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Neil Gaiman Quotes

Total quotes: 71
“He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Tagged: Home, Peace
“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, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Tagged: Heartbreak, Love
“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.Make good art.I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best. Make good art.”
— Neil Gaiman, Commencement Address at The University of the Arts Philadelphia, 2012
Tagged: Graduation, Commencement, Speech
“The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.”
— Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Tagged: Future, Time
“I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Tagged: Men, boys, Communication
“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, The Sandman
Tagged: Love, Dating
“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Tagged: Hard Work, Dreams
“Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?”
— Neil Gaiman, Stardust
Tagged: humanity, Universe
“When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.”
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
Tagged: Angels, Evil
“That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel
Tagged: Memories, Death, Life
“Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they're scared for the fear to become real.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Tagged: Fear, emotions
“You don’t need princes to save you. I don’t have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and the Spindle
Tagged: princess, Dating, Love
“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, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Tagged: Tragedy, War, humanity
“I really don’t know what ‘I love you’ means. I think it means ‘don’t leave me here alone’.”
— Neil Gaiman, Dark Sonnet
Tagged: Love, Trust, Abandonment, Poetry
“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.”
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
Tagged: crazy, Insanity, Life
“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. And that is what makes them dangerous.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Tagged: War, Evil, Society
“Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative, or so we presume, for nobody returns to dispute it.”
— Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Tagged: Life, Death, enjoy life
“If you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.”
— Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art
Tagged: Knowledge, Education, Success
“It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt. If you do not climb, you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
Tagged: Failure, Trying, risks
“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, The Sandman
Tagged: Death, Questions, Time
“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, Fragile Things
Tagged: Sex, Love, Dating
“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, Neil Gaiman/Chris Riddell 3-Book Box Set: Coraline; The Graveyard Book; Fortunately, the Milk
Tagged: fairy tales, strength
“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, Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones (New Edition) (Sandman (Graphic Novels))
Tagged: True Love, Love, romance, Heartbreak, heart
“I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel
Tagged: first lines of books
“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
Tagged: Perfect Words
“There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.”
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Tagged: fragile, Heartbreak, Dreams, Love
“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.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Tagged: moving, Home, Happiness
“ If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.”
— Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Tagged: Books, Reading, Knowledge
“It’s part of growing up, I suppose… You always have to leave something behind you.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
Tagged: Growing Up, Moving On
“I believe that it is difficult to kill an idea because ideas are invisible and contagious, and they move fast.”
— Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Tagged: Ideas, Thinking
“I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
Tagged: Violence, Anger, War
“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, Make Good Art
Tagged: Mistakes, Failure
“There are some as are what they are. And there are some as aren't what they seem to be. And there are some as only seem to be what they seem to be.”
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Tagged: Illusions, Life
“We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
Tagged: Be yourself, actions
“Some things are too big to be seen; some emotions are too huge to be felt.”
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
Tagged: emotions, believing
“The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was no enjoying himself.”
— Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere: Author's Preferred Text
Tagged: first lines of books
“Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.”
— Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Tagged: Family, Friends, Mourning
“Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.”
— Neil Gaiman,
Tagged: Endings, Beginnings, Starting Over
“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, American Gods
Tagged: Life, enjoy life
“'Not only are there no happy endings,' she told him, 'there aren't even any endings.'”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
Tagged: Endings, Death, Stories
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