Quotessence
Home / Authors / Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWorldWritingThinkingSaidKnowsBookStoriesWay

Famous Neil Gaiman Quotes

“BLUEBERRY GIRL Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never you mind, This is a prayer for a blueberry girl. First, may you ladies be kind. Keep her from spindles and sleeps at sixteen, Nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty, These will not trouble her eyes. Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen– Let her have brave days and truth, Let her go places that we’ve never been, trust and delight in her youth. Ladies of grace and ladies of favor and ladies of merciful night, This is a prayer for a blueberry girl. Grant her your clearness of sight. Words can be worrisome, people complex, motives and manners unclear, Grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear. Let her tell stories and dance in the rain, somersault, tumble & run, Her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep. Let her grow like a weed in the sun. Ladies of paradox, ladies of measure, ladies of shadow that fall, This is a prayer for a blueberry girl. Words written clear on a wall. Help her to help herself, help her to stand, help her to lose and to find, Teach her we’re only as big as our dreams. Show her that fortune is blind. Truth is a thing she must find for herself, precious and rare as a pearl. Give her all these and a little bit more: Gifts for a blueberry girl.”

InspirationalGirlsWishes
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image

“You've been a really good friend to me, Richard. And I've sort of got to quite like having you around. Please don't go.' He squeezed her hand in his gently. 'Well,' he said, 'I've sort of got to quite like having you around, too. But I don't belong in this world. In my London...well, the most dangerous thing you ever have to watch out for is a taxi in a bit of a hurry. I like you too. I like you an awful lot. But I have to go home.' She looked up at him with her odd-coloured eyes, green and blue and flame. 'Then we won't ever see each other again,' she said. 'I suppose we won't' 'Thanks for everything you did,' she said, seriously. Then she threw her arms around him, and she squeezed him tightly enough that the bruises on his ribs hurt, and he hugged her back, just as tightly, making all his bruises complain violently, and he simply didn't care.”

RelationshipsFriendshipEmotionGoodbyeSaying GoodbyeBreaking UpGoing Home
Book:Neverwhere
Create image

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth. We all have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is huge and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.”

InspirationalArtImagination
Book:Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World
Create image

“Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment. Just look around this room that we're in. I'm going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It's this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it might be easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on. This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, in this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things. They daydreamed, they pondered, they made things that didn't quite work, they described things that didn't yet exist to people who laughed at them. And then, in time, they succeeded.”

Imagination
Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Create image

“The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is YOU. Your voice, your mind your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”

WritingCreativityLivingIndividuality
Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Create image

“The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is YOU. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.t”

WritingArtCreativityLivingIndividuality
Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Create image

“And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung,’ said Coraline to the cat. ‘It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.’ "‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave”

KnowingBraveryBraveBeing AfraidBeing Scared
Book:Coraline
Create image

“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 QuotesAdulthoodNeil Gaiman
Book:The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Create image

“Her eyes are grey. Her hair is straggly and wet. Her fingers are stubby. The nails are chewed and broken. Her teeth are crooked, jagged things. There is a vacancy in her gaze, a feeling of absence when you are near her that is impossible to put into words. Her sigil is the hooked ring. One day her hook will catch your heart. Describing her, we articulate what she is and why she is: when hope is past, she is there. She is in a thousand thousand waiting rooms and empty streets, in grey concrete buildings and anonymous hotels. She is on the other side of every mirror. When the eyes that look back at you know you too well, and no longer care for what they see, they are her eyes. She stands and waits, and in her posture the pain no longer tells you to live, and in her presence joy is unimaginable.”

Despair
Book:The Sandman: Endless Nights
Create image

“You get work however you get work, but people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of todays world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

HumorWorkAttitude
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image

“So be wise. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would. Now go, and make interesting mistakes. Make Interesting. Mistakes. Make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. Make good art.”

ArtWriting AdviceMake Good ArtArt Matters
Book:Art Matters: Because Your Imagination Can Change the World
Create image

“CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler. MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing. CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing. MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged. CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed. MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed. CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying. MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing. CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating. MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing. CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord? MORPHEUS: I am hope.”

WisdomCompetitionInsightCunningOutwit
Book:The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
Create image

“So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o' the wisp. Not long ago you burned--your heart burned--in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all." "Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own? I have given my heart to another." "The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?" "Yes." "You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me. We could have been young again, well into the next age of the world. Your boy will break it, or waste it, or lose it. They all do." "Nonetheless, he has my heart. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you, when you return to them without it.”

Love
Book:Stardust
Create image

“Fue tu sonrisa la que me llevo a pensar que eras extranjera antes de oírte hablar. (...) Aquí las sonrisas son muy valiosas y poco habituales. Pero tu sonreías todo el tiempo, como si te encantara todo lo que veías. Me dedicaste una sonrisa la primera vez que me viste, incluso con más ganas que antes. Tu sonreíste y yo me perdí, como un niño pequeño en un bosque enorme que ya no puede encontrar el camino de vuelta a casa.”

EmotionalLoversSmile
Book:Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Create image