Neil Gaiman Quotes

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

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.

You were her way here, and it's a dangerous thing to be a door.

I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street.

I learned to write by writing.

I like airplanes. I like anywhere that isn't a proper place. I like in betweens.

I think that is something that I always like in my work - the sense of inclusion rather than the sense of otherness.

'Doctor Who' was the first mythology that I learned, before ever I ran into Greek or Roman or Egyptian mythologies.

It's like you said the other day," said Adam. "You grow up readin' about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus' when you think the world's full of amazin' things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste hangin' about for millions of years. 'Snot worth growin' up for, if you ask my opinion.

Sometimes an old idea gets relegated to the back of the line in the mad delight of a new idea, one you've never had before, and that you write fast in the thrill of the new. No rules. Just stories, and you tell as many of them as you can.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show part is that you never stop loving someone. There's always a piece of them in your heart.

It seems to me that one of the most interesting things about God as a concept, if you decide to believe in God, is that God's ways are unknowable. And God obviously, look at the world around you, does or is responsible for some terrible, terrible, awful things. A young girl kidnapped and kept in the darkness and sexually abused. The deaths of six million Jews. A mudslide that buries a village. All of these things. If God is doing the good stuff, he's got to be doing that stuff too.

Writer advice... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write.

I think hell is something you carry around with you, not somewhere you go.

It stared at them, and it paused for a hundred years, which transpired in a dozen heart beats.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

I thought, I'm going to die. And, thinking that, I was determined to live.

When most people said "I'm psychic, you see," they meant "I have an overactive but unoriginal imagination/wear black nail varnish/talk to my budgie;" when Anathema said it, it sounded as though she was admitting to a hereditary disease which she'd much prefer not to have.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it.

As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck... I believe that life is a game, that 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.

Eyes as black and as shiny as chips of obsidian stared back into his. They were eyes like black holes, letting nothing out, not even information.

Fictions are merely frozen dreams, linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no more than the people who create them.

They could not truly look dead, because they did not ever look alive.

You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imaginary.

They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation in all things. And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any other religion. Amusing, isn't it?

Suggestions? Put it aside for a few days, or longer, do other things, try not to think about it. Then sit down and read it (printouts are best I find, but that's just me) as if you've never seen it before. Start at the beginning. Scribble on the manuscript as you go if you see anything you want to change. And often, when you get to the end you'll be both enthusiastic about it and know what the next few words are. And you do it all one word at a time.

I very rarely want to go back and fix things, because I'm much more interested in the next thing, and in taking what I learned from the things that don't work, and applying them to new things that may work.

I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.

Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here.

My wife, Amanda, is terribly good at warping reality. She is like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and you find yourself living in her universe, doing things that are completely unexpected or unimaginable for you, but you blink and you're up on a stage singing, or wearing a peculiar wig, or writing a book filled with feelings and emotion, or doing something equally as unlikely.

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

All your tomorrows start here.

To be Despair. It is a portrait. Only close your eyes and feel.

And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.

We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.

The price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted.

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

I do not permit affection or lack thereof to influence my actions. There is good, and there is evil. The good must be protected, the evil eradicated. I have shown you the triumph of evil as a caution.

She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said. "Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats." Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?

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. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

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

What power would Hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.