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Neil Gaiman Quotes - Page 3

All Quotes Adventure Age Aliens Art Boundaries Cancer Challenges Change Character Childhood Children Chocolate Choices Comedy Country Culture Dancing Darkness Design Desire Destiny Devil Earth Empathy Evil Failing Falling In Love Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Football Freedom Of Speech Fun Funeral Future Giving Graduation Growing Up Hate Heart Hell Home House Hurt Identity Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Jesus Journey Joy Killing Kindness Kissing Liars Life Lifetime Literature Losing Loss Love Lucifer Luck Lying Madness Magic Meetings Memories Metaphor Moon Morning Mountain New Year Pain Parting Past Rain Reading Reality Regret Running School Science Fiction Silence Sin Sleep Son Sorrow Soul Storytelling Style Summer Tea Terror Today Tragedy Waiting Wall War Water Wednesday Wine Winning Worry Writing

There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down

There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.

Fall, Boys, Men

Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Moving, Writing, Perfection

"Ten rules for writing fiction", www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

I know that this is the internet, and we're all anonymous and all that, but really. It doesn't hurt to try to be nice.

Hurt, Nice, Trying

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.

Graduation, Stupid, Mean

"The Sandman. #36: I Woke Up And One Of Us Was Crying". Comic book by Neil Gaiman, 1992.

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.

Passion, Eye, Thinking

Be wise, because the world needs more wisdom. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

Graduation, Wise, Needs

Neil Gaiman (2016). “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction”, p.418, Hachette UK

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.

Inspirational, Life, Mind

Neil Gaiman (2008). “M Is for Magic”, HarperCollins

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.

Freedom Of Speech, Stuff, Like You

"Why defend freedom of icky speech?" by Neil Gaiman, journal.neilgaiman.com. December 1, 2008.

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.

Life, Inspirational Life, Lifetime

"Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes". Comic book by Neil Gaiman, 1989.

I think most things are pretty magical, and that it's less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.

Thinking, Stopping, Matter

I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.

Dream, Drama, Book

Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Graduation, Interesting, World

Neil Gaiman (2016). “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction”, p.418, Hachette UK

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.

Dream, Moving, Dark

Neil Gaiman (2009). “The Graveyard Book”, p.80, A&C Black

It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world. So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them. And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy.

New Year, Dark, Opportunity

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

Children, Book, Reading

"Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming" by Neil Gaiman, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2013.

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.

Stars, Sadness, Eye

Neil Gaiman (2007). “Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess's Stardust: Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie”, Vertigo

THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

Eye, Thinking, People

FaceBook post by Neil Gaiman from Sep 17, 2011

Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you.

Love, Morning, Eye

We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.

Writing, Rights, Stories

Neil Gaiman (2002). “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, N E S F A Press

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.

Love, Lying, Two

Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.

Song, Voice, People

Neil Gaiman (2005). “Anansi Boys”

Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Whatever you're scared of doing, Do it.

New Year, Mistake, Years

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.

Farewell, Blow, Grieving

"Sandman Special: The Song of Orpheus". Comic book by Neil Gaiman, 1991.

I hope the strong women out there aren't quiet and they don't go away, because when people attack you for speaking, the best way to drive them nuts is to smile and carry on speaking, louder, more wisely, more intensely, more articulately than ever.

Strong Women, Nuts, People

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

Two, Civilization, Twenties

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