200+ Quotes & Sayings By Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman was born in England and later became an American citizen. He began his career as a comic book writer and is the author of several novels, including American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. His work has been adapted for television and film and he has won numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It...
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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. Neil Gaiman
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I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. Neil Gaiman
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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. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.. You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. Neil Gaiman
In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving...
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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. Neil Gaiman
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I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life. Neil Gaiman
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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. . Neil Gaiman
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Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
I am the most miserable person who ever lived,
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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. Neil Gaiman
Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And...
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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. Neil Gaiman
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So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o' the wisp. Not long ago you burned--your heart burned--in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all."" Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own? I have given my heart to another."" The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?"" Yes."" You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me. We could have been young again, well into the next age of the world. Your boy will break it, or waste it, or lose it. They all do."" Nonetheless, he has my heart. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you, when you return to them without it. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs...
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For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.
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You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path...
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Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken. Neil Gaiman
You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you...
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You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not. Neil Gaiman
I believe that life is a game, that life is...
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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') Neil Gaiman
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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
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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
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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? Neil Gaiman
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell...
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Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious...
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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
Words save our lives, sometimes.
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Words save our lives, sometimes. Neil Gaiman
Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good...
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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. Neil Gaiman
Let's start a new tomorrow, today.
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Let's start a new tomorrow, today. Neil Gaiman
Now you people have names. That's because you don't know...
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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. Neil Gaiman
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So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Neil Gaiman
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She could hear, some way off, her brothers calling to each other in the woods behind the house. She hoped desperately that their game wouldn't bring them any closer, that they wouldn't scare the birds away. Somehow she knew that you didn't get many moments like this in your life: moments when you knew, without any doubt, that you were alive, when you felt the air in your lungs and the wet grass beneath your feet and the cotton on your skin; moments when you were completely in the present, when neither the past nor the future mattered. She tried to slow her breathing, hoping somehow to make this moment last forever. . Neil Gaiman
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I don’t ever remember being afraid of “oldness”.There are things I miss about being younger - chiefly the ability to pull all-nighters and keep working and working well; and being smiled at by girls I didn’t know who thought I was cute; and I wish I had the eyesight I had even five years ago… but that stuff feels pretty trivial. I’m happier than I’ve been at any time in my life these days. I have a wonderful wife whom I adore, watched three amazing kids grow into two delightful adults and my favourite teenager, an astonishing number of grand life experiences, I’ve made art I’m proud of, I have real, true, glorious friends, and I’ve been able to do real good for things I care about, like freedom of speech, like libraries. Sometimes I’ll do something like An Evening With Neil and Amanda, or the 8 in 8 project, and completely surprise myself. I miss friends who have died, but then, I’m glad that time gave them to me, to befriend, even for a while, and that I was alive to know them. I knew Douglas Adams, and I knew Roger Zelazny, and I knew John M Ford, and I knew Diana Wynne Jones… do you know how lucky that makes me? Ah, I’m rabbiting on, and I sound a bit more Pollyannaish than I’m intending to sound: I know the downside of age and the downside of time, and I am sure that the view from age 51 is not the view from age 71.I wish the time hadn’t gone so fast, though. And sometimes I wish I’d enjoyed it more on the way, and worried about it less. . Neil Gaiman
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work...
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Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush.." To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.. More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and.. for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?. Neil Gaiman
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Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet,...
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The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies. Neil Gaiman
You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?'' R...
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You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?'' R E V E L A T I O N S. CHAPTER SIX. Neil Gaiman
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He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it was an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did. What he did was put the fear of God into them. More precisely, the fear of Crowley. In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. "Say goodbye to your friend, " he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it. . " Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat. The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified. Neil Gaiman
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I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-"" What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously." This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years-"" The same bird every thousand years?" Crowley hesitated. "Yeah, " he said." Bloody ancient bird, then."" Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-""-limps-""-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-"" Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of-" The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."" But it gets there anyway, " Crowley persevered." How?"" It doesn't matter! "" It could use a space ship, " said the angel. Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah, " he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird-"" Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about, " said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to-" He hesitated. "What havethey got to do?"" Sharpen its beak on the mountain, " said Crowley. "And then it flies back-""-in the space ship-"" And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again, " said Crowley quickly. There was a moment of drunken silence." Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak, " mused Aziraphale."Listen, " said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-" Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly."-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music."Aziraphale froze." And you'll enjoy it, " Crowley said relentlessly. "You really will."" My dear boy-"" You won't have a choice."" Listen-"" Heaven has no taste."" Now-"" And not one single sushi restaurant." A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has...
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Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers. Neil Gaiman
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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
You have a very open relationship with your fans.
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You have a very open relationship with your fans."" Yes. We have an open relationship. Obviously they can see other authors if they want, and I can see other readers. Neil Gaiman
He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner...
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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. Neil Gaiman
There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against...
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There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches. Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: 'Learn, guys.. Neil Gaiman
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There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of man-made evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. These dogs advance deliberately, purposefully, the wilderness made flesh, their teeth yellow, their breath a-stink, while in the distance their owners witter, "He's an old soppy really, just poke him if he's a nuisance, " and in the green of their eyes the red campfires of the Pleistocene gleam and flicker. Neil Gaiman
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Fuck you, " said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart. Neil Gaiman
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It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
If you only write when inspired, you may be a...
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If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist. Neil Gaiman
The best way to show people true things is from...
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The best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming. Neil Gaiman
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I am the only one of us who brings in any money. the other two cannot make money fortune telling. this is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. it is a bad thing and it troubles people, so they do not come back. Neil Gaiman
It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's...
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It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much. Neil Gaiman
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Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut. Neil Gaiman
Everything that is, casts a shadow
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Everything that is, casts a shadow Neil Gaiman
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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 commit 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. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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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
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CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler. M O R P H E U S: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing. C H O R O N Z O N: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing. M O R P H E U S: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged. C H O R O N Z O N: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed. M O R P H E U S: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed. C H O R O N Z O N: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying. M O R P H E U S: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing. C H O R O N Z O N: I am a nova, all-exploding.. planet-cremating. M O R P H E U S: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing., Dreamlord?MORPHEUS: I am hope. Neil Gaiman
Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to...
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Talk is free but the wise man chooses when to spend his words. Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
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Oh, monsters are scared', said Lettie. 'And as for grown-ups..' She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, 'I'm going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.'.. We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations. . Neil Gaiman
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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. Neil Gaiman
Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead
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Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead Neil Gaiman
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I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer's night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently, some so close to me I could see they were burning green as they flew, and some further away, who seemed to be flashing white. And in the sky above them a continual roil of distant summer lightning (the storm distant enough that it was silent) burned and flashed and illuminated the clouds. It seemed as if the lightning bugs were talking to the lightning, in a perfect call and response of flash and counterflash. I watched the sky and the meadow flash and flash while the dog walked ahead of me, and realised that I was perfectly happy.. Neil Gaiman
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Are you happy?” asked Mr. Nancy, suddenly. He had been staring at Shadow for several hours. Whenever Shadow glanced over to his right, Mr. Nancy was looking at him with his earth-brown eyes. “Not really, ” said Shadow. “But I’m not dead yet.” “Huh?” “ ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ Herodotus.” Mr. Nancy raised a white eyebrow, and he said, “I’m not dead yet, and, mostly because I’m not dead yet, I’m happy as a clamboy.” “The Herodotus thing. It doesn’t mean that the dead are happy, ” said Shadow. “It means that you can’t judge the shape of someone’s life until it’s over and done.” “I don’t even judge then, ” said Mr. Nancy. “And as for happiness, there’s a lot of different kinds of happiness, just as there’s a hell of a lot of different kinds of dead. Me, I’ll just take what I can get when I can get it. . Neil Gaiman
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Are you happy?” asked Mr. Nancy, suddenly. He had been staring at Shadow for several hours. Whenever Shadow glanced over to his right, Mr. Nancy was looking at him with his earth-brown eyes. “Not really, ” said Shadow. “But I’m not dead yet.” “Huh?” " 'Call no man happy until he is dead.’ Herodotus.” Mr. Nancy raised a white eyebrow, and he said, “I’m not dead yet, and, mostly because I’m not dead yet, I’m happy as a clamboy.” “The Herodotus thing. It doesn’t mean that the dead are happy, ” said Shadow. “It means that you can’t judge the shape of someone’s life until it’s over and done.” “I don’t even judge then, ” said Mr. Nancy. “And as for happiness, there’s a lot of different kinds of happiness, just as there’s a hell of a lot of different kinds of dead. Me, I’ll just take what I can get when I can get it. . Neil Gaiman
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He told me that the phrase “the happiest days of your life” referred to your school days. This seemed nonsensical to me then, and I suspected it of being either adult propaganda or, more likely, confirmation of my creeping suspicion that the majority of adults actually had no memories of being children. Neil Gaiman
I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.
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I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge. Neil Gaiman
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No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes–forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. Neil Gaiman
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And sometimes, when you fall, you fly. Neil Gaiman
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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
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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. Neil Gaiman
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I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. . Neil Gaiman
She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you...
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She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death. Neil Gaiman
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime....
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You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less. Neil Gaiman
90
Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.“ Hello, Bod, ” she said.“ Hello, ” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”“ Names aren’t really important, ” she said.“ I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”“ He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”“ Can I ride him?” asked Bod.“One day, ” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”“ Promise?” I promise. . Neil Gaiman
DEATH:
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DEATH: "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night without fear." M O R P H E U S: "And I am far more terrible than you, sister. Neil Gaiman
If you want to call it that. But it is...
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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. Neil Gaiman
93
Fox was here first, and his brother was the wolf. Fox said, people will live forever. If they die they will not die for long. Wolf said, no, people will die, people must die, all things that live must die, or they will spread and cover the world, and eat all the salmon and the caribou and the buffalo, eat all the squash and all the corn. Now one day Wolf died, and he said to the fox, quick, bring me back to life. And Fox said, No, the dead must stay dead. You convinced me. And he wept as he said this. But he said it, and it was final. Now Wolf rules the world of the dead and Fox lives always under the sun and the moon, and he still mourns his brother. . Neil Gaiman
94
One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate. Neil Gaiman
So,
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So, " he asked. "How's death?"" Hard, " she said. "It just keeps going. Neil Gaiman
The only reason people die, is because EVERYONE does it....
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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
For some folks death is release, and for others death...
97
For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them. Neil Gaiman
I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond...
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I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear. Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out. Neil Gaiman
Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can...
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Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"" Then what died? who are you mourning?"" A point of view. Neil Gaiman
Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die....
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Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change. Neil Gaiman