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2cc4200 Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't. fear neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
1275fb0 Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure. Face your life, It's pain, It's pleasure, Leave no path untaken. pain personality treasure life love dancing neil-gaiman the-graveyard-book name pleasure Neil Gaiman
195a1f4 As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end. reality harsh-truth neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
d7c7d5d This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them. And if a story set in an infinite number of possible worlds is true in one of them, then it must be true in all of them. So maybe, it's not as fictional as we think. infinite-worlds worlds neil-gaiman infinite Neil Gaiman
8a4ebc2 "Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers." reading fiction fantasy neil-gaiman escapism Neil Gaiman
7023bbf "If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won't. You'll already have made that art, and when they're talking about the last thing you did, you should already be making the next thing. inspiration neil-gaiman reviews encouragement Neil Gaiman
e963620 Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting. peas revolting neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
4eb59b6 Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that. good terry-pratchett good-omens neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
ac533a5 So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. inspirational neil-gaiman mistakes Neil Gaiman
e4b6863 M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises... words magic writing neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
c3390a7 Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head? Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming. Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility. responsibility dream the-dreaming the-endless the-kindly-ones the-sandman neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
25b5395 "In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful... And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago. He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?" "Not really." "Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?" "If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible." author neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
52f6c5b The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself--his clothes, his manner, his carriage--as a grand joke. There was a dull pain in his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Vandemar's face. It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more. And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it. lady-door marquis-de-carabas neverwhere neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
c6159d4 Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour. That would do it every time. terry-pratchett humor good-omens neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
55c31a3 Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. delirium sandman neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
25c69c8 But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat. humour funny terry-prachett good-omens neil-gaiman Terry Prachett talking about Neil Gaiman
b9fe802 I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows. mr-wednesday neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
467959f It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale - they are well-equipped to deal with these fantasy m-is-for-magic fairytale neil-gaiman children Neil Gaiman
b7f299f It was as if some people believed there was a divide between the books that you were permitted to enjoy and the books that were good for you, and I was expected to choose sides. We were all expected to choose sides. And I didn't believe it, and I still don't. I was, and still am, on the side of books you love. gaiman newbery-medal-acceptance-speech neil-gaiman the-graveyard-book Neil Gaiman
58899fa Sometimes it was like Neil was from an alien planet, where people never asked for or shared anything emotional without deeply apologizing first. He assured me that he was simply British. And that we Americans, with all of our loud oversharing and need for random hugs and free admissions to people we've just met of deep, traumatic childhood wounds looks just as alien to them. oversharing hugs british neil-gaiman random Amanda Palmer
51bb6dd Newton Pulsifer had never...as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He'd have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour's chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He'd sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn't come. And then he'd tried to become an official Atheist and hadn't got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. .... Then he'd tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he'd innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He'd found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn't really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist. To Newt's straightforward mind this was intolerable. terry-pratchett religion neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
0e6e3f9 None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you -- even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. religion neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
83c640b Oh, monsters are scared', said Lettie. 'And as for grown-ups...' She stopped talking, rubbed her freckled nose with a finger. Then, 'I'm going to tell you something important. 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. The truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.' ... We sat there, side by side, on the old wooden bench, not saying anything. I thought about adults. I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long books. The kind with no pictures or conversations. inspirational-quotes neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
264de8d And, selfish and scared, I wonder how much more he has to give. michael-zulli neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
2c8c24c For there was nothing in his eyes but the black night and the cold stars. stars morpheus sandman neil-gaiman star cold night eyes Susanna Clarke
3addbd4 Depriving our communities of libraries will deprive our society of its ability to survive. - Neil Gaiman neil-gaiman Kyle Cassidy
4410ac2 Like all sentient beings, Fat Charlie had a weirdness quotient. For some days the needle had been over in the red, occasionally banging jerkily against the pin. Now the meter broke. fat-charlie meter quotient neil-gaiman weirdness Neil Gaiman
b091499 The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that at any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened The Fraud Police. In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don't know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. writing funny inspiration fraud-police make-good-art creative-writing neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
a28f11b And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be. good neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
f8120df I know a charm that can cure pain and sickness, and lift the grief from the heart of the grieving. I know a charm that will heal with a touch. I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and locks. A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it. A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back to their own doors again. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their hearths and their homes. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child's head, that child will not fall in battle. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the gods. Every damned one of them. A fifteenth: I had a dream of power, of glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe in my dreams. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one know but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be. fantasy neil-gaiman gods Neil Gaiman
e3b4c57 "But," expostulated Josiah Worthington. "But. A human child. A living child. I mean. I mean, I mean. This is a graveyard, not a nursery, blast it." josiah-worthington graveyard neil-gaiman ghost Neil Gaiman
613cef7 "He said, "Were he only like his sister--what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of the silver chain about her neck. Her smile is full of comfort and her eyes are kind and happy! How I long to see her!" "Who, sir?" asked Paramore, puzzled. "Why, his sister, John. His sister." death sandman sister neil-gaiman smile lady eyes Susanna Clarke
0eb798d "I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. blog new-year neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
f29dff2 You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you can not have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color. neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
028040b "One word after another. writing neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
8c97c84 Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you'll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get. Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be - an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words - was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal. And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time. make-good-art neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
c0f936b Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn't looking. life neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
6c76269 She tasted the day he lost his first job. She tasted the morning he had awakened, still drunk, in his car, in the middle of a cornfield, and, terrified, had sworn off the bottle for ever. She knee his real name. She remembered the name that had once been tattooed on his arm and knew why it could be there no longer. She tasted the color of his eyes from the inside, and shivered at the nightmare he had in which he was forced to carry spiny fish in his mouth, and from which he woke, choking, night after night. She savored the hungers in food and fiction, and discovered a dark sky when he was a small boy and he had stared up at the stars and wondered at their vastness and immensity, that even he had forgotten. smoke-and-mirrors tastings neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
9ab54d1 forgetfulness can sometimes bring freedom of a sort neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
40bf44d It occurred to me then that the man might not be mad; I found this far more disquieting than the alternative. smoke-and-mirrors murder-mysteries neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
85cdbf4 People named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan. tinkerbell smoke-and-mirrors neil-gaiman susan Neil Gaiman
7dd561d Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat. humor neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
d22a8d3 There. Consider yourself warned. There are so many little triggers out there, being squeezed in the darkness even as I write this. This book is correctly labeled. Now all we have to worry about is all the other books, and, of course, life, which is huge and complicated and will not warn you before it hurt's you. Thank you for coming. Enjoy the things that never happened. Secure your own mask again after you read these stories, but do not forget to help others. trigger-warning neil-gaiman quotes Neil Gaiman
08d6e61 The lovelorn came, too. The alone. The lunatics-they were brought here, sometimes. Got their name from the moon, it was only fair the moon had a chance to fix things. moon the-moon trigger-warning neil-gaiman Neil Gaiman
b1116f1 Without warning a lady appeared. She came from the direction of Friday-street, for she had just been with Mr. Newbolt. She strode capably through the snow. She wore a black silk gown and something very queer swung from a silver chain about her neck. Her smile was full of comfort and her eyes were kind and happy. She was just as Mr. Newbolt had described. And the name of this lady was Death. death sandman neil-gaiman Susanna Clarke
14ac01f Para comprender el estado de la humanidad puede que baste con saber que la mayoria de los grandes triunfos y grandes catastrofes de la historia no se deben a que las personas son buenas en esencia o malas en esencia, sino a que las personas son en esencia personas. spanish terry-pratchett good-omens neil-gaiman español Terry Pratchett
8430773 The world seems to work in predictable ways, and you think you see the pattern. But that's fatal. Because it's only a pattern until you meet the first event that doesn't fit. And by then it's too late. By then, all the tricks you've learned to deal with the world -- well, they just don't work anymore. neverwhere neil-gaiman Mike Carey
d0d3925 A los que Crowley no podia soportar era a esos que se llamaban a si mismos satanicos. No solo por lo que hacian, sino por la mania que tenian de achacarselo todo al Infierno. Se les ocurria alguna idea vomitiva que no se le pasaria a un demonio por la cabeza ni en un millon de anos, alguna atrocidad oscura y descerebrada que solo una mente humana hecha y derecha podria concebir, y luego gritaban: <>, y se quedaban con los jueces cuando lo cierto es que el Diablo nunca empujaba a nadie a nada. No le hacia falta. Y eso a los humanos les costaba entenderlo. El Infierno no era ningun gran deposito de mal, no mas de lo que, segun Crowley, el Cielo era una fuente de bien; eran solo bandos en una gran partida cosmica de ajedrez. Y era en la mente humana donde se hallaba la verdadera fuente de la bondad verdadera y de la verdadera maldad de infarto. spanish terry-pratchett crowley good-omens neil-gaiman Terry Pratchett
0779950 Crecemos leyendo cosas de piratas, de vaqueros, de naves espaciales y cosas asi, y cuando te crees que el mundo esta lleno de todo eso, van y te dicen que en verdad son todo ballenas muertas, bosques talados y residuos nucleares por ahi sueltos durante un millon de anos. Pues para eso no vale la pena crecer, mira tu por donde. spanish terry-pratchett good-omens neil-gaiman español Terry Pratchett
7f0d993 "A major defining factor was my wanting him to be part of the DC Universe. Because if someone as powerful as the Sandman was running all the dreams in the world, a natural question would be "Why haven't we heard about him by now?" The answer I came up with was "He's been locked away." And that solution formed an image in my head of a naked man in a glass cell. My next question was "How long had he been trapped there?" The movie hadn't been made yet, but I'd read Oliver Sacks's book a few months earlier, so I knew about the encephalitis lethargica, or "sleepy sickness," that had swept Europe in 1916. Scientists to this day don't understand what caused it, and I loved the idea of blaming it on the Sandman's imprisonment, so I determined the length of his stay to be seventy-two years--ending in late 1988, when the series debuted. And so on; each plot point just seemed to naturally lead to the next one." sleepy-sickness sandman neil-gaiman interview Hy Bender
6ae18d3 "I did Barbie's dream as a one-off thing, but I found it haunting me; I kept having an image in my head of Martin Tenbones getting killed in real New York. Still, that would've been the end of it...except, by a wild coincidence, a short time later I received a postcard from Jonathan Carroll. He wrote that he'd been following my graphic novel --which was being serialized in magazine at the time--and he was finding a number of very scary similarities between my story and his as yet unpublished novel, . He concluded, "We're like two radio sets tuned to the same goofy channel." I wrote back and said, "I think you're right. What's more, I abandoned a whole storyline after reading , but I keep thinking I ought to return to it." Jonathan then sent me a wonderful letter with this advice: "Go to it, man. Ezra Pound said that every story has already been written. The purpose of a good writer is to write it new. I would very much like to see a Gaiman approach to that kind of story." With that encouragement, I began creating ." writing neil-gaiman jonathan-carroll radio interview Hy Bender
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