Neil Gaiman Quotes

There are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.They kill themselves, you mean? said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.Indeed.Does it work? Are they happier dead?Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.

~ Neil Gaiman

Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.

~ Neil Gaiman

But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.

~ Neil Gaiman

And Desire smiles, and forgets, for Desire is a creature of the moment.

~ Neil Gaiman

I am Desire, am I not? That is what I am; that is what I do. I make things want things. Where I touch, things want and need and love - drawn to their objects of desire like butterflies to a candle-flame.

~ Neil Gaiman

I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?

~ Neil Gaiman

If you have nothing left to want, then you just wait. Until there's nothing left to wait for.

~ Neil Gaiman

[Dream] I do not want a grape.[Desire] I could make you want one.

~ Neil Gaiman

It always rains on the unloved-wet dreams-a fishing expedition-she kisses wyverns (the disneyland analogy)-dinner etiquette and chocolate lovers-desire swears by the first circle-things are changing-what can possibly go wrong?

~ Neil Gaiman

Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?

~ Neil Gaiman

In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.He said, Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?Not really.Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible.Oh. He paused. I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping.I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.

~ Neil Gaiman

Now go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

~ Neil Gaiman

It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck.

~ Neil Gaiman

A table for TONIGHT should certainly have been booked years before-perhaps, it was implied, by Richard's parents. A table for TONIGHT was impossible: if the pope, the prime minister, and the president of France arrived this evening without a confirmed reservation, even they would be turned out into the street with a continental jeer.

~ Neil Gaiman

Slowly gently night creeps up on you, more gentle than light, it helps you realize how much the light hinders you. In the darkness your senses learn when they should quit – in the embrace of the dark everything becomes what it really is. People fear the dark but unlike the light it does not lie to you. In the dark you can go where you long to be.

~ Neil Gaiman

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.

~ Neil Gaiman

The universe is amply supplied with night.

~ Neil Gaiman

Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

~ Neil Gaiman

My people, we stay indoors. We have keyboards. We have darkness.

~ Neil Gaiman

The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

~ Neil Gaiman

In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night, Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in.And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they're being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them.

~ Neil Gaiman

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

~ Neil Gaiman

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

~ 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. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.

~ Neil Gaiman

No, look, there's a blue box. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It can go anywhere in time and space and sometimes even where it's meant to go. And when it turns up, there's a bloke in it called The Doctor and there will be stuff wrong and he will do his best to sort it out and he will probably succeed 'cause he's awesome. Now sit down, shut up, and watch 'Blink'.

~ Neil Gaiman

The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen.

~ Neil Gaiman

It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.

~ Neil Gaiman

Yes, I was scared of the Daleks and the Zarbi and the rest, but I was taking other, stranger, more important lessons away from my Saturday tea time serial. For a start, I became infected by the idea that there are an infinite number of worlds only a foot step away. And another part of the meme was this- some things are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. And perhaps some people are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside as well. And that was only the start of it.

~ Neil Gaiman

Poems ancient and modern prowled the ice floes in bear form, filled with words that could wound with their beauty.

~ Neil Gaiman

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; thatwitches are often betrayed by their appetites;dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;hearts can be well-hidden,and you betray them with your tongue.Do not be jealous of your sister.Know that diamonds and rosesare as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs:colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.Remember your name.Do not lose hope -- what you seek will be found.Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.Trust dreams.Trust your heart, and trust your story.When you come back, return the way you came.Favors will be returned, debts be repaid.Do not forget your manners.Do not look back.Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand.When you reach the little house, the place your journey started,you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.And then go home. Or make a home.Or rest.

~ Neil Gaiman

We often confuse what we wish for with what is.

~ Neil Gaiman

You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.

~ Neil Gaiman

You’re going back?” asked Bod. Things that had been immutable were changing. “You’re really leaving? But. You’re my guardian.”,“I was you’re guardian. But you are old enough to guard yourself. I have other things to protect.

~ Neil Gaiman

Loki's green eyes flashed with anger and with admiration, for he loved a good trick as much as he hated being fooled.

~ Neil Gaiman

One of the dwarfs walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the prye, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse.

~ Neil Gaiman

You see, until then I'd been driven. I'd had a true quest, a purpose beyond my function - and then suddenly, the quest was over. I felt... drained. Disappointed. Let down.Does that make sense? I had been sure that as soon as I had everything back I'd feel good. But inside I felt worse than when I stared.

~ Neil Gaiman

You know,” he said. “I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.” There was silence, in the high place.

~ 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. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.

~ 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

Dreams are composed of many things, my son. Of images and hopes, of fears and memories. Memories of the past, and memories of the future...

~ Neil Gaiman