Quotes From "The Graveyard Book" By Neil Gaiman

1
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
Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And...
2
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
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path...
3
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken. Neil Gaiman
4
If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained. Neil Gaiman
5
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
6
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
7
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
If you want to call it that. But it is...
8
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
9
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
Bod shrugged.
10
Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead. Neil Gaiman
11
We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write. Neil Gaiman
Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.
12
Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. Neil Gaiman
And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean...
13
And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean squashed tomatoes? I don't think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that's just how they talk then. Neil Gaiman
You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always...
14
You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it. Neil Gaiman
15
The boy was a model pupil, forgettable and easily forgotten, and he sent much of his spare time in the back of the English class where there were shelves of old paperbacks, and in the school library, a large room filled with books and old armchairs, where he read stories as enthusiastically as some children ate. Neil Gaiman
16
Liza Hempstock, who had been Bod's friend for the last six years, was different in another way; she was less likely to be there for him when Bod went down to the nettle patch to see her, and on the rare occasions when she was, she would be short-tempered, argumentative and often downright rude. Bod talked to Mr Owens about this, and after a few moments' reflection, his father said, "It's just women, I reckon. She liked you as a boy, probably isn't sure who you are now you're a young man. I used to play with one little girl down by the duck pond every day until she turned about your age, and then she threw an apple at my head and did not say another word to me until I was seventeen." Mrs Owens stiffened. "It was a pear I threw, " she said, tartly, "and I was talking to you again soon enough, for we danced a measure at your cousin Ned's wedding, and that was but two days after your sixteenth birthday." Mr Owens said, "Of course you are right, my dear." He winked at Bod, to tell him that it was none of it serious. And then mouthed "Seventeen" to show that, really, it was. Neil Gaiman
17
You aren't allowed out of the graveyard -it's aren't, by the way, not amn't, not these days-because it's only in the graveyard that we can keep you safe. This is where you live and this is where those who love you can be found. Outside would not be safe for you. Not yet. Neil Gaiman
18
You’re as plain as the nose on your face, ” said Mr. Pennyworth. “And your nose is remarkably obvious. As is the rest of your face, young man. As are you. For the sake of all that is holy, empty your mind. Now. You are an empty alleyway. You are a vacant doorway. You are nothing. Eyes will not see you. Minds will not hold you. Where you are is nothing and nobody. Neil Gaiman
19
But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open. Neil Gaiman
20
You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Neil Gaiman
21
There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion. Neil Gaiman
22
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. Neil Gaiman
23
Leave no path untaken. Neil Gaiman
24
There are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence."" They kill themselves, you mean?" said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid." Indeed."" Does it work? Are they happier dead?"" Sometimes. Mostly, no. It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean. Neil Gaiman
25
Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust? Neil Gaiman
26
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
27
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
28
You are almost never cool to your children. Neil Gaiman
29
Silas consumed only one food, and it was not bananas. Neil Gaiman
30
We should do our best to satisfy your interests in stories and books and the world. There are libraries. Neil Gaiman
31
A grayeyard is not a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy.. Neil Gaiman
32
Traveling through the Dragon's Den, it has just been explained that Haroun, the Ifrit, has been caught in a mirror trap. Here is the passage that follows:" So, " said Silas. "Now there are only three of us."" And a pig, " said Kandar [the mummy]" Why?" Asked Miss Lupescu, with a wolf-tongue, through wolf teeth. "Why the Pig?""It's lucky, " said Kandar.Miss Lupescu growled, unconvinced." Did Haroun have a pig?" asked Kandar, simply. . Neil Gaiman
33
You're weird, ' she said. 'You don't have any friends.'' I didn't come here for friends, ' said Bod truthfully. "i came here to learn.' Mo's nose twitched. "Do you know how weird that is?' she asked. "Nobody comes to school to learn. I mean, you come because you have to. Neil Gaiman
34
How old are you?"" About fifteen, I think. Though I still feel the same as I always did, " Bod said, but Mother Slaughter interrupted, "And I still feels like I done when I was a tiny slip of a thing, making daisy chains in the old pasture. You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it. Neil Gaiman
35
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. Neil Gaiman
36
If he didn’t care about you, you couldn’t upset him, ” Liza tells Bod. Neil Gaiman
37
...Come home, Bod.' ‘I think .. . I said things to Silas. He’ll be angry.’ ‘If he didn’t care about you, you couldn’t upset him, ’ was all she said. Neil Gaiman