Neil Gaiman Quotes & Sayings

The Americas became a symbol of clemency, of a second chance. — Neil Gaiman

She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. — Neil Gaiman

If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don't read big Tolkienesque fantasies - Tolkien didn't read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. — Neil Gaiman

I am thinking of a sky filled with spaceships, so many of them that they seem like a plague of locusts, silver against the luminous mauve of the night. — Neil Gaiman

He said it aloud; it's easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud. "I didn't need any of you people a week ago and I don't need you now. I don't care. I'm done." The — Neil Gaiman

Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way. — Neil Gaiman

Never mind. There. For good or bad. It's done. — Neil Gaiman

Trees there were, old as trees can be, huge and grasping with hearts black as sin. Strange trees that some said walked in the night. — Neil Gaiman

I squeezed my hands into fists, and I hoped as hard as I knew how — Neil Gaiman

Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven. — Neil Gaiman

The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges. — Neil Gaiman

The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.
'Pock! There,' said Czernobog. 'Is done.' There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer's day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.
'Czernobog?' asked Shadow. Then, 'Are you Czernobog?'
'Yes. For today,' said the old man. 'By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.'
'Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could?'
The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. 'Because,' said the old man, after some time, 'there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. — Neil Gaiman

There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud. — Neil Gaiman

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together. — Neil Gaiman

It was as bad as the summer that her mother had taken the training wheels off Coraline's bicycle;but then, back then, in with all the cuts and scrapes (her knees had scabs on top of scabs) she had had a feeling of achievement. She was learning something, doing something she had not known how to do. Now she felt nothing but cold loss. She had failed the ghost children. She had failed her parents. She had failed herself, failed everything. — Neil Gaiman

Coraline took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness, where strange voices whispered and distant winds howled. She became certain that there was something in the dark behind her: something very old and very slow. Her heart beat so hard and so loudly she was scared it would burst out of her chest. She closed her eyes against the dark. Eventually — Neil Gaiman

Even the oldest stories are new to somebody ... — Neil Gaiman

So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did them. — Neil Gaiman

It's an artist's job to show people the world they live in. We hold up mirrors. — Neil Gaiman

He had only ever seen one episode of it - the one where Coach's daughter comes to the bar - although he had seen that several times. Shadow had noticed that you only ever catch one episode of shows you don't watch, over and over, years apart; he thought it must be some kind of cosmic — Neil Gaiman

Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So, — Neil Gaiman

He realized how much he wanted to take her pain away — Neil Gaiman

Shadow felt like a pea being flicked between three cups, or a card being shuffled through a deck. — Neil Gaiman

Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, to get by on what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. — Neil Gaiman

Our word Tragedy comes from the greek, tragos-ode: "The song of the goat." Anybody who has ever heard a goat attempt to sing will know why. — Neil Gaiman

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending. — Neil Gaiman

Ten more minutes of walking, he guessed, and the bridge seemed to be no nearer. He was too cold to shiver. His eyes hurt. This was not simply cold: this was science fiction. This was a story set on the dark side of Mercury, back when they thought Mercury had a dark side. This was somewhere out on rocky Pluto, where the sun is just another star, shining only a little more brightly in the darkness. This, thought Shadow, is justm a jhair away from places where air comes in buckets and pours just like beer. — Neil Gaiman

She tasted the day he lost his first job. She tasted the morning he had awakened, still drunk, in his car, in the middle of a cornfield, and, terrified, had sworn off the bottle for ever. She knee his real name. She remembered the name that had once been tattooed on his arm and knew why it could be there no longer. She tasted the color of his eyes from the inside, and shivered at the nightmare he had in which he was forced to carry spiny fish in his mouth, and from which he woke, choking, night after night. She savored the hungers in food and fiction, and discovered a dark sky when he was a small boy and he had stared up at the stars and wondered at their vastness and immensity, that even he had forgotten. — Neil Gaiman

How the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world. They were sung. The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the hunting grounds, and the dark. Songs — Neil Gaiman

You know, I'm normally so sanguine. But ... being accused of rushing these two books out to cash in on the Newbery Medal, without access to time travel equipment or anything, just makes me want to bang my forehead gently against a tree for half an hour. Is it too much to ask people to think? — Neil Gaiman

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art
write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. — Neil Gaiman

My hands shook, but the milk did not touch the milk, and the Universe did not end. — Neil Gaiman

Don't worry," she said, seriously. "Most of the blood was someone else's." She — Neil Gaiman

Proper bread was white, and pre-sliced, and tasted like almost nothing: that was the point. — Neil Gaiman

I want to write a play. I'd like to do an original musical. I should probably put together a poetry collection. — Neil Gaiman

Had been of the opinion that the whole karaoke evening was going to be an utter bust; but then the little old man had sashayed into the room, walked past the table of several blonde women with the fresh sunburns and smiles of tourists, who were sitting by the little makeshift stage in the corner. He had tipped his hat to them, for he wore a hat, a spotless green fedora, and lemon-yellow gloves, and then he walked over to their table. They giggled. "Are you enjoyin' yourselves, ladies?" he asked. They continued to giggle and — Neil Gaiman

There are those who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one ... — Neil Gaiman

As a kid, I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays, and I would walk home at night. For several years, I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them. — Neil Gaiman

I was sad not to have won thousand of pounds. I already new what I would buy with it. I would buy a place to go and be alone. — Neil Gaiman

This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. — Neil Gaiman

Living and seizing to live are imaginary solutions. Existence lies elsewhere. — Neil Gaiman

I was not scared of anything, when I read my book ... — Neil Gaiman

Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. — Neil Gaiman

You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it. — Neil Gaiman

All they knew of religion was the Bean Sidhe, the banshee, who came to wail at the walls of a house where death soon would be, and — Neil Gaiman

Tramps and vagabonds have marks they make on gateposts and trees and doors, letting others of their kind know a little about the people who live at the houses and farms they pass on their travels. I think cats must leave similar signs; how else to explain the cats who turn up at our door through the year, hungry and flea-ridden and abandoned? — Neil Gaiman

Turn my head, and you may go where you want. I turn it again, you will stay till you rot. I have no face, but I live or die by my crooked teeth - who am I? — Neil Gaiman

I just want you to know,' said the girl, coldly, 'that whoever you are and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.' And then she added, with feeling, 'Idiot. — Neil Gaiman

You," she told him, "are so full of shit, it's a wonder your eyes don't turn brown. — Neil Gaiman

You can't make me love you. — Neil Gaiman

We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearl-like, from our souls without real pain. Fiction — Neil Gaiman

I started blogging a decade ago because I like blogging. Writing's a kind of lonely thing to do, and I liked the idea of demystifying the process because I loved it as a kid and teenager and as somebody who wanted desperately to write. — Neil Gaiman

It occurred to me then that the man might not be mad; I found this far more disquieting than the alternative. — Neil Gaiman

As for thinking time versus writing time, well, that's up to you. But - and I wish it were otherwise - books don't get written by thinking about them, they get written by writing them. And that's when you make discoveries about what you're writing. That's when you get the happy accidents. — Neil Gaiman

I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She — Neil Gaiman

It seemed to us that the fantastic can be, can do, so much more than its detractors assume: it can illuminate the real, it can distort it, it can mask it, it can hide it. It can show you the world you know in a way that makes you realise you've never looked at it, not looked at it. — Neil Gaiman

It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale - they are well-equipped to deal with these — Neil Gaiman

Shadow was in a dark place, and the thing staring at him wore a buffalo's head, rank and furry with huge wet eyes. Its body was a man's body, oiled and slick. — Neil Gaiman

Thirty-five years a showgirl that she admits to, and her feet hurt, day in, day out, from the high heels, but she can walk down steps with a forty-pound headdress in high heels, she's walked across a stage with a lion in high heels, she could walk through goddamn Hell in high heels if it came to that. — Neil Gaiman

I only met Mad Sweeney twice, alive," he said. "The first time I thought he was a world-class jerk with the devil in him. The second time I thought he was a major fuckup and I gave him the money to kill himself. He showed me a coin trick I don't remember how to do, gave me some bruises, and claimed he was a leprechaun. Rest in peace, Mad Sweeney. — Neil Gaiman

And if you are waiting for a new book in a long ongoing series, whether from George or from Pat Rothfuss or from someone else ...
Wait. Read the original book again. Read something else. Get on with your life. Hope that the author is writing the book you want to read, and not dying, or something equally as dramatic. And if he paints the house, that's fine.
And ( ... ) in the future, when you see other people complaining that George R.R. Martin has been spotted doing something other than writing the book they are waiting for, explain to them, more politely than I did the first time, the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you. — Neil Gaiman

He was the boy with the book. Always and forever. — Neil Gaiman

Most of us find our own voices only after we've sounded like a lot of other people. — Neil Gaiman

He was drowning in the Time, could feel it crushing him, like an ancient forest being crushed into oil. — Neil Gaiman

Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on. — Neil Gaiman

I was ten years old, and I was still playing conkers and knocking off sweet shops while she was sitting on the linoleum floor of her cell sawing at her wrists with a bit of broken glass she'd got from heaven-knows-were. Cut her fingers up, too, but she did it all right. They found her in the morning, sticky, red, and cold. — Neil Gaiman

What are god's?" asked the buffalo man.
"I don't know," said Shadow. — Neil Gaiman

The one thing 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. The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked ... that's the moment you may be starting to get it right. — Neil Gaiman

It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart. Despair says little, and is patient. — Neil Gaiman

I am grim of mind and wrathful of spirit and I have no desire to be nice to anyone, — Neil Gaiman

It's about focus. It's about being you, but the you that people believe in. It's about being the concentrated, magnified essence of you. It's about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. — Neil Gaiman

Now me," said Mr. Vandemar.
"What number am I thinking of?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"What number am I thinking of?" repeated Mr. Vandemar. "It's between one and a lot," he added, helpfully. — Neil Gaiman

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day. — Neil Gaiman

Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed. — Neil Gaiman

It always ends. That's what gives it value. — Neil Gaiman

Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead — Neil Gaiman

Every now and then I'll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn't have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things. — Neil Gaiman

My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It's just where they think it will do best in the bookshops. — Neil Gaiman

Not an option. You burned your bridges. So keep walking. Do your own time ... — Neil Gaiman

You don't discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer them to read. And not everyone has the same taste as you. — Neil Gaiman

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. — Neil Gaiman

It's oneiric, a beautiful, formless sequence of silver nitrate shadows, and when it ends I wonder what happened, and then I begin to rebuild it in my head — Neil Gaiman

There are sneaking,
creeping, crumpling
noises coming from
inside the walls. — Neil Gaiman

This was the moment of the storm. The paradigms were shifting. He could feel it. The old world, a world of infinite vastness and illimitable resources and future, was being confronted by something else - a web of energy, of opinions, of gulfs. — Neil Gaiman

Dreams are hopes, and echoes of hope. — Neil Gaiman

I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there. — Neil Gaiman

Her other mother smiled brightly and the hair on her head drifted like plants under the sea. — Neil Gaiman

Do you know what Freud said about dreams of flying? It means you're really dreaming about having sex."

"Indeed? Tell me, then, what does it mean when you dream about having sex? — Neil Gaiman

At the best of times his face was unreadable. Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined. Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not move to follow. — Neil Gaiman

Introduction to bits. Things are going up on the curb, every few months. Maybe. Bottle of the inside of the lines of the landing, not as we can set of brightness. But the houses get repayed, man. Anywhere. There's nowhere else to be late at a number of me? But it's visible from the house. It's early evening, but it crackles and perhaps they own. It means that perhaps the result of bubbly waiting for a few moments. I have to flinch at the forthcoming disaster strikes. Nathan: He travels. While most of the hoarded seconds of the moon given flesh. Inanna is that they own. That which does the theme afterwards. They become bitter. Not a level on a few moments I see. Thank you. Yeah. Arty stuff. — Neil Gaiman

This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph. — Neil Gaiman

Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while. And then Death came in the night and whispered her secret into the ear of the eighty second Lord of Stormhold, and he nodded his grey head and said nothing more — Neil Gaiman

I don't know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn't know then I can't put into words. — Neil Gaiman

We are writing the future in Letters of Fire. — Neil Gaiman

I have always felt," he said, "that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats — Neil Gaiman

I've been inspired by dreams - I've even stolen scenes or images or characters from them. — Neil Gaiman

Let her tell stories and dance in the rain, somersault, tumble and run, her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep, let her grow like a weed in the sun. — Neil Gaiman

I thought I was your destination. Looks like I was just another stop on the line. — Neil Gaiman

They are simply numbers and cannot thus be right or wrong [ ... ] What I trust that I am saying is that all numbers are by their nature correct. Well, except for Pi, of course. I can't be doing with Pi. Gives me a headache just thinking about it, going on and on and on and on and on ... — Neil Gaiman

I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'
'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'
'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.
'You're a God?' said Shadow.
Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said. — Neil Gaiman