Neil Gaiman Quotes

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

The short story is still like the novel's wayward younger brother, we know that it's not respectable - but I think that can also add to the glory of it.

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.

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.

You're sick. Sick and evil and weird.

Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.

I love religion. I could make up religions all day. I sort of think that in an ideal world I'd like to be a religion designer. I'd like people come up to me and say, I need a religion. I'd go talk to them for a while, and I'd design a religion for them. That would be a great job. There's a need for people like that. Fortunately, seeing that one can't actually do it, I get paid for sort of making them up anyway.

A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.

Even the proudest spirit can be broken with love.

Why does she want me?" Coraline asked the cat. "Why does she want me to stay here with her?" "She wants something to love, I think," said the cat. "Something that isn't her. She might want something to eat as well. It's hard to tell with creatures like that.

Human beings do not relate to written words in the same way that they will relate to spoken words. They do not relate to music in the same way that they do to pictures. It's all different parts of our head, different parts of our minds processing this.

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.

A flash of resentment. It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having...if not died, then having given up her life. It wasn't fair. "Life's not fair," said Ginnie, as if I had spoken aloud.

Also, I've already won all the awards.

The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are...so make up your own rules.

Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say "what kind of tea?"

If you have something specific and visible to fear, rather than something that could be anything, it is easier.

As I wouldn't wear a costume, I couldn't imagine him wanting to wear one. And seeing that the greater part of my wardrobe is black (It's a sensible colour. It goes with anything. Well, anything black)[...].

If you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about you are very probably wrong - even if you're the author.

Hunchbacks danced at my wedding for luck. It's a thing you don't see nowadays.

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now that's a question.

She took my hands in her, then, and squeezed them. 'But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is,' and she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear.

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?

Identity can be so gelatinous sometimes.

People talk about escapism as if it's a bad thing... Once you've escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills, weapons, knowledge you didn't have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality.

Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

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.

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map that is the territory. You must remember this.

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.

I don't think I'm mainstream. I think what I am is lots and lots of different cults. And when you get lots and lots of small groups who like you a lot, they add up to a big group without ever actually becoming mainstream.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.

Fear is contagious. You can catch it.

Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?" "Easy," said the cat. "Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it." "Small world," said Coraline. "It's big enough for her," said the cat. "spiders' webs only have to be large enough to catch flies." Coraline shivered.

People who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

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.

When I was very young, I would occasionally stick 'f****' where I knew something contentious might happen so that the editor could remove the word 'f***' very proudly and leave whatever else was around it.

When I was a kid and a young man I read everything. When I was about 23, I was incredibly lucky in that I wound up with several book review columns, which meant that I had to read huge amounts of stuff that was outside my experience and outside my comfort zone. I think every young writer should be forced to read the kind of stuff they would not normally read for pleasure.

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.

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," she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and the shawls and clusters of bright stars.

I love making things. I love building things. I love the idea that something's in the world that wasn't there before.

You think you're being given all of these things: phones that can communicate with other devices, car service that's better than a taxi, all of these amazing things that are available to you at any time. It isn't until you've swum across the river that you can start to see the negative aspects of it all.

If ever you get to be my age," said the old woman, "you will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run.

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.

Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.

The Marquis sighed. "I thought it was just a legend," he said. "Like the alligators in the sewers of New York City." Old Bailey nodded, sagely: "What, the big white buggers? They're down there. I had a friend lost a head to one of them." A moment of silence. Old Naeiley handed the statue back to the Marquis. Then he raised his hand, and snapped it, like a crocodile hand, at the Carabas. "It was OK," gurned Old Bailey with a grin that was most terrible to behold. "He had another.