Best 1490 quotes of Neil Gaiman on MyQuotes

I am amiable. Vague. Puzzled. Messy-haired.

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. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?" "I am hope.

I am fascinated a) by transgressive art and b) what happens beyond the boundaries.

I am not by nature the kind of creator who is transgressive in order to be transgressive.

I am remarkably likeable. Few people have ever been as likeable as I am. There is, frankly, no end to my likeability. People gather together in public assemblies to discuss how much they like me. I have several awards, and a small medal from a small country in South America which pays tribute both to how much I am liked and my general all around wonderfulness. I don't have it on me, of course. I keep my medals in my sock drawer.

I am the most unhappy soul alive." "I'd heard it said that fairies have no souls." "Then do I ache, and bleed, and smart, elsewhere; still, call it soul for it is solely mine.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck... I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars.

I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.

I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed.

I can get away before the storm hits. Away from a world in which opiates have become the religion of the masses.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

Identity can be so gelatinous sometimes.

I didn't like people rewriting my dialogue. I didn't like the fact that we'd start a comic with the Joker, and by the time we inked it, he would have turned into the Scarecrow.

I'd love to think that people in the future would gather in theatres, at conventions, and in darkened rooms, and read it out to each other.

I'd love to write some porn, but I don't know if I have the right engines. When I was a young man and I was tempted to write porn, imaginary parents would appear over my shoulder and read what I was writing; just about the point that I managed to banish the imaginary parents, real children would lean over my shoulder and read what I was writing.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is.

I do not permit affection or lack thereof to influence my actions. There is good, and there is evil. The good must be protected, the evil eradicated. I have shown you the triumph of evil as a caution.

I don't believe in "writer's block". I try and deal with getting stuck by having more than one thing to work on at a time. And by knowing that even a hundred bad words that didn't exist before is forward progress.

I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader.

I don't know if proud is the right word, but I am somebody who does not, on the whole, have the highest regard for my own stuff in that when I look all I get to see are the flaws.

I don't know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn't know then I can't put into words.

I don't know why people would want to have lunch with writers. I've eaten with writers. We have appalling table manners, and rarely say anything other than 'Pass the salt' or 'If you're not going to eat that, can I have it?'

I don't necessarily think stories have functions any more than diamonds have functions, or the sky has a function... Stories exist. They keep us sane, I think. We tell each other stories, we believe stories. I love watching the slow rise of the urban legend. They're the stories that we use to explain ourselves to ourselves.

I don't think about age groups when I write, although I think if I know I'm writing for Children I'll be a bit more ambitious, and think more about every word, because I know that they pay closer attention when they read than adults do.

I don't think I'm mainstream. I think what I am is lots and lots of different cults. And when you get lots and lots of small groups who like you a lot, they add up to a big group without ever actually becoming mainstream.

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.

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 don't think you get perfect couples. At best you get two people building something, and working at it, and loving each other, and doing their best to communicate.

I don't think you should ever insult people unintentionally: if you're doing it, you ought to mean it.

Idris: Are all people like this? The Doctor: Like what? Idris: So much bigger on the inside.

I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

If a Devil is one who dares, when others hold back, then I am happy to play the Devil in this Mystery, boy.

If ever you get to be my age," said the old woman, "you will know all there is to know about regrets, and you will know that one more, here or there, will make no difference in the long run.

If I'm writing a novel, I'll probably get up in the morning, do email, perhaps blog, deal with emergencies, and then be off novel-writing around 1.00pm and stop around 6.00pm. And I'll be writing in longhand, a safe distance from my computer. If I'm not writing a novel, there is no schedule, and scripts and introductions and whatnot can find themselves being written at any time and on anything.

I finally made friends with my father when I entered my twenties. We had so little in common when I was a boy, and I am certain I had been a disappointment to him. He did not ask for a child with a book, off in its own world. He wanted a son who did what he had done; swam and boxed and played rugby, and drove cars at speed with abandon and joy, but that was not what he wound up with.

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place.

If not for Death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning — a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross.

If people are standing up there saying, my football team just won with help from God, then obviously God just pissed over the other team.

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

If the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads.

If writing a novel is a year's exile to a foreign country, writing a short story is a weekend spent somewhere exotic. They're much more like vacations, more exciting and different, and you're off.

If you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about you are very probably wrong - even if you're the author.

If you are protected from dark things then you have no protection of, knowledge of, or understanding of dark things when they show up.

If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.

If you cared enough about your characters, what happened to them was interesting... it's important to care about them, about who they are and what they do...I don't really care whose side they are on, and they can be monstrous on the outside or, worse, on the inside, but you still have to want to spend time with them.

If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.