Gaiman Quotes & Sayings

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything, Ray said once, in an interview. — Neil Gaiman

Will you go back?" asked the Lord of the Gallows. "To America?"
"Nothing to go back for," said Shadow, and as he said it he knew it was a lie.
"Things wait for you there," said the old man. "But they will wait until you return. — Neil Gaiman

I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing. — Neil Gaiman

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill. — Neil Gaiman

She found herself to be quite worried that something would
jump out at her, so she began to whistle. She thought it might
make it harder for things to jump out at her, if she was whistling. — Neil Gaiman

He was numb: heart-numb, mind-numb, soul-numb. And the numbness, he realized, went a long way down, and a long way back. — Neil Gaiman

To be a good writer ... read a lot and write every day. — Neil Gaiman

He would not die, for only inferior people died, and he was the inferior of no one. Time — Neil Gaiman

The limeade was very interesting. It didn't taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical. — Neil Gaiman

Gee-word?"
"Gods. What were you doin' the day they handed out brains, boy, anyway?"
"Someone was telling a story about stealing a tiger's balls, and I had to stop and find out how it ended. — Neil Gaiman

We live in our heads. You know, we are these vast things that just go in and in forever, and not only that but we comprise all of the things that we imagine, we comprise all of the things we've dreamed, we comprise the things that we've believed and we comprise the things that we used to believe but we manage no longer to believe in. — 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

They never get easier, never stop my heart from trip-trapping, never let me escape, this time, unscathed. But they teach me things, and they open my eyes, and if they hurt, they hurt in ways that make me think and grow and change. — Neil Gaiman

If there's one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse. — 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

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place ... Most, probably all, human beings get to do awful things and believe things that other human beings think they should be burned for believing, and they get to do and believe wonderful things too, and artists, writers, musicians, creators, actors, are nothing if not human beings. — Neil Gaiman

Names come and names go. — Neil Gaiman

I'm a has-been. Who the fuck cares about me?"
Shadows said softly, "You're a god".
Wednesday looked at him sharply. [ ... ] "So?"
"It's a good thing to be a god", said Shadow
"Is it? — Neil Gaiman

Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is? — Neil Gaiman

Perhaps it's a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. — 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. — Neil Gaiman

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

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy. — 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

You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished. — Neil Gaiman

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned, to learn that not every project will survive. — Neil Gaiman

What's wrong?" "It's hard. It's too fucking hard. I don't know if this is going to work. We might as well cut our throats. Just cut our own throats." "You mustn't talk like that." "Yeah. Right. — Neil Gaiman

Author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman, in a 2012 commencement address at the University of the Arts, said that excellence in business can be boiled down to three simple things: 1. Be Efficient: Turn in work on time. 2. Be Effective: Do great work. 3. Be Congenial: Be a pleasure to work with.1 Gaiman added that even mastering two of the three will take you far. If you do great work and are a pleasure to work with, most people will forgive you for missing a deadline. If you're always on time and a pleasure to work with, most people put up with less than perfect work. If you turn in great work on time, most people will put up with you being unpleasant. — Brad Lomenick

Don't wear green in your dressing room,' suggested Miss Spink.
'Or mention the Scottish play, added Miss Forcible. — Neil Gaiman

He entertained these thoughts awkwardly, as a man entertains unexpected guests. Then, as he reached his objective, he pushed these thoughts away, as a man apologizes to his guests, and leaves them, muttering something about a prior engagement. — Neil Gaiman

How old are you, really?" I asked. "Eleven." I thought for a bit. Then I asked, "How long have you been eleven for? — Neil Gaiman

And all the time we spent in this place would fade and vanish, like a dawn dream on waking that colours the day but cannot be touched or remembered. — Neil Gaiman

enter the world of things as they are — Neil Gaiman

Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it. The lower half was wrapped in a paper napkin. Shadow picked it up with the napkin and bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. "First pasty I've ever had," he said. "It's real good. — Neil Gaiman

Tonight, as you eat, reflect if you can: there are children starving in the world, starving in numbers larger than the mind can easily hold, up in the big numbers where an error of a million here, a million there, can be forgiven. It may be uncomfortable for you to reflect upon this or it may not, but still, you will eat. — Neil Gaiman

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

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. — 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 are obvious, boy. You are difficult to miss. If you came to me in company with a purple lion, a green elephant, and a scarlet unicorn astride which was the King of England in his Royal Robes, I do believe that it is you and you alone that people would stare at, dismissing the others as minor irrelevancies. — Neil Gaiman

Someone had once told her that if you look up at the sky from the bottom of a mine shaft, even in the brightest daylight, you see the night sky and stars. — Neil Gaiman

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts. — 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

There was nothing to scare me but shadows, and the shadows were not even properly visible when I looked at them directly. — Neil Gaiman

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not. — Neil Gaiman

You musn't be afraid of the dark.'
'I'm not,' said Shadow. 'I'm afraid of the people in the dark. — Neil Gaiman

To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor painless. It demands a single-mindedness that is almost unknown in this day. — Neil Gaiman

Since the dawn of humanity, stories have allowed each of us to be many. — Neil Gaiman

You are young and in love, every young man in your position, is the most miserable man who ever lived — Neil Gaiman

I think ... I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.'
'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said. — Neil Gaiman

She closed her eyes and wished that the earth would swallow her up. — Neil Gaiman

People can get involved in wonderfully creative ways that have nothing to do with you, but spark off things you begin with. — Neil Gaiman

Great art is anything that provokes a deep emotinal reaction at the time that you hear it and then you can't get it out of your head. And then you go back and you experince something completely different to the thing that you experinced the first time. And wheather its a painting, a piece of music or a book. In a book, its that moment, when you put it down and you go:"I'm not quite the same person, that I was before I read that book" or "I'm not the same person I was before I saw this painting." That is great art. — 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

Just go with it. It won't hurt.'
I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much. — Neil Gaiman

When the all-father in eagle form had almost reached the vats, with Suttung immediately behind him, Odin blew some of the mead out of his behind, a splattery wet fart of foul-smelling mead right in Suttung's face, blinding the giant and throwing him off Odin's trail.
No one, then or now, wanted to drink the mead that came out of Odin's ass. — Neil Gaiman

Well," said the third. "Somebody's got to do the honours." "I shall," said the queen, gently. She lowered her face to the sleeping woman's. She touched the pink lips to her own carmine lips and she kissed the sleeping girl long and hard. — Neil Gaiman

S'why I looove America: City Center's in ruins, there's a fifties creature on the loose, and a man can still get drunk. — Neil Gaiman

The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen. — Neil Gaiman

I opened my mouth to tell her that nothing could kill me, not now, but she said, 'Not kill you. Destroy you. Dissolve you. You wouldn't die in here, nothing ever dies in here, but if you stayed here for too long, after a while just a little of you would exist everywhere, all spread out. And that's not a good thing. Never enough of you all together in one place, so there wouldn't be anything left that would think of itself as an "I." No point of view any longer, because you'd be an infinite sequence of views and points ... — Neil Gaiman

When I was but a young pup...there was a woman I met, under the stars, who let me play with her bubbies, and she told me my fortune. She told me that I would be undone and abandoned west of the sunset, and that a dead woman's bauble would seal my fate. And I laughed and poured more barley wine and played with her bubbies some more, and I kissed her full on her pretty lips. — Neil Gaiman

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime. — Neil Gaiman

Oh - that family, yes. There are still some photos of them around here. They look like nice people, don't they?"
They ... 'look like nice people'?"
Well, they do, don't they? Of course, they never actually existed - except maybe in the most tenuous and retrospective way - but still, it's nice to think they were good people."
Uh. Right. Gee, I suppose you must do a lot of drugs. — Neil Gaiman

We should do our best to satisfy your interests in stories and books and the world. There are libraries. — Neil Gaiman

I missed her, deeply, painfully. But life goes on. — Neil Gaiman

He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring because yesterday has brought it. — Neil Gaiman

Today, fantasy is, for better or for worse, just another genre, a place in a bookshop to find books that, too often, remind one of far too many other books; it is an irony, and not entirely a pleasant one, that what should be, by definition, the most imaginative of all types of literature has become so staid, and, too often, downright unimaginative. — Neil Gaiman

It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price all good places have to pay. — 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

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book. — Neil Gaiman

The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show he had seen as a teenager, about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it's only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins, it's a threat. This grin was one of those. — Neil Gaiman

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. 'Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost. — Neil Gaiman

What happens next? — Neil Gaiman

Dinosaurs are reptiles, sir," said Professor Steg. "We do not go in for milk. — Neil Gaiman

Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" She shook her head. She didn't smile. She said, "Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here." "So you used to know everything?" She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This, — Neil Gaiman

On Sunday morning Mrs. Whitaker went to church. Her local church was St. James the Less, which was a little more "Don't think of this as a church, think of it as a place where like-minded friends hang out and are joyful" than Mrs. Whitaker felt entirely comfortable with, but she liked the vicar, the Reverend Bartholomew, when he wasn't actually playing the guitar. — Neil Gaiman

She seemed able to go to sleep whenever she wanted to, a skill I envied and did not have. — Neil Gaiman

Darling? This is Ursula Monkton, — Neil Gaiman

Not an option. You burned your bridges. So keep walking. Do your own time ... — 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've never known anyone who was what he or she seemed; or at least, was only what he or she seemed. People carry worlds within them. — Neil Gaiman

I'm more or less happily writing Chapter Six of The Graveyard Book. I say more or less as I'm at that place where I hope that the book knows what it's doing because right now I don't have a clue - I'm writing one scene after another like a man walking through a valley in thick fog, just able to see the path a little way ahead, but with no idea where it's actually going to lead him. — Neil Gaiman

You're enjoying this,' said Amy. 'My whole world has been taken over by a mysterious voice. All the people are extinct. Rory's gone. And you're enjoying this.'
'No, I'm not,' said the Doctor, trying hard not to show how much he was enjoying it. — Neil Gaiman

In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence. — Neil Gaiman

She patted him on the arm. "You're fucked up, Mister. But you're cool."
"I believe that's what they call the human condition," said Shadow. — Neil Gaiman

The monk made his evening devotions with slightly less enthusiasm than usual. It is one thing to pray; it is another to pray to entities who will search you out on the road and beat you across the head with sticks if you say something that offends them. — Neil Gaiman

Nobody is ever given more to shoulder than he or she can bear. — Neil Gaiman

Drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own. The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be. You know why I show that to you? — Neil Gaiman

In every big-budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve-mile-long spaceship, it was an off-white twenty-year-old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput ...
VROOOOSH.
But it was exactly like that anyway. — Neil Gaiman

I took delight in hurling books across the room if I knew I would not be reading the second chapter. Then I'd go and pick them up again, because they are books, after all, and we are not savages. — Neil Gaiman

People would fight over who owns a poisonous desert, if that desert was Jerusalem. — 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

While clothes do not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do not make fine birds, sometimes they can add a certain spice to a recipe. — Neil Gaiman

I have given my heart. Her face is - " "Usual complement of bits?" asked the little creature. "Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?" "Of course." "Well then, you can skip that stuff," said the little hairy man. "We'll take it all as said. So what damn-fool silly thing has this young lady got you a-doin' of? — Neil Gaiman

Didn't I just say you'll never get any two people to remember anything the same? — Neil Gaiman

Excuse me,' he said. 'I know this is a personal question. But are you clinically insane?'
'Possible, but very unlikely. Why? — Neil Gaiman

It begins, as most things begin, with a song. — Neil Gaiman

Sometimes," she said to Atsula, "I feel that I could simply spread my arms and fall into the sky." "That is because you are a scout," said Atsula, the priestess. "When you die, you shall fall into the sky and become a star, to guide us as you guide us in life. — Neil Gaiman

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. - BEN FRANKLIN, POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK T — Neil Gaiman

A story that began with, and exists because of, my love of the remoter parts of Scotland, where the bones of the Earth show through, and the sky is a pale white, and it's all astoundingly beautiful, and it feels about as remote as any place can possibly be. — Neil Gaiman

Party name of Thorn? Tristran of that set? — Neil Gaiman