Quotes From "Fragile Things: Short Fictions And Wonders" By Neil Gaiman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would. Neil Gaiman

It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. 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 remarkable difficult to kill. . Neil Gaiman

We knew that it would soon be over, and so we put it all into a poem, to tell the universe who we were, and why we were here, and what we said and did and thought and dreamed and yearned for. We wrapped our dreams into words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable. Neil Gaiman

The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers.. 'It is escapism, true, ' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward freedom, the drive to escape?. Neil Gaiman

If we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us. Neil Gaiman

Never use five words if you can get away with one, eh? I've known dead men talk more than you do. Neil Gaiman

You're a poem?' I repeated. She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose whose world was swallowed by the sea.'' Isn't it hard to be three things at the same time?'' What's your name?'' Enn.'' So you are Enn, ' she said. 'And you are a male. And you are a biped. Is it hard to be three things at the same time? Neil Gaiman

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created. Neil Gaiman

I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as I have or will, I suspect, ever get. Neil Gaiman

Of course, fairy tales are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them. They are currency that we share with those who walked the world before ever we were here. (Telling stories to my children that I was, in my turn, told by my parents and grandparents makes me feel part of something special and odd, part of the continuous stream of life itself.) Neil Gaiman

Because stories start in minds-- they aren't artifacts or natural phenomena. Neil Gaiman

We owe it to each other to tell stories, as people simply... Neil Gaiman

It’s a way of talking about lust without talking about lust, he told them. It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about? Neil Gaiman

The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it." What do you want?' it repeated. He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realised he did not.' Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you. Why?'' I wanted to meet you, ' he said, without looking around. 'I want to live for ever.' His voice crackedas he said it. He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could alreadyfeel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life. The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him severallong seconds to recognise it as laughter.' This is not life, ' said the voice. It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard. Neil Gaiman

I was not so old that I would deny my own senses. Neil Gaiman

We think that tomorrow, unless we surrender, they may drop the moon on us." "You're joking."" Wish I was. Neil Gaiman

Do not fear the ghosts in this house; theyare the least of your worries. Personally I find the noises they make reassuring, The creaks and footsteps in the night, their little tricks of hiding things, or moving them, I findendearing, not upsettling. It makes the placefeel so much more like a home. Inhabited. Neil Gaiman

The moments of déjà vu were coming more frequently, now. Moments would stutter and hiccup and falter and repeat. Sometimes whole mornings would repeat. Once I lost a day. Time seemed to be breaking down entirely. Neil Gaiman