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Quote by Neil Gaiman

“We must have bearers, and outriders, and perhaps an elephant — they are so imposing, nothing says ‘Get out of the way’ quite like an elephant in the front . . .”

Quote by Neil Gaiman

Work

Stardust

A young man named Tristan finds a magical dust that allows him to travel between worlds. His journey leads him to encounter a variety of fantastical creatures and to fall in love with a mortal girl, Yvaine, who is pursued by a malevolent king. The story explores themes of love, destiny, and the blurred lines between reality and fantasy. more

Author

Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman, born on November 10, 1960, is a renowned British author. His works span across various genres including fantasy, horror, and science fiction, with notable titles such as 'American Gods' and 'Good Omens'. Gaiman's writing style is distinctive and has won him a dedicated fan base. more

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“A mouse can fall down a mine shaft a third of a mile deep without injury. A rat falling the same distance would break his bones; a man would simply splash ... Elephants have their legs thickened to an extent that seems disproportionate to us, but this is necessary if their unwieldy bulk is to be moved at all ... A 60-ft. man would weigh 1000 times as much as a normal man, but his thigh bone would have its area increased by only 100 times ... Consequently such an unfortunate monster would break his legs the moment he tried to move. [Expressing, in picturesque terms, the strength of an organism relative to its bulk.]”

“It seems safe to say that apes know about death, such as that is different from life and permanent. The same may apply to a few other animals, such as elephants, which pick up ivory or bones of a dead herd member, holding the pieces in their trunks and passing them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, only to touch and inspect the relics. Do they miss each other? Do they recall how he or she was during life?”

“Solomon breathed a sigh of relief ever so slightly, thankful that the cricket had not been eaten. Not that he was concerned for the cricket being eaten. No, he was simply relieved that the voice in the closet, which could be a monster, had not eaten it. If the voice had eaten the cricket, that meant that he was a monster that eats things in the night, and Solomon too could be eaten. Being eaten by a closet monster was perhaps the scariest thing that could happen to an elephant, not to mention a cricket, as far as Solomon was concerned.”

“The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organisation, and maximise chaos. Life is designed to combat these forces. We slow down reactions, concentrate matter, and organise chemicals into compartments; we sort laundry on Wednesdays. "It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe," James Gleick wrote. We live in the loopholes of natural laws, seeking extensions, exceptions, and excuses. The laws of nature still mark the outer boundaries of permissibility – but life, in all its idiosyncratic, mad weirdness, flourishes by reading between the lines. Even the elephant cannot violate the law of thermodynamics – although its trunk, surely, must rank as one of the most peculiar means of moving matter using energy.”

“That’s what the Remembering is like, Goma – it’s more than recollection, passed-down stories, oral history. They feel it. It’s deep within them – a bridge of blood between the present and the past. He remembered Earth. He spoke of it not as something he’d been told about, but as a world he knew in his bones. As if he ached for blue skies, hard sunlight, the promise of the long rains. Life as an elephant – simple as breathing, hard as death, the joy and the sadness of being alive. Nothing was ever easy for them. But nothing was ever as strong, either. They were born knowing they were the kings of creation. They took the worst that the world could throw at them, including humanity.”