Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book (2008)

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Name the different kinds of people,' said Miss Lupescu. 'Now.' Bod thought for a moment. 'The living,' he said. 'Er. The dead.' He stopped. Then, '... Cats?' he offered, uncertainly.

Neil Gaiman
He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.

Neil Gaiman
Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?

Neil Gaiman
Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.

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
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
At the best of times his face was unreadable. Now his face was a book written in a language long forgotten, in an alphabet unimagined. Silas wrapped the shadows around him like a blanket, and stared after the way the boy had gone, and did not move to follow.

Neil Gaiman
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. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too.

Neil Gaiman
You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.

Neil Gaiman
If I come back, it will be a place, but it won't be a home any longer.

Neil Gaiman
I'm a stranger," pointed out Bod. "You're not," she said, definitely. "You're a little boy." And then she said, "And you're my friend. So you can't be a stranger.

Neil Gaiman
Repeat after me, there are the living and the dead, there are day-folk and night-folk, there are ghouls and mist-walkers, there are high hunters and the Hounds of God. Also, there are solitary types." "What are you?" asked Bod. "I," she said sternly, "am Miss Lupescu." "And what is Silas?" She hesitated. Then she said, "He is a solitary type.

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I'll find you. Don't worry. Just be on your own and I'll find you.

Neil Gaiman
And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.

Neil Gaiman
Bod was thrilled. He imagined a future in which he could read everything, in which all stories could be opened and discovered.

Neil Gaiman
You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imaginary.

Neil Gaiman
Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra.

Neil Gaiman
The tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste out sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sout with the same tongue.

Neil Gaiman
Because there are mysteries. Because there are things that people are forbidden to speak about. Because there are things they do not remember.

Neil Gaiman
It's just harder out there in the world of the living, and we cannot protect you out there as easily. I wanted to keep you perfectly safe...But there is only one perfectly safe place for your kind, and you will not reach it until all your adventures are over and none of them matter any longer.

Neil Gaiman
Bod said, "I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want," he said, and then he paused, and thought. "I want everything."

Neil Gaiman
Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.

Neil Gaiman
People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.

Neil Gaiman
Look. I brought you here to give you a choice-" "You didn't bring us here," said Nick. "You're here," said Bod. "I wanted you here. I came here. You followed me. Same thing.

Neil Gaiman
Bod quite liked crows. He thought they were funny and he liked the way they helped to keep the graveyard tidy.

Neil Gaiman
If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.

Neil Gaiman
There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.

Neil Gaiman
Bod walked back into the graveyard and up the hill, until he reached the Frobisher mausoleum. He did not enter it. He climbed up the side of the building, using the thick ivy root as a foothold, and he pulled himself up onto the stone roof, where he sat and thought looking out at the world of moving things beyond the graveyard, and he remembered the way Scarlett had held him and how safe he felt, if only for a moment, and how fine it would be to walk safely in the lands beyond the graveyard, and how good it was to be master of his own small world.

Neil Gaiman
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

Neil Gaiman
You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Neil Gaiman