Neil Gaiman Quotes

445 Sourced Quotes

Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.

Neil Gaiman
Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.

Neil Gaiman
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?' 26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.' 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

Neil Gaiman
Doing fine, thank you, I would say, never knowing how to talk about what I do. If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my heart. Some of them. Not all.

Neil Gaiman
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
But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

Neil Gaiman
It's an artist's job to show people the world they live in. We hold up mirrors.

Neil Gaiman
The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men — one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf — and it'll look up expectantly.

Neil Gaiman
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say "what kind of tea?"

Neil Gaiman
It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will take a graveyard.

Neil Gaiman
"Because," she said, "when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave."

Neil Gaiman
I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.

Neil Gaiman
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
It won't hurt, said her other father. Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn't hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.

Neil Gaiman
"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

Neil Gaiman
Someone killed my Mother and my Father and my Sister?" "Yes, someone did." "A Man?" "A Man." "Which means," said Bod, "you're asking the wrong question." Silas raised an eyebrow. "How so?" "Well," said Bod. "If I go outside in the world, the question isn't who will keep me safe from him?" "No?" "No. It's who will keep him safe from me?

Neil Gaiman
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
The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.

Neil Gaiman
If they think you're a hero, they're wrong. After you die, you don't get to be Beowulf or Perseus or Rama any more. Whole different set of rules. Chess, not checkers. Go, not chess. You understand?

Neil Gaiman
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
You get on with your own life. Lettie gave it to you. You just have to grow up and try and be worth it.

Neil Gaiman
There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

Neil Gaiman
"What's your name," Coraline asked the cat. "Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?"

Neil Gaiman
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. And that is what makes them dangerous.

Neil Gaiman
There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world

Neil Gaiman
Why do I have this imagination? It's the only one I've got!

Neil Gaiman
Nothing's changed. You'll go home. You'll be bored. You'll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You're too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don't even get your name right.

Neil Gaiman
The ties of blood," said Spider, "are stronger than water." Water's not strong," objected Fat Charlie.

Neil Gaiman
Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.

Neil Gaiman
So," he asked. "How's death?" "Hard," she said. "It just keeps going.

Neil Gaiman