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8e41a34
|
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
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|
fairy-tales
books
inspirational
paraphrasing-g-k-chesterton
dragons
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Neil Gaiman |
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2f31ab8
|
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.
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|
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Neil Gaiman |
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6bdd2e8
|
I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything..
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|
poverty
wealth
reality
love
knowing
fame
teach
facts
school
|
Neil Gaiman |
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7c86b32
|
Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
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e934914
|
I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled..
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|
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Neil Gaiman |
|
4d90ff6
|
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. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that 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..
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|
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Neil Gaiman |
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441e161
|
Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody -- no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.
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|
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Neil Gaiman |
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1e59a3e
|
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 foolin' a soul.
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|
towns
bookstore
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
671d4a6
|
I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
76a1015
|
There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.
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Neil Gaiman |
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6ac8fad
|
She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.
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|
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Neil Gaiman |
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ed3733a
|
She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood
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|
poetry
inspirational
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
8771eaa
|
She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood. She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.
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|
poetry
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
4da98d4
|
When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
7eeb513
|
D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. your library). Don't apologise to
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|
libraries
library
reading
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
1f54625
|
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
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6092bef
|
Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
7c40127
|
Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
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|
mind
youth
life
stories
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
f0ec91a
|
You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
78d2d6c
|
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.
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|
sex
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
382ef78
|
When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. "It's all right" we whisper, "I'm here, I love you." and we lie: "I'll never leave you." For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad."
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
3553e56
|
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?
|
|
want
fun
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
c339377
|
Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway
|
|
inspirational
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
ed5deb9
|
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 |
|
55e210f
|
What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'Cats don't have names,' it said. 'No?' said Coraline. 'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
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|
self-knowledge
names
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
777f416
|
Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, brave.
|
|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
ae8bfa0
|
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.
|
|
humor
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
11318c9
|
Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.
|
|
pain
life
pleasure
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
c03cdef
|
Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are." The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. "Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow. "Fuck you," said the raven."
|
|
poe
humor
nevermore
parody
raven
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
3d6228d
|
There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won't remember and that she can't even let herself think about because that's when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it's always raining a slow and endless drizzle. You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice..
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|
rain
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
b0caca8
|
I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't..
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|
friends
love
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
a1eff44
|
I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.
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|
happiness
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
375ed2e
|
Books were safer than other people anyway.
|
|
books
book-quotes
bookworms
love-for-books
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
f36d978
|
Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody.
|
|
looks
people
true-nature
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
c2b035c
|
All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
4dc7cf4
|
A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.
|
|
dreams
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
1893581
|
Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
040f240
|
Every hour wounds. The last one kills.
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|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
8c52b17
|
You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.
|
|
living
heart
life
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
dccfa44
|
An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.
|
|
|
Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett |
|
1e52592
|
I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?
|
|
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
18cd4c7
|
She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.
|
|
|
Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett |
|
aec3d72
|
Sleep my little baby-oh Sleep until you waken When you wake you'll see the world If I'm not mistaken... Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure... Face your life Its pain, Its pleasure, Leave no path untaken.
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|
dance
sleep
pain
individuality
choice
treasure
identity
life
love
name
pleasure
|
Neil Gaiman |
|
f410bc2
|
If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.
|
|
inspirational
|
Neil Gaiman |