Neil Gaiman Quotes

They are simply numbers and cannot thus be right or wrong [ ... ] What I trust that I am saying is that all numbers are by their nature correct. Well, except for Pi, of course. I can't be doing with Pi. Gives me a headache just thinking about it, going on and on and on and on and on ... ~ Neil Gaiman

...Minnesota, Wisconsin, all around there... has the kind of women I liked when I was younger. Pale-skinned and blue-eyed, hair so fair it's almost white, wine-colored lips, and round, full breasts with the veins running through them like a good cheese. ~ Neil Gaiman

He made love to Porcupine Woman and got his dick shot through with more needles than a pincushion. He'd argue with rocks and the rocks would win. ~ Neil Gaiman

I've been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It was me and a handful of tyrannosaurs. We'd be writing blog entries like, 'The tyrannosaurus is getting grumpy.' ~ Neil Gaiman

It's what people do. They believe. And when they will not take responsibilities for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. ~ Neil Gaiman

He undertook to overtake
The road was on a bend
From now on the Undertaker
Is his only friend ~ Neil Gaiman

It's just harder out there in the world of the living, and we cannot protect you out there as easily. I wanted to keep you perfectly safe ... But there is only one perfectly safe place for your kind, and you will not reach it until all your adventures are over and none of them matter any longer. ~ Neil Gaiman

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. ~ Neil Gaiman

Do you wonder where poetry comes from? Where we get the songs we sing and the tales we tell? Do you ever ask yourself how it is that some people can dream great, wise, beautiful dreams and pass those dreams on as poetry to the world, to be sung and retold as long as the sun rises and sets, as long as the moon will wax and wane? Have you ever wondered why some people make beautiful songs and poems and tales, and some of us do not? It ~ Neil Gaiman

You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter. ~ Neil Gaiman

You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the waterhole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, 'Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I'll look after your balls for you. ~ Neil Gaiman

A trail of lightning spread across the clouds, and Shadow wondered if that was the thunderbird returning to its high crags, or just an atmospheric discharge, or whether the two ideas were, on some level, the same thing.
And of course they were. That was the point after all. ~ Neil Gaiman

But then I thought, just because we are few and they are many, we are weak, and they are powerful, it does not mean that we are lost. ~ Neil Gaiman

Inside the pub, Richard's friends continued to celebrate his forthcoming departure with an enthusiasm that, to Richard, was beginning to border on the sinister. ~ Neil Gaiman

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography. ~ Neil Gaiman

Mister whoever-the-fuck you are," said Shadow, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the engines, "there isn't enough money in the world. ~ Neil Gaiman

Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.
She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.
Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.
Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.
There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.
There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones. ~ Neil Gaiman

We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearl-like, from our souls without real pain. Fiction ~ Neil Gaiman

I'll swap you my dad," I said.
"Oh-oh," said my little sister. ~ Neil Gaiman

The model for tomorrow, and this is the model I've been using with enormous enthusiasm since I started blogging back in 2001, is to try everything. Make mistakes. Surprise ourselves. Try anything else. Fail. Fail better. And succeed in ways we never would have imagined a year or a week ago. ~ Neil Gaiman

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. ~ Neil Gaiman

Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it was easy. ~ Neil Gaiman

I kept starting 'Anansi Boys' as a movie and stopping, and eventually wrote the novel and was happy. ~ Neil Gaiman

People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. ~ Neil Gaiman

Sometimes war is necessary to teach us the value of peace. Sometimes you need to learn the real value of diplomacy in avoiding war. And I'd rather my students learned those lessons on the playground than on the battlefield. ~ Neil Gaiman

You can't make me love you. ~ Neil Gaiman

And sometimes, when you fall, you fly. ~ Neil Gaiman

Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting. ~ Neil Gaiman

We don't do spells," she said. She sounded a little disappointed to admit it. "We'll do recipes sometimes. But no spells or cantrips. Gran doesn't hold with none of that. She says it's common. ~ Neil Gaiman

I am a Hound of God. I travel my own road, into Hell and out of it. ~ Neil Gaiman

It was as if some people believed there was a divide between the books that you were permitted to enjoy and the books that were good for you, and I was expected to choose sides. We were all expected to choose sides. And I didn't believe it, and I still don't.
I was, and still am, on the side of books you love. ~ Neil Gaiman

Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen. More Nothing. The Return of Nothing. Son of Nothing. Nothing Rides Again. Nothing and Abbot and Costello meet the Wolfman ... ~ Neil Gaiman

Oh, sweety-weety-pudding-and-pie, you are in so much trouble ~ Neil Gaiman

Soon," said the crackling voice of the flame, coming from behind him, "they will fall. Soon they will fall and the star people will meet the earth people. There will be heroes among them, and men who will slay monsters and bring knowledge, but none of them will be gods. This is a poor place for gods. ~ Neil Gaiman

It is as natural to die as it is to be born. ~ Neil Gaiman

So go my little love. Touch the world. Eat their hearts and poison their dreams. Rip their nightmares into the daylight and scum their sleep with creeping fear. ~ Neil Gaiman

I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work. ~ Neil Gaiman

IT IS POSSIBLY WORTH MENTIONING THAT IN FAT CHARLIE'S world, women did not simply turn up. You needed to be introduced to them; you needed to pluck up the courage to talk to them; you needed to find a subject to talk about when you did, and then, once you had achieved those heights, there were further peaks to scale. You needed to dare to ask them if they were doing anything on Saturday night, and then when you did, mostly they had hair that needed washing that night, or diaries to update, or cockatiels to groom, or they simply needed to wait by the phone for some other man not to call. ~ Neil Gaiman

He calls himself the Marquis de Carabas," he said. "He's a fraud and a cheat and possibly even something of a monster. If you're ever in trouble, go to him. He will protect you, girl. He has to. ~ Neil Gaiman

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. ~ Neil Gaiman

I take it this is some obscure West Indian usage of the word 'similar' which means 'nothing at all alike'? ~ Neil Gaiman

They might be dirty, and cheap, and their food might taste like shit, but at least they didn't speak in clichés ~ Neil Gaiman

It's easier to lie to yourself when you say things out loud. ~ Neil Gaiman

Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. ~ Neil Gaiman

It is a sea of blood. We come from the sea, Tim; our blood is salt, and strange tides ebb and flow within us all. ~ Neil Gaiman

I'm alive,' said Shadow. 'I'm not dead. Remember?'
'You're not dead,' Laura said. 'But I'm not sure you're alive, either. Not really. ~ Neil Gaiman

The only reason people die, is because EVERYONE does it. You all just go along with it.
It's RUBBISH, death. It's STUPID. I don't want nothing to do with it. ~ Neil Gaiman

Life is no play. We meet people once, and never see them again. There is no shape to events, no point at which we turn to the audience for their praise. ~ Neil Gaiman

it was sucking fall to the ground, and it ~ Neil Gaiman

It's an America with strange mythic depths. I see it as a distorting mirror; a book of danger and secrets, of romance and magic. It's about the soul of America, really. What people brought to America; what found them when they came; and the things that lie sleeping beneath it all. ~ Neil Gaiman

We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world. ~ Neil Gaiman

If it were today, I would have her heart cut out, true. But then I would have her head and arms and legs cut off. I would have them disembowel her. And then I would watch, in the town square, as the hangman heated the fire to white-heat with bellows, watch unblinking as he consigned each part of her to the fire. I would have archers around the square, who would shoot any bird or animal who came close to the flames, any raven or dog or hawk or rat. And I would not close my eyes until the princess was ash, and a gentle wind could scatter her like snow.

I did not do this thing, and we pay for our mistakes. ~ Neil Gaiman

I thought I was looking at a building at first: that it was some kind of tent, as high as a country church, made of grey and pink canvas that flapped in the gusts of storm wind, in that orange sky: a lopsided canvas structure aged by weather and ripped by time. And then it turned and I saw its face ... ~ Neil Gaiman

Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams. ~ Neil Gaiman

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. ~ Neil Gaiman

My mom used to say, 'Life isn't fair,'" said Shadow.

"Of course she did," said Wednesday. "It's one of those things that moms say, right up there with 'If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you do it too?'"

"You stiffed that girl for ten bucks, I slipped her ten bucks," said Shadow, doggedly. "It was the right thing to do."

Someone announced that their plane was boarding. Wednesday stood up. "May your choices always be so clear," he said. ~ Neil Gaiman

I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed. ~ Neil Gaiman

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't. ~ Neil Gaiman

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold ~ Neil Gaiman

Heavens protect us from the dress sense of American academics. ~ Neil Gaiman

Richard found himself, on otherwise sensible weekends, accompanying her to places like the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, where he learned that walking around museums too long hurts your feet, that the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while, and that it is almost beyond the human capacity for belief to accept how much museum cafeterias will brazenly charge for a slice of cake and a cup of tea. ~ 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

Tell him that we fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. ~ Neil Gaiman

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. ~ 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

I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it. ~ Neil Gaiman

Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams. ~ 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

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

DREAM ! Dreams shape the world . Dreams create the world anew, every night. Do not dream the world the way it is now, in thrall to our feline masters and mistresses ~ Neil Gaiman

You're as plain as the nose on your face," said Mr. Pennyworth. "And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody. ~ Neil Gaiman

There's a tale in the Caballa that suggests that the Angel of Death is so beautiful that upon seeing it (or him, or her) you fall in love so hard, so fast, that your soul is pulled out through your eyes. I like that story. ~ Neil Gaiman

Mortality is a hard thing to face. 'That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.' That's as maybe. But that which does kill us, kills us, and ain't that a bitch...How do you make sense of your life? Signal to noise: what's signal? What's noise? ~ Neil Gaiman

That was the trouble with hiding things. Sometimes, if you were in a hurry, you left them behind. Even important things. ~ Neil Gaiman

He heard long ago, in a dream, that one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: that this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after. ~ Neil Gaiman

I believe in the reflections that they show us, when they are told. ~ Neil Gaiman

Parameters are the things you bounce off to create art. ~ Neil Gaiman

I found myself, unbidden, thinking of the holy fools in the old story, the ones who went fishing in the lake for the moon, with nets, convinced that the reflection in the water was nearer and easier to catch than the globe that hung in the sky. ~ Neil Gaiman

My heart ... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. ~ Neil Gaiman

I learned the Norse gods came with their own doomsday: Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, the end of it all. The gods were going to battle the frost giants, and they were all going to die.

Had Ragnarok happened yet? Was it still to happen? I did not know then. I am not certain now. ~ Neil Gaiman

But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable. ~ Neil Gaiman

There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. ~ Neil Gaiman

I will rise now and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek the one I love." She is whispering that, and she whispers, "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. He said, this stature of mine is like to a palm tree, and my breasts like clusters of grapes. He said he would come to me then. I am my beloved's and his desire is only toward me. ~ Neil Gaiman

Even in dreams and in death, a monk and a fox are from different worlds, as they were in life, and in different worlds they will forever stay ~ Neil Gaiman

This little piggy went to Hades
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh
This little piggy violated virgins
And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to get to the top ~ Neil Gaiman

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

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending. ~ Neil Gaiman

Were not people but cartoon mice and rats and barnyard animals, human-sized, and celebrating - began to sing songs from Disney cartoons. Fat Charlie knew that they wanted him to join in with them. Even asleep he could feel himself panicking at the simple idea of having to sing in public, his limbs becoming numb, his lips prickling. I ~ Neil Gaiman

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

I imagine the world dividing into the people who want to feed their children, and the ones shooting at them. ~ Neil Gaiman

Different creatures have different eyes. Human eyes (unlike, say, a cat's eyes, or an octopus's) are only made to see one version of reality at a time. ~ Neil Gaiman

The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself
his clothes, his manner, his carriage
as a grand joke.
There was a dull pain in his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Vandemar's face.
It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more.
And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it. ~ Neil Gaiman

Why didn't adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies? I ~ Neil Gaiman

Load of old tosh," said Peter, crossly. ~ Neil Gaiman

I've known ambitious people with no aptitude for the thing they did. Most of whom, rather terrifyingly, tended to succeed. ~ Neil Gaiman

I didn't know I had another mother,' said Coraline cautiously. 'Of course you do. Everyone does,' said the other mother, her black-button eyes gleaming. ~ Neil Gaiman

One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. ~ Neil Gaiman

Ah ... do Frost Giants eat people?'
There was a pause. The fox said, 'Occasionally,' at the same time as the bear said, 'Almost never. ~ 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

There was something sly about his smile,
his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something
that sent her early to their trysting place,
beneath the oak, beside the thornbush,
something that made her climb the tree and wait.
Climb a tree, and in her condition.
Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light,
carrying a bag,
from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife.
He worked with a will, beside the thornbush, beneath the oaken tree,
he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave,
that old song ...
shall I sing it for you, now, good folk? ~ Neil Gaiman