Neil Gaiman > Quotes

“We owe it to each other to tell stories.”
― Neil Gaiman

“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“We often confuse what we wish for with what is.”
― Neil Gaiman, MirrorMask

“I thought I was your destination. Looks like I was just another stop on the line.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. ”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow.”
― neil gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“What do stars do? They shine.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House

“Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

“In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone,
We must speak of other matters,
You can be me when I'm gone

Flowers gathered in the morning,
Afternoon they blossom on,
Still are withered in the evening,
You can be me when I'm gone.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I'm always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”
― Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology

“Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality waiting to be shaped.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imaginary.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“I don't think you should ever insult people unintentionally: if you're doing it, you ought to mean it.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“The Doctor: Sorry, do you have a name?
Idris: Seven hundred years and finally he asks.
The Doctor: But what do I call you?
Idris: I think you call me... Sexy?
The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only when we're alone.
Idris: We are alone.
The Doctor: Oh. Come on then, Sexy.”
― Neil Gaiman

“When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere