Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Neil Gaiman

158 quotes

“So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (1990) -->
“Life — and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison — is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Death Talks About Life (January 1993)
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Barbie, in The Sandman #37, A Game of You, "I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying" (1993)
“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dream, in The Sandman #60 The Kindly Ones 4 (1996)
“Look, I'm sorry it's over too. But good things have to end, stories have to end. It's what gives them meaning.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Author's note at the end of Sandman #75 (March 1996)
“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Where do you get your ideas?" (1997)
“I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor [Karen Berger]. She told me, "There's no masturbation in the DC Universe." To which my reaction was, "Well that explains a lot about the DC Universe.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sandman Companion (1999)
“You can tell when a Hollywood historical film was made by looking at the eye makeup of their leading ladies, and you can tell the date of an old science fiction novel by every word on the page. Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Of Time, and Gully Foyle", Foreword to a 1999 edition of The Stars My Destination (1956)
“Do not be jealous of your sister. 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 (born 1960) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Instructions", first published in A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales (2000) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
“Fuck! I got a Hugo!”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Final line of acceptance speech for Hugo award for American Gods (September 2002)
“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: somewhat less sinister ducks" Blog entry (23 April 2004)
“I was pleased to get a copy of Roger Zelazny's novel Lord of Light the other day. It's one of my favourite books (I think the first thing author Steve Brust ever said to me was "Let's have an argument. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is the best book anyone's ever written." "Ah," I said, "If you make it best SF book of the 1960s, I'll go along with it." "Oh. Fair enough." It was the first of a long line of failed arguments.) It's got a blurb from me on it, which I hope sells many copies.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman's Journal (29 May 2004)
“Cabell's far and away my favourite forgotten American writer — he wrote about 25 books, most of them very different from each other. The only ones to have remained more or less in print over the last forty years are the fantasies Figures of Earth, Jurgen and The Silver Stallion.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Novelisting" at Neil Gaiman's Journal (23 October 2004)
“The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Gunpowder treason and plot" Blog entry (5 Nov 2004)
“What most people don't know about love, sex, and relations with other human beings would fill a book. Strangers in Paradise is that book. I have long suspected that what people did in private was much funnier than it ever was erotic. Terry Moore obviously thinks so too. Strangers in Paradise is a delightful new comic, and Terry Moore is a fun writer and a fine cartoonist.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Blurb on The Complete Strangers In Paradise (2004), Vol. 1
“I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing... I've always loved the gutter.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response to a question about the increasing critical acceptance of fantasy writing, in a Radio interview, Studio 360 show 640, originally broadcast (1 October 2005)
“American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish I had an origin story for you. When I was four, I was bitten by a radioactive myth.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how his interest in mythology started, in an interview with Bookslut (October 2006)
“Travers's Mary Poppins was a natural phenomena, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. ... philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing ...”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In his Foreword to Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur (2007) by Giorgia Grilli, p. xiii
“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman's Journal (15 October 2007)
“Why do I have this imagination? It's the only one I've got!”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: San Diego Comicon (2007)
“Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman's Journal (01 December 2008)
“I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream, Tweet ID # 1178514410, (5 February 2009)
“Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say "what kind of tea?”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a widely reported post from his Twitter account (25 February 2009)
“Off to bed. If squirrels take over in the night, I, for one, welcome our new bushy-tailed scampering overlords, & I know where the nuts are.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream,Tweet ID # 2189298072 (16 June 2009)
“I don't know what it's like to be God — obviously ...until that very first moment when you get to sit down and type the words in your script: INTERIOR. TARDIS. ... Suddenly I got a very good idea of what it must feel like. I went: "I'm writing it now this scene in the Tardis. I'm writing it!" And that was amazing, it was wonderful.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On writing the script for the episode of Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Wife" (originally titled "House of Nothing"), as quoted in "Neil Gaiman reveals power of writing Doctor Who" by Tim Masters at BBC News (24 May 2010)
“Doctor Who has never pretended to be hard science fiction ... At best Doctor Who is a fairytale, with fairytale logic about this wonderful man in this big blue box who at the beginning of every story lands somewhere where there is a problem.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Neil Gaiman reveals power of writing Doctor Who" by Tim Masters at BBC News (24 May 2010)
“Her words are always with us. Some of them are written on my soul. I miss her as a glorious funny prickly person, & I miss her as the deepest and smartest of the writers, too.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in about Ursula Le Guin (2018)
“On a day like today it’s worth saying, I believe survivors. Men must not close our eyes and minds to what happens to women in this world. We must fight, alongside them, for them to be believed, at the ballot box & with art & by listening, and change this world for the better.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 28 September 2018 tweet
“As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 14 January 2025 post Breaking the Silence responding to sexual allegations
“In Hollywood the man who cleans your pool is an actor. The man who sells you your copy of Variety is an actor. I don't think there's a real person left in the place.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is always ending, for someone.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't believe in Apocalypses. I believe in Apocatastases. I think it may be the title for The Film. It's a bitch to pronounce, and no-one knows what it means, but otherwise it's a great title.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apocatastasis. What it means: 1) Restoration, re-establishment, renovation 2) Return to a previous condition 3) (Astronomy) Return to the same apparent position, completion of a period of revolution. Think about it.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’ve a good heart,” she told him. “Sometimes that’s enough to see you safe wherever you go.” Then she shook her head. “But mostly, it’s not.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unimpressed was his default state.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always felt,” he said, “that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the final sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter 10; Gaiman here references the famous statement of Isaac Asimov from "Foundation", Astounding Science-Fiction (May 1942)
“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the kind of thing you wonder about when you make up things for a living.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was also, they added, Very Now, which was important in a town in which an hour ago was Ancient History.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the better protected files corrupt, and the best protected corrupt absolutely.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And our latest project was Death. It's one of the hard ones—one of the big ones, too, I suspect. Possibly it may even become the attribute that's going to define the Creation for the Created: If not for Death, they'd be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning—a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross...”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘He should not have been destroyed like that. That was wrong.’ “‘It was His will.’ “Lucifer stood. ‘Then perhaps His will is unjust. Perhaps the voices in the Darkness speak truly, after all. How can this be right?’ “‘It is right. It is His will. I merely performed my function.’ “He wiped away the tears with the back of his hand. ‘No,’ he said flatly.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The little folk dare anything", said his friend. "And they talk a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was very young, somebody — maybe it was a squirrel, they talk so much, or a magpie, or maybe a fishie — told me that Pan owned all this forest. Well, not owned owned. Not like he would sell the forest to someone else, or put a wall all around it ... 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 (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source