Neil Gaiman Quotes: 114

• Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

  Coraline

• Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

  The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

• I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

• Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

  The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections

• May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

• I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.

• Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

• Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.

  The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You

• People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

• What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

  American Gods

• Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

• Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

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

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

  Smoke and Mirrors

• She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.

  Stardust

• Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.

• Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

• She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood. She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

• 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.

  The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

• I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

• You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

  The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

• When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. "It's all right"we whisper, "I'm here, I love you."and we lie: "I'll never leave you."For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad.

  Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days

• In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

  M Is for Magic

• Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.

  Coraline

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

  The Graveyard Book

• It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.

• Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!

• 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.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• Hey,"said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes."Say 'Nevermore,'"said Shadow."Fuck you,"said the raven.

  American Gods

• Books were safer than other people anyway.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."(As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)

• Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.

  The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

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

  Neverwhere

• Sleep my little baby-ohSleep until you wakenWhen you wake you'll see the worldIf I'm not mistaken...Kiss a loverDance a measure,Find your nameAnd buried treasure...Face your lifeIts pain, Its pleasure,Leave no path untaken.

  The Graveyard Book

• If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.

  The Graveyard Book

• I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

• 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.

  The Graveyard Book

• 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. (from 'Instructions')

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.

  Anansi Boys

• 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.

  Coraline

• I am the most miserable person who ever lived,"he said... "You are young, and in love,"said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.

  Stardust

• Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.

  The Graveyard Book

• 25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?'26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.'27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.

  American Gods

• You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?''REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• 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 remarkably difficult to kill.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• 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.

  American Gods

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

  Make Good Art

• Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.

• Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure. Face your life, It's pain, It's pleasure, Leave no path untaken.

  The Graveyard Book

• We owe it to each other to tell stories.

• Words save our lives, sometimes.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.

  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

• Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.

  Stardust

• Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.

• They were kissing. Put like that, and you could be forgiven for presuming that this was a normal kiss, all lips and skin and possibly even a little tongue. You'd miss how he smiled, how his eyes glowed. And then, after the kiss was done, how he stood, like a man who had just discovered the art of standing and had figured out how to do it better than anyone else who would ever come along.

  Anansi Boys

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

• It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us,"said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.

  American Gods

• He couldn’t see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn’t. And there was never an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• 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.

  The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections

• For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.

  The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House

• Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?

  The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

• 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.

  The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

• He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.

  Stardust

• They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it was not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.

  Stardust

• 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.

• She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.

  The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

• Let's start a new tomorrow, today.

  Anansi Boys

• Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

• Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

  Coraline

• 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.

  Anansi Boys

• Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.

  Smoke and Mirrors

• I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.

  The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

• I really don't know what "I love you"means.I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.

• Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commits acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them.

  The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

• Idris: Are all people like this?The Doctor: Like what?Idris: So much bigger on the inside.

• Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

• Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.

• Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

  The Graveyard Book

• I am hope.

  The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

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

  The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

• 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.

  The Graveyard Book

• Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)

• Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian. All right?

  The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections

• Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead

  American Gods

• If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

• There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

• My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say...''He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant.

• On the whole, stories don't write themselves.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.

  The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

• 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.

  The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

• But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it."(Online journal entry for January 31, 2009)

• The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

• 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.

  The Graveyard Book

• Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other people's voices. But as quickly as you can start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there will always be better writers than you and there will always be smarter writers than you, but you are the only you.

• Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to spend his words.

  Odd and the Frost Giants

• Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped away the cover of forgetfulness, stripped everything down to truth, and it hurt more than anything.

  Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

• That is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones.

  American Gods

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

  American Gods

• Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down.

• Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra.

• They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.

  The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

• And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

• He had had a severe shock some weeks earlier, when, having narrowly failed to capture a large grey-brown hare for his dinner, it had stopped at the edge of the forest, looked at him with disdain, and said, 'Well, I hope you're proud of yourself, that's all,' and had scampered off into the long grass

  Stardust

• 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.

  American Gods

• If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies, he read books on Finnish philology. Go and read outside of your comfort zone, go and learn stuff.