Quotessence
Home / Authors / Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWorldWritingThinkingSaidKnowsBookStoriesWayDreamSandmanWantChildrenMenSometimesCoralineWellsBelieveLooks

Famous Neil Gaiman Quotes

“Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them.”

WorldWantNeedsWritingChildrenImportantBookStoriesKidsFormReadingSoundFictionGoneWiseWindFindingsAnd LoveImportant ThingsBraveLove StoryBe BraveLove Of ReadingChildren Book
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image

“Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.”

WritingWellsBookHardStoriesUsedJoyReadingFictionPleaseFindingsStrangerProfessionThese DaysNon FictionBuzzWriting FictionJadedReading Fiction
Book:Adventures in the Dream Trade
Create image

“I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.”

WritingBookEndsDreamAgeDesireLinesSinFireYouthDramaLettersSkinsFinalsTalesBuriedShelvesDuskRewritingMy TruthPalimpsest
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image

“The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.”

IfsGivingWritingI CanDoneStoriesEyeAdviceReadyReaderPicksSatisfiedPrintShort StoryDrawersRevisionBest AdviceNew Eyes
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image

“We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”

PeopleWritingChildrenImportantHappensLyingFictionReaderTruth IsCreatingObligationTalesWho We AreTelling The TruthTrue Things
Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Create image

“I don't think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it's raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn't mean you have to write directly about the bad thing; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it.”

ThinkingNeedsWritingMeanArtSometimesHurtSourceTragedyVery GoodPainfulBad ThingsCoveredLayersPearlsGood PlaceTime PassesPlaces To Go
Author:Neil Gaiman
Create image