Collier. “A Study in Emerald” is his version of Sherlock Holmes, by way of H. P. Lovecraft. The writer Gene Wolfe says that “Sunbird,” Gaiman’s story about an epicurean club that eats the mythical phoenix, “is so much in the style of R. A. Lafferty it’s almost as if Lafferty were dictating it from Heaven.” Gaiman still writes on demand, composing for anthologies (the living-statue story was an assignment), birthdays, and holidays. Now that he is widely read, he is apt to publish even the most ephemeral of these offerings, often between hard covers and with lavish illustrations. Last spring, he released “Blueberry Girl,” a bit of doggerel written for his friend Tori Amos when she was expecting her first child. (“Help her to help herself, help her to stand, / help her to lose and to find. / Teach her we’re only as big as our dreams. / Show her that fortune is blind.”) It spent five weeks on the best-seller list for children’s picture books. " http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/25/100125fa_fact_goodyear?currentPage=all I have the vague feeling that I've see that Wolfe quote before.