Neil Gaiman

“You can't trust other people. If it's important, you have to do it yourself.”

“And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.”

“Too soon, the sun will rise.”

“I'll find you. Don't worry. Just be on your own and I'll find you.”

“Not gay, just never met the right woman.”

“There's an expression, deja vu, that means that you feel like you've been somewhere before, that you've somehow already dreamed it or experienced it in your mind.”

“I was a stranger and you took me in.-Joji G. Shoji, d. 1921”

“Bod was thrilled. He imagined a future in which he could read everything, in which all stories could be opened and discovered.”

“I'm a stranger," pointed out Bod."You're not," she said, definitely. "You're a little boy." And then she said, "And you're my friend. So you can't be a stranger.”

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”

“Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I'm always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.”

“Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')”

“He was having more fun than a barrelful of monkeys.**Several years earlier Spider had actually been tremendously disappointed by a barrelful of monkeys. It had done nothing he had considered particularly entertaining, apart from emit interesting noises, and eventually, once the noises had stopped and the monkeys were no longer doing anything at all—except possibly on an organic level—had needed to be disposed of in the dead of night.”

“Oh - that family, yes. There are still some photos of them around here. They look like nice people, don't they?"They...'look like nice people'?"Well, they do, don't they? Of course, they never actually existed - except maybe in the most tenuous and retrospective way - but still, it's nice to think they were good people."Uh. Right. Gee, I suppose you must do a lot of drugs.”

“Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.”

“Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they're scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too. ”

“It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”

“The cat looked as if it were about to say something sarcastic. Then it flicked its whiskers and said, "Challenge her. There's no guarantee she'll play fair, but her kind of thing loves games and challenges.”

“I miss you', he admitted. 'I'm here', she said. 'That's when I miss you most. When you're here. When you aren't here, when you're just a ghost of the past or a dream from another life, it's easier then.”

“The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.''What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.”

“This is crazy', said Shadow.Like the rest of your life is sane? Give me a fucking break.”

“I think I’ll dismember the world and then I’ll dance in the wreckage.”

“Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.”

“There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.”

“The sky had never seemed so sky; the world had never seemed so world.”

“A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.”

“This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is.""What?""The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.”

“You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.”

“Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones.”

“Are you scared?’ asked Mr. Ibis.‘Not really.’‘Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand.”

“You musn’t be afraid of the dark.’‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.”

“Death’s a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don’t anymore. I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths until the last big one.”

“But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.”

“They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.”

“Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.”

“Jesus. Low-Key Lyesmith," said Shadow. and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-smith.""You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and the embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.”

“All around me darkness gathers, Fading is the sun that shone, We must speak of other matters, You can be me when I'm goneFlowers gathered in the morning,Afternoon they blossom on,Still are withered in the evening,You can be me when I'm gone.”

“Some things may change," said Wednesday, abruptly. "People, however... People stay the same.”

“Goodbyes are overrated.”

“Never mind. There. For good or bad. It's done.”

“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.”

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.”

“When most people said "I'm psychic, you see," they meant "I have an overactive but unoriginal imagination/wear black nail varnish/talk to my budgie;" when Anathema said it, it sounded as though she was admitting to a hereditary disease which she'd much prefer not to have.”

“Fat Charlie wondered what Rosie's mother would usually hear in a church. Probably just cries of "Back! Foul best of Hell!" followed by gasps of "Is it alive?" and a nervous inquiry as to whether anybody had remembered to bring the stakes and hammers.”

“You don't have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.”

“People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales.”

“I don't think it would be fun to write after inhaling art fumes. (What are art fumes?) No, I just make stuff up. It's easier that way.”

“I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.”

“For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.”

“Rubbish!" screamed a fat, elderly woman, in Richard's ear, as he passed her malodorous stall. "Junk!" She continued. "Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. You know you want it.”