Neil Gaiman

Quotes

• “The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you li...”
• “Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, o...”
• “Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. Any starting writer starts out with other pe...”
• “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things,...”
• “May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone ...”
• “Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this ach...”
• “If you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien, don’t read big Tolkienesque fantasies — Tolkien didn’t read big...”
• “My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where d...”
• “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell ...”
• “Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters ...”
• “People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are mad...”
• “Reading is important.Books are important.Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but s...”
• “When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Di...”
• “Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and q...”
• “Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than ...”
• “Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you...”
• “But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it."(Online journal entry for Jan...”
• “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, a...”
• “Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by...”
• “And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch ...”
• “Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already los...”
• “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.”
• “Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.”
• “There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.”
• “Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”
• “Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.”
• “Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.”
• “If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.”
• “Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.”
• “Idris: Are all people like this?The Doctor: Like what?Idris: So much bigger on the inside.”
• “I really don't know what "I love you"means.I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.”
• “A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."(As quoted on BookRiot, June 18, 2013)”
• “It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.”
• “Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
• “Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.”
• “We owe it to each other to tell stories.”