Neil Gaiman

“She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”

“The limeade was very interesting. It didn't taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical.”

“Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed.”

“Fiction does something unique in that it takes us out of our heads and puts us into other people's heads. And I think reading, and experiencing fiction through reading, is something that gives us empathy. And that, I think, is vital. It takes us out of our lives. Without reading, you're stuck with one life. Reading gives you more than one life. It gives you an infinite number of lives, which I think is wonderful. Or at least, not infinite, but as many as there are books on the shelves.”

“Repeat after me, there are the living and the dead, there are day-folk and night-folk, there are ghouls and mist-walkers, there are high hunters and the Hounds of God. Also, there are solitary types.""What are you?" asked Bod."I," she said sternly, "am Miss Lupescu.""And what is Silas?"She hesitated. Then she said, "He is a solitary type.”

“She found herself to be quite worried that something wouldjump out at her, so she began to whistle. She thought it mightmake it harder for things to jump out at her, if she was whistling.”

“Outside, the world had become a formless, swirling mist with noshapes or shadows behind it, while the house itself seemed tohave twisted and stretched. It appeared to Coraline that it wascrouching and staring down at her, as if it were not really ahouse but only the idea of a house—and the person who hadhad the idea, she was certain, was not a good person.”

“Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity.”

“Once you’ve written a book, it belongs to everyone, and they are all allowed to have opinions, and the spectrum of opinions is the spectrum of humanity.”

“If Hell is other people... then Purgatory is airports.”

“I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up, and I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.”

“Az istenek meghalnak. És amikor valóban meghalnak, senki sem gyászolja őket és senki sem emlékszik rájuk többé. Az eszméket nehezebb megölni, mint az embereket, de a végén őket is el lehet pusztítani.”

“Ezeket az isteneket régen elfeledték, és lehet, hogy már meg is haltak. Mindössze száraz történelemkönyvek lapjain találkozhatunk velük. Eltávoztak közülünk. Eltávoztak mind, de nevük és képük tovább él bennünk.nw”

“Eszébe jutott Szerda megjegyzése, és önkéntelenül elmosolyodott: túl sok emberrel találkozott, akik mondogatták, hogy tilos elfojtani az érzéseket, ki kell mutatni az érzelmeket, szabadon kell ereszteni a fájdalmat. Árnyék úgy gondolta, sok minden szól az érzelmek elfojtása mellett. Ha elég sokáig és elég mélyen eltemeted őket, egy idő után nem érzel semmit.”

“Minden óra sebet ejt rajtad. Az utolsó végez veled. Hol hallotta ezt? Már nem emlékezett rá.”

“She's not talking now," muttered the Rani's aunt, wagging one stick-like finger. "That tiger is throwing his voice.""Can no-one get that woman to stop talking?" asked the Rajah of the room."Easier to stop 'em than start 'em," said the tiger, and he dealt with the matter.”

“There is nothing to be frightened of," said the Rajah. "Very few tigers are man-eaters.""But I am," said the tiger."You might be lying," said the Rajah."I might be," said the tiger. "But I'm not.”

“In the manner of one recognizing a line from a familiar poem in a strange book.”

“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.”

“I'll show you an imaginative re-creation, my fist imaginatively re-creating your fucken face for starters.”

“Some things are too big to be seen; some emotions are too huge to be felt.”

“This is not a place, after all. It is BETWEEN places. This is NOWHERE. A brief thought: I could stay here, abandon my quest, hang forever in the void, safe and cold and alone.”

“Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you’re in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice; various freeloading insects have evolved a mellifluous existence because of this very fact. Humans act the same way.”

“Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold.”

“It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.”

“It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois.”

“There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends to make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.”

“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising… and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.”

“I move from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what I need. Slipping and sliding and flickering through the dreams; and the dreamer will wake, and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can truly be.”

“Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.”

“The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself...That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.”

“When things go wrong, this is what you should do. Make good art.”

“Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow."Fuck You," said the Raven.”

“You're alive...That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name.”

“I think maybe Hell is a place. But you don't have to stay anywhere forever.”

“The dead are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You’re alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you’re dead, it’s gone. Over. You’ve made what you’ve made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”

“When you are scared, but you do it anyway, that's brave.”

“Sometimes big things happen, and they echo. Those echoes crash across worlds. They are the ripples in the fabric of things. Often they manifest as storms. Reality is a fragile thing, after all.”

“I don't really like driving in the snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars.”

“I am a poem, or I am a pattern, or a race of people whose world was swallowed by the sea.”

“Rattle his bonesover the stonesits only a pauperwho nobody owns”

“Everything that is,casts a shadow”

“It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale - they are well-equipped to deal with these”

“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...”

“Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)”

“It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.”

“And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it.”

“Даже Ничто не может длиться вечно. Возможно, он провел в Нигде десять минут, а возможно, десять тысяч лет. Разницы не было никакой, время превратилось в концепцию, в которой давно уже отпала необходимость. Он теперь не пон\мнил своего настоящего имени. Он чувствовал себя пусты очищенным в этом месте, которое и местом-то не было. Он не имел формы в этой пустоте. Он был ничем.”

“If there's one thing that a study of history has taught us, it is that things can always get worse.”

“What makes you think I'm giving you a ride?” “Because I'm a damsel in distress,” she said. “And you are a knight in whatever. A really dirty car.”