Death Neil Gaiman Quotes & Sayings

Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"
"Then what died? who are you mourning?"
"A point of view. — Neil Gaiman

Death is the second oldest of the Endless. It's hard not to love her. She loves you, after all. — Neil Gaiman

He heard long ago, in a dream, that one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: that this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after. — Neil Gaiman

But we do not need to recount every sermon and eulogy. After all, you were there. — Neil Gaiman

Death has a body like a model, the clothes of a poet and the smile of your best friend. She wears a top hat for fun, her ankh necklace for power, and carries a big black umbrella for travelling to the 'sunless lands.' I wonder what she smells like? I'm sure it's fresh and clean and her laugh must be rinkly or maybe it's warm and chuckly, but whatever it is, Death laughs a lot.
We talk about the 'miracle of birth' but what about the 'miracle of death'? We have the science of death pretty much figured out, but death's magic and inevitability have been feared and ignored for a long time now.
What if Death is a person? — Neil Gaiman

Could be anyone. The Kin. I mean ... it's like calling yourselves the People. It's what pretty much every race-name means. Except for Dalek. That means Metal-Cased Hatey Death Machines in Skaronian. — Neil Gaiman

I once read that you die because you see the Angel of Death, and you fall in love. And you fall in love so hard your soul is sucked out through your eyes, and that's the moment of death. It's a lovely, strange old Jewish legend. — Neil Gaiman

Death had vanished from the streets of America, thought Shadow; now it happened in hospital rooms and in ambulances. We must not startle the living, — Neil Gaiman

Still, there was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. — Neil Gaiman

It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much. — Neil Gaiman

Death's a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don't anymore. I think it's a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there's nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths until the last big one. — Neil Gaiman

When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave. — Neil Gaiman

There were ten tongues within one head, and one went out to fetch some bread, to feed the living and the dead." "What does it mean?" "A wren made a nest inside the skull of a gibbeted corpse, flying in and out of the jaw to feed its young. In the midst of death, as it were, life just keeps on happening. — Neil Gaiman

I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert's dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them. — Neil Gaiman

One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate. — Neil Gaiman

DESTRUCTION: Our sister [Death] defines life, just as Despair defines hope, or Desire defines hatred, or as Destiny defines freedom.
MORPHEUS: And what do I define, by this theory of yours.
DESTRUCTION: Reality, perhaps. — Neil Gaiman

She's as old as the hills, evil as a snake, all malevolence and magic and death. — Neil Gaiman

Death's a capricious thing, innit?" "Yes. Yes, she is. — Neil Gaiman

I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life. — Neil Gaiman

Maeve was rapidly coming to the conclusion that in a well-organized world, Death should be like the kind of all-expenses-included luxury vacation where they give you a folder at the start filled with the tickets, discount vouchers, schedules, and several phone numbers to ring if you get into trouble. — Neil Gaiman

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. — Neil Gaiman

It's not what I'd want for at my funeral. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when the pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie. — Neil Gaiman

The only reason people die, is because EVERYONE does it. You all just go along with it.
It's RUBBISH, death. It's STUPID. I don't want nothing to do with it. — Neil Gaiman

Oh, he'll help us whether he wants to or not. I told the truth. I would not kill him. The death-curse of a god is an evil thing.
But I can hurt him. And I will.
And besides ...
Have you never wondered, little bird, what it must be like to see the world through the eyes of a god? — Neil Gaiman

The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it.
What do you want?' it repeated.
He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not.
'Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you.
Why?'
'I wanted to meet you,' he said, without looking around. 'I want to live for ever.' His voice cracked
as he said it.
He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already
feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life.
The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several
long seconds to recognise it as laughter.
'This is not life,' said the voice.
It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard. — Neil Gaiman

If you want to call it that. But it is a very specific sort of magic. There's a magic you take from death. Something leaves the world, something else comes into it. — Neil Gaiman

It's a way of talking about lust without talking about lust, he told them. It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about? — Neil Gaiman

When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death. — Neil Gaiman

A skeleton, even a walking one, is at least human; Death of a sort lurks inside every living creature. — Terry Pratchett

I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. — Neil Gaiman

Love isn't quite desire ... Love is probably a little bit in The Sandman's domain. Love is partly a dream, it's partly to do with desire, and sometimes it's partly to do with death, as well. It's also very often something to do with delirium ... — Neil Gaiman

And we held our breath, just for a moment, to see if the world had ended, but it hadn't, so we yawned and drank our champagne and carried on living, except for those of us who died, and everything continued such as before. — Neil Gaiman

You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less. — Neil Gaiman

...but fear of death gives us strength. — Neil Gaiman

Huge, dizzying, clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairytale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful ... — Neil Gaiman

And it's easy to be cynical about death when you're young. When you are young, death is an anomaly. It's not real. It only affects other people. — Neil Gaiman

The world is full of all sorts of brilliant stuff and I haven't found out all about it yet, so I don't want anyone messing it about or endin' it before I've had the chance to find out about it.
-Adam to DEATH & the 4 horsepeople of the Apocalypse — Neil Gaiman

You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live. — Neil Gaiman

But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable. — Neil Gaiman

It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten. — Neil Gaiman

It doesn't happen like this! Everybody, you put him in a death trap, he pulls something outta his utility belt and he's away. Same bat time, same bat channel. — Neil Gaiman

If not for Death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning - a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross. — Neil Gaiman

Sexton: I think the whole world's gone mad.
Death: Uh-uh. It's always like this. You probably just don't get out enough. — Neil Gaiman

Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness.
Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.
Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house.
Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive. — Neil Gaiman

Listen, gods die when they are forgotten. People too. But the land's still here. The good places, and the bad. The land isn't going anywhere. And neither am I. — Neil Gaiman

Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time. — Neil Gaiman

There's a tale in the Caballa that suggests that the Angel of Death is so beautiful that upon seeing it (or him, or her) you fall in love so hard, so fast, that your soul is pulled out through your eyes. I like that story. — Neil Gaiman

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. — Neil Gaiman

When we consider that each of us has only one life to live, isn't it rather tragic to find men and women, with brains capable of comprehending the stars and the planets, talking about the weather; men and women, with hands capable of creating works of art, using those hands only for routine tasks; men and women, capable of independent thought, using their minds as a bowling-alley for popular ideas; men and women, capable of greatness, wallowing in mediocrity; men and women, capable of self-expression, slowly dying a mental death while they babble the confused monotone of the mob? — Neil Gaiman

Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams. — Neil Gaiman

DEATH: "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night without fear."
MORPHEUS: "And I am far more terrible than you, sister. — Neil Gaiman

Sir. Might I with due respect remind you that Mister Vandemar and myself burned down the City of Troy? We brought the Black Plague to Flanders. We have assassinated a dozen kings, five popes, half a hundred heroes and two accredited gods. Our last commission before this was the torturing to death of an entire monastery in sixteenth-century Tuscany. We are utterly professional. — Neil Gaiman

Just remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they've got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?"
"No, Matthew. What do they say?"
"The king is dead, that's what they say. The king is dead. Long live the king. — Neil Gaiman

How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister? — Neil Gaiman

Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother. — Neil Gaiman

There are things in this book, as in life, that might upset you. There is death and pain in here, tears and discomfort, violence of all kinds, cruelty, even abuse. There is kindness, too, I hope, sometimes. Even a handful of happy endings. (Few — Neil Gaiman

You are not dead, until every person who knew you is dead as well. Where did I hear that? It doesn't matter. There is a village in my head. — 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

There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.
And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.
The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now. — Neil Gaiman

I suspect that the next generation to come along will puzzle over our agonies, much as I puzzled over the death of the Victorian music halls as a child, and much as I felt sorry for the performers who had only needed thirteen minutes of material in their whole life, and who did their thirteen minutes in town after town until the day that television came along and killed it all. — Neil Gaiman

A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy, — Neil Gaiman

Without warning a lady appeared.
She came from the direction of Friday-street, for she had just been with Mr. Newbolt. She strode capably through the snow. She wore a black silk gown and something very queer swung from a silver chain about her neck. Her smile was full of comfort and her eyes were kind and happy. She was just as Mr. Newbolt had described.
And the name of this lady was Death. — Susanna Clarke

We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world. — Neil Gaiman

I will dream if I want to, I said, and my death is my own affair. — Neil Gaiman

You're going to pay the bill," said Grahame. "Then I'll escort you and the young lady out to the car. And we'll go back to my place, for a proper talk. Any funny business, and I shoot you both. Capiche? "
Fat Charlie capiched. He also capiched who had been driving the black Mercedes that afternoon and just how close he had already come to death that day. He was beginning to capiche how utterly cracked Grahame Coats was and how little chance Daisy and he had of getting out of this alive. — Neil Gaiman

It is only a gesture," he said, turning back to Shadow. "But gestures mean everything. The death of one dog symbolizes the death of all dogs. — Neil Gaiman

Even in dreams and in death, a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay — Neil Gaiman

It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us. — Neil Gaiman

My parents had told me that I would not really die, not the real me: that nobody really died, when they died; that my kitten and the opal miner had just taken new bodies and would be back again, soon enough. — Neil Gaiman

Rebirth always follows death. — Neil Gaiman

Because it is the nature of Dreams, and ONLY of Dreams, to define Reality. Destiny is bound to existence. Death is limited by what she will or will not accept. — 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

Death is the great democracy. — Neil Gaiman

He said, "Could be anyone. The Kin. I mean . . . it's like calling yourselves the People. It's what pretty much every race-name means. Except for Dalek. That means Metal-Cased Hatey Death Machines in Skaronian." And — Neil Gaiman

He could barely remember the last time he had seen a hearse on the streets. Death had vanished from the streets of America, thought Shadow; now it happened in hospital rooms and in ambulances. — Neil Gaiman

The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself
his clothes, his manner, his carriage
as a grand joke.
There was a dull pain in his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Vandemar's face.
It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more.
And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it. — Neil Gaiman

Sure we have. You work for me now. You protect me. You transport me from place to place. You run errands. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of. — Neil Gaiman

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death. — Neil Gaiman

I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.
Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out. — Neil Gaiman

What you have to remember," said Mr. Ibis, testily, "is that life and death are different sides of the same coin. Like the heads and tails of a quarter." "And if I had a double-headed quarter?" "You don't. They only belong to fools, and gods. — Neil Gaiman

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

This is a bright place, filled with frightened people, and fast hard things that hurt and wound. No matter. I swore I would remain by her side forever, and until death divided us. — Neil Gaiman

I knew a guy once. He did weight training at the Muscle Farm, years back. He said that the Dakota Indians, the young men climb up the mountain, then form death-defying human chains off the heads, just so that the guy at the end of the chain can piss on the president's nose." Wednesday guffawed. "Oh, fine! Very fine! Is any specific president the particular butt of their ire?" Shadow shrugged. "He never said. — Neil Gaiman

There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. — Neil Gaiman

The real problem with stories - if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death. — Neil Gaiman

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

Any way, death is so final, isn't it?
"Is it?" asked Richard.
"Sometimes," said the marquis de Carabas. And they went down. — Neil Gaiman

Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.
"Hello, Bod," she said.
"Hello," he said, as he danced with her. "I don't know your name."
"Names aren't really important," she said.
"I love your horse. He's so big! I never knew horses could be that big."
"He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well."
"Can I ride him?" asked Bod.
"One day," she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. "One day. Everybody does."
"Promise?"
I promise. — Neil Gaiman

The Macabray, the dance of the living and the dead, the dance with Death. — Neil Gaiman

They knew her, the graveyard folk, for each of us encounters the Lady on the Grey at the end of our days, and there is no forgetting her. — Neil Gaiman

Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So this is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own. — Neil Gaiman

Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart. — Neil Gaiman

So," he asked. "How's death?"
"Hard," she said. "It just keeps going. — Neil Gaiman

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't. — Neil Gaiman

Charitably ... I think ... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change. — Neil Gaiman

I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult. Today they gave me comfort of a kind. I was wearing the right clothes for a hard day. — Neil Gaiman

I believe [ ... ] that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. — Neil Gaiman

I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust our legal system — Neil Gaiman

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead. — Neil Gaiman