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Neil Gaiman

158 quotes

“We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we've shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd never heard anything like it before. It was like banshee music. This absolutely otherworldly voice, singing about a book, and as a bookish kid, I was always fascinated by anything, any music that seems to be about or inspired by books.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Kate Bush makes a record, and you don't hear from her. And you play the stuff she has made, and one day you are surprised, and she brings out something else, and she's been quietly working away on it, for however long she wanted to work on it, and I love that. I love the willingness to be quiet, until its time to speak — which is something that she does over and over.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the uninitiated, Good Omens is a story about how the world is going to end next Saturday. Just after tea. And how the only things standing between us and the inevitable Armageddon are a demon, Crowley, and an angel (and rare book dealer), Aziraphale, who are, rather uncomfortably, working together, not to mention a witch, a very small witchfinder army, the Antichrist (who is 11, and very nice) and his dog.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Terry Pratchett and I met in February 1985, in a Chinese restaurant. I was a young journalist. He was a former journalist and Electricity Board PR, and a writer who had just published his second Discworld novel. I was the first journalist who had ever interviewed him. I remember we made each other laugh a lot. We laughed at the same things. We became friends. It was easy.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We wrote the first draft in about nine weeks. Nine weeks of gloriously long phone calls, in which we would read each other what we'd written, and try to make the other one laugh. We'd plot, delightedly, and then hurry off the phone, determined to get to the next good bit before the other one could. We'd rewrite each other, footnote each other's pages, sometimes even footnote each other's footnotes.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Have a nice doomsday.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are mature, we decide what we read or do not read.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We build the stories in our heads. We take words, and we give them power, and we look out through other eyes, and we see, and experience, what others see. I wonder, Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe places?”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I grew up loving and respecting short stories. They seemed to me to be the purest and most perfect things people could make: not a word wasted, in the best of them.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was demonstrating to the world the writing was a craft, that it was not an act of magic.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was kind, and gentle, with that midwestern niceness that’s a positive thing rather than an absence of character.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writers live in houses other people built.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn’t looking.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not scared of bad people, of wicked evildoers, of monsters and creatures of the night. The people who scare me are the ones who are certain of their own rightness. The ones who know how to behave, and what their neighbors need to do to be on the side of the good.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She said she would tell our fortunes from the lines in our palms, if we had coins to cross her palm. I gave the old biddy a clipped lowland groat, and she looked at the palm of my right hand. She said, “I see death in your past and death in your future.” “Death waits in all our futures,” I said.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought about it. “Sometimes I think that truth is a place. In my mind, it is like a city; there can be a hundred roads, a thousands paths, that will all take you, eventually, to the same place. It does not matter where you come from. If you walk toward the truth, you will reach it, whatever path you take.” Calum MacInnes looked down at me and said nothing. Then, “You are wrong. The truth is a cave in the black mountains. There is one way there, and one only, and that way is treacherous and hard, and if you choose the wrong path you will die alone, on the mountainside.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my family “adventure” tends to be used to mean “any minor disaster we survived” or even “any break from routine.” Except by my mother, who still uses it to mean “what she did that morning.” Going to the wrong part of a supermarket car park and, while looking for her car, getting into a conversation with someone whose sister, it turns out, she knew in the 1970s would qualify, for my mother, as a full-blown adventure.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In May I received an anonymous Mother’s Day card. This puzzled me. I would have noticed if I had ever had children, surely?”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Jerusalem, thought Morrison, was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come to Jerusalem and go mad,” said Morrison. “Not much of an advertising slogan.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“See?” said the boy. There was that precocious amusement again; but all kids can be insufferable sometimes, when they think they know something you don’t. It’s probably good for them.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative, or so we presume, for nobody returns to dispute it. Such is my motto.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still, no use crying over unspilt milk, and you can’t mend an omelette without unbreaking a few eggs.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Were you always like this?” “Like what?” “A madman. With a time machine.” “Oh, no. It took ages until I got the time machine.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Learning how to be strong, to feel her own emotions and not another’s, had been hard; but once you learned the trick of it, you did not forget.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s no Hell to spite the sinners. There’s no Heaven for the blessed. God is not what you imagine.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But Shadow kept things on the inside. It was one of the things he liked about the British: even when they wanted to know what was happening on the inside, they did not ask. The world on the inside remained the world on the inside.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Local gossip travels faster than light.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’re very good. Are you a professional artist?” “I dabble,” she said. Shadow had spent enough time talking to the English to know that this meant either that she dabbled, or that her work was regularly hung in the National Gallery or the Tate Modern.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are those who think it’s devil worship,” said Oliver. “And I think they are wrong. But then, one man’s god is another’s devil. Eh?”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am grim of mind and wrathful of spirit and I have no desire to be nice to anyone.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the gods cannot change destiny.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the battlefield called Vigrid, the gods will fall in battle with the frost giants, and the frost giants will fall in battle with the gods.The undead troops from Hel will litter the ground in their final deaths, and the noble Einherjar will lie beside them on the frozen ground, all of the them dead for the last time, beneath the lifeless misty sky, never to rise again, never to wake and fight.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. You have failed.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing will remain of the armies of the living and of the dead, of the dreams of the gods and the bravery of their warriors, nothing but ash. Soon after, the swollen ocean will swallow the ashes as it washes across all the land, and everything living will be forgotten under the sunless sky. That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so 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' or 'how very perceptive' 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 body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The character "Rose Walker" in The Sandman #65, The Doll's House (1990)
“Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, "So this is how it feels," and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: William Shakespeare, portrayed as looking back over his career as he finishes writing The Tempest as one of two plays commissioned by Morpheus (aka Dream, aka The Sandman). "The Tempest," issue #75 of The Sandman (1996)…
“Actually, my favorite treatment of bad reviews is James Branch Cabell who, in the back of the 18 volume beautiful, huge collection of all of his works the Biography of Manuel, did a final section detailing what the reviewers said for each of his books. The book reviews go like this. The first 5 or 6 books, the reviews he quotes say something like: "Beautiful illustrations by the artist; such a pity about the words." Then you get to the reviews of Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice and the reviews say: "This a terrible book. It has no redeeming features; it's simply awful; a major misstep." And then every single review for every book he wrote after Jurgen begins, "Well, this isn't Jurgen. Apparently the author has lost the facility with which he wrote that delightful book." So he did put this wonderful parade of the ridiculous things that the reviewers said over time. As I mentioned in the blog, the only final thing that you can say about the reviewers, is this. The same day that the Publisher's Weekly review came in which said, "The road trip plot was completely aimless, but I liked the stuff in Lakeside," the Summer Book Forum book review came in which said, "The roadside stuff is amazing — the novel only loses focus when you get to the stuff in Lakeside." ... If you actually pay any credence to it, it does make you crazy. So you just kind of smile and think, "Maybe someday I'll review all the reviewers someday." But you probably won't.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview With Neil Gaiman" by Claire E. White, at Writers Write (2001)
“Last year, initially The Scotsman newspaper — being Scottish and J. K. Rowling being Scottish — and because of the English tendency to try and tear down their idols, they kept trying to build stories which said J. K. Rowling ripped off Neil Gaiman. They kept getting in touch with me and I kept declining to play because I thought it was silly. And then The Daily Mirror in England ran an article about that mad woman who was trying to sue J. K. Rowling over having stolen muggles from her. And they finished off with a line saying [something like]: And Neil Gaiman has accused her of stealing. Luckily I found this online and I found it the night it came out by pure coincidence and the reporter's e-mail address was at the bottom of the thing so I fired off an e-mail saying: "This is not true, I never said this. You are making this up." I got an apologetic e-mail back, but by the time I'd gotten the apologetic e-mail back it was already in The Daily Mail the following morning and it was very obvious that The Daily Mail‘s research [had] consisted of reading The Daily Mirror. And you're going: journalists are so lazy.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On stories which implied that Harry Potter was merely a revised Timothy Hunter of Gaiman's The Books of Magic, in January magazine interview (2002)
“Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together. I knew a lot of writers in London and many of them were award-winning writers and many of them were award-winning, respectable writers. And the trouble with being an award-winning, respectable writer is that you probably are not making a living. If you write one well-reviewed, well-respected, not bad selling, but not a bestseller list book every three years, which you sell for a whopping 30,000 pounds, that's still going to average out to 10,000 pounds a year and you will make more managing a McDonald's. With overtime you'd probably make more working in a McDonald's. So there were incredibly well-respected, award-winning senior writers who, to make ends meet, were writing film novelizations and TV novelizations under pen names that they were desperately embarrassed about and didn't want anybody to know about.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: January magazine interview (2002)
“I think that unless a reviewer gets their facts completely wrong, the author should shut up (and even then, the author should probably let it go — although I'm a big fan of a letter that James Branch Cabell wrote to the New York Times pointing out that their review of Figures of Earth was bollocks. ... For most authors, not being James Branch Cabell, it's probably wisest after reading a particularly stupid or vicious or bad review to mentally compose your letter to the editor, fill it with your sharpest and most cutting and brilliant bon mots, and then, having made it up, to successfully resist the urge to put it to paper, and to return cheerfully to work.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: De Gustibus, and how to reply to bad reviews" (22 September 2004)
“Chesterton was important — as important to me in his way as C. S. Lewis had been. You see, while I loved Tolkien and while I wished to have written his book, I had no desire at all to write like him. Tolkien's words and sentences seemed like natural things, like rock formations or waterfalls, and wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm. Chesterton was the complete opposite. I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004)
“Chesterton and Tolkien and Lewis were, as I've said, not the only writers I read between the ages of six and thirteen, but they were the authors I read over and over again; each of them played a part in building me. Without them, I cannot imagine that I would have become a writer, and certainly not a writer of fantastic fiction. I would not have understood that the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming, nor that the majesty and the magic of belief and dreams could be a vital part of life and of writing. And without those three writers, I would not be here today. And nor, of course, would any of you. I thank you.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mythcon 35 Guest of Honor Speech", in Mythprint (October 2004)
“Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn't qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things. On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, "I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent." And I said, "Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something." And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks on "Imposter syndrome" on Tumblr (12 May 2017)
“Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end ... that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.”
Neil Gaiman (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source