Neil Gaiman - American Gods (2001)

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He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.

Neil Gaiman
There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise.

Neil Gaiman
Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however... People stay the same.

Neil Gaiman
Something feels weird," he told Laura. That wasn't the first thing he said to her. The first thing was "I love you," because it's a good thing to say if you can mean it, and Shadow did.

Neil Gaiman
He had kissed her good night that night, and she had tasted like strawberry daiquiris, and he had never wanted to kiss anyone else again.

Neil Gaiman
I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.

Neil Gaiman
The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.' 'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow. 'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.

Neil Gaiman
None of this is truly happening," he said to Shadow. He sounded miserable. "It's all in your head. Best not to think of it.

Neil Gaiman
You made peace, said the buffalo man. You took our words and made them your own. They never understood that they were here—and the people who worshiped them were here—because it suits us that they are here. But we can change our minds. And perhaps we will.

Neil Gaiman
There was nowhere they could have gone and they went there anyway.

Neil Gaiman
It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.

Neil Gaiman
It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise, in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real.

Neil Gaiman
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
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
Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.

Neil Gaiman
The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

Neil Gaiman
Can you believe it? Fifty miles from McDonald's. I didn't think there was anywhere in the world that was fifty miles from McDonald's.

Neil Gaiman
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

Neil Gaiman
What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul.

Neil Gaiman
There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.

Neil Gaiman
He goes his way. We travel a spiral. The quickest way is sometimes the longest.

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

Neil Gaiman
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
They all do the same things. They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive.

Neil Gaiman
In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world there's a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail is-well, it's magic, isn't it? Perhaps it's a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That's how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate on that.

Neil Gaiman
I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.

Neil Gaiman
It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.

Neil Gaiman
It's not the fish you catch, it's the peace of mind you take home at the end of the day.

Neil Gaiman
Lives are snowflakes -- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

Neil Gaiman