Neil Gaiman Quotes - Page 5

You can no more read the same book again than you can step into the same river.
Neil Gaiman
And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.
Neil Gaiman
Fat Charlie had had no real liking for the police, but until now, he had still managed to cling to a fundamental trust in the natural order of things, a conviction that there was some kind of power--a Victorian might have thought of it as Providence--that ensured that the guilty would be punished while the innocent would be set free. This faith had collapsed in the face of recent events and had been replaced by the suspicion that he would spend the rest of his life pleading his innocence to a variety of implacable judges and tormenters, many of whom would look like Daisy, and that he would in all probability wake up in cell six the next morning to find that he had been transformed into an enormous cockroach. He had definitely been transported to the kind of maleficent universe that transformed people into cockroaches.
Neil Gaiman
And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard self-satisfied strength of belief even for that.
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
Adults follow paths. Children explore.
Neil Gaiman
And I would try and walk far enough away that people would not assume I was with him.
Neil Gaiman
I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who /I/ was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what /was/ me? And what was watchig?
Neil Gaiman
Each person whoever 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 own 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 songs instead.Take Daisy, for example. Her song, which had been somewhere in the back of her head for most of her life, had a reassuring, marching sort of beat, and words that were about protecting the weak, and it had a chorus that began “Evildoers beware!” and was thus much too silly ever to be sung out loud. She would hum it to herself sometimes though, in the shower, during the soapy bits.And that is, more or less, everything you need to know about Daisy. The rest is details.
Neil Gaiman
We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead.
Neil Gaiman
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you
Neil Gaiman
The ocean was back in the pond, and the only knowledge I was left with, as if I had woken from a dream on a summer's day, was that it had not been long ago since I had known everything. I looked at Lettie in the moonlight. "Is that how it is for you? I asked. "Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" ...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.
Neil Gaiman
I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.
Neil Gaiman
I went down to Safeways, and I bought her a packet of best ground sirloin.
Neil Gaiman
Silas consumed only one food, and it was not bananas.
Neil Gaiman
Dinner was wonderful. There was a joint of beef, with roast potatoes, golden-crisp on the outside and soft and white inside, buttered greens I did not recognize, although I think now that they might have been nettles, toasted carrots all blackened and sweet (I did not think that I liked cooked carrots, so I nearly did not eat one but I was brave, and I tried it, and I liked it, and was disappointed in boiled carrots for the rest of my childhood.) For dessert there was the pie, stuffed with apples and with swollen raisins and crushed nuts, all topped with a thick yellow custard, creamier and richer than anything I had ever tasted at school or at home. The kitten slept on a cushion beside the fire, until the end of the meal, when it joined a fog-colored house cat four times its size in a meal of scraps of meat.
Neil Gaiman
Shadow was a couple of a hundred yards away from his motel, and he walked there, breathing the cold air, past red and yellow and blue lights advertising every kind of fast food a man could imagine, as long as it was a hamburger.
Neil Gaiman
Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.
Neil Gaiman
You are almost never cool to your children.
Neil Gaiman
If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.
Neil Gaiman
What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
Neil Gaiman
And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristan Thorn traveled beyond the fields we know...
Neil Gaiman
I would fall asleep with my face pressed into her fur, while her deep electrical purr vibrated softly against my cheek. They made me think of the seaside, and so I called her Ocean, and I could not have told you why.
Neil Gaiman
Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us.
Neil Gaiman
A book is a dream you hold in your hands
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
Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Believe," said the rumbling voice. "If you are to survive, you must believe.""Believe what?" asked Shadow. "What should I believe?"He stared at Shadow, the buffalo man, and he drew himself up huge, and his eyes filled with fire. He opened his spit-flecked buffalo mouth and it was red inside with the flames that burned inside him, under the earth."Everything," roared the buffalo man.
Neil Gaiman
You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.
Neil Gaiman
We often confuse what we wish for with what is.
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
Poems ancient and modern prowled the ice floes in bear form, filled with words that could wound with their beauty.
Neil Gaiman
Fiction is dangerous because it lets you into other people's heads. It shows you that the world doesn't have to be like the one you live in." At the first nationally recognized science fiction convention in China in 2007, Gaiman took a party official aside and said, "While not actually illegal, science fiction is regarded as dangerous and subversive in China. Why did you say yes to a science-fiction convention?"The party official answered, "In China, we're really good at making things people bring to us, but we don't invent, we don't innovate." When Chinese party officials visited Google, Apple and Microsoft, they asked what the executives read as children. The official continued: "They all said, 'We read science fiction. The world doesn't have to be the way it is right now. We can change it.' " "That," said Gaiman, "is the big dangerous thing.
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
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
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
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
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's as old as the hills, evil as a snake, all malevolence and magic and death.
Neil Gaiman
Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.
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
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
My people, we stay indoors. We have keyboards. We have darkness.
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
Darkness is happening," said the leather woman, very quietly. "Night is happening. All the nightmares that have come out when the sun goes down, since the cave times, when we huddled together in fear for safety and for warmth, are happening. Now.
Neil Gaiman
The universe is amply supplied with night.
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
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
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
It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck.
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
Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?
Neil Gaiman