The Best Neil Gaiman quotes

Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. — Neil Gaiman

I started writing when I was about 20, 21 maybe. — Neil Gaiman

I learned to write by writing. — Neil Gaiman

I’ve been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It was me and a handful of tyrannosaurs. We’d be writing blog entries like, ‘The tyrannosaurus is getting grumpy.’ — Neil Gaiman

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism. — Neil Gaiman

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. — Neil Gaiman

Writing imaginative tales for the young is like sending coals to Newcastle. For coals. — Neil Gaiman

I always say that if you’re a novelist, the challenge is not writing what you think ought to happen, but trying in some way to write what did happen in a world that doesn’t necessarily exist. — Neil Gaiman

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. — Neil Gaiman

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

A life that is, like any other, unlike any other. — Neil Gaiman

Real life doesn’t have to be convincing, but fiction does. — Neil Gaiman

I missed her, deeply, painfully. But life goes on. — Neil Gaiman

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn’t. — Neil Gaiman

Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way. — Neil Gaiman

You don’t get explanations in real life. You just get moments that are absolutely, utterly, inexplicably odd. — Neil Gaiman

We save our lives in such unlikely ways. — Neil Gaiman

How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister? — Neil Gaiman

Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and fatal. — Neil Gaiman

Hey, that’s life, flick it off if you can’t take a joke. — Neil Gaiman

Life and death are different sides of the same coin. — Neil Gaiman

Truly life is wasted on the living. — Neil Gaiman

Words save our lives, sometimes. — Neil Gaiman

Leave no stone unturned. Deeply explore the beauty of your life. — Neil Gaiman

I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time. — Neil Gaiman

Time is fluid here’, said the Demon. — Neil Gaiman

She smiled at Coraline, as if it had been a very long time since she had smiled and she had almost, but not quite, forgotten how. — Neil Gaiman

I lost some time once. It’s always in the last place you look for it. — Neil Gaiman

I think there should be an Occupy Gallifrey. Because 0.000001% of the people have 99.99999% of the Time. — Neil Gaiman

In ten years time I’ll be… (dead) sixty. — Neil Gaiman

Things bloosom in their time. They bud and bloom, blossom and fade. Everything in its time. — Neil Gaiman

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. — Neil Gaiman

Because,’ said Thor, ‘when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time. — Neil Gaiman

As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time. — Neil Gaiman

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. — Neil Gaiman

There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now. — Neil Gaiman

I spent] much of my time reminding Matt Groening that I really need to be a head in a jar on Futurama. — Neil Gaiman

And then it went, and time passed properly once more, every second following every other second just like they’re meant to. — Neil Gaiman

The Time Lords really didn’t like genocide. I’m not too keen on it myself. It’s the potential you’re killing off. What if, one day, there was a good Dalek? What if… — Neil Gaiman

Without dreams, there could be no despair. — Neil Gaiman

When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget. — Neil Gaiman

Dreams are hopes, and echoes of hope. — Neil Gaiman

Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams. — Neil Gaiman

One cannot begin a new dream without abandoning the last [one]. — Neil Gaiman

It was a dream, and in dreams you have no choices: either there are no decisions to be made, or they were made for you long before ever the dream began. — Neil Gaiman

But revelation? That is the province of a dream. It can be yours, but only if your heart is strong. — Neil Gaiman

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. — Neil Gaiman

What power would Hell have if those imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven? — Neil Gaiman

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. — Neil Gaiman

When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death. — Neil Gaiman

Our worries, fears, and dreams make fantastic stories. Take them with you as you grow up. — Neil Gaiman

Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill. — Neil Gaiman

Songs remain. They last…A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That’s the power of songs. — Neil Gaiman

The stuff you bring back from dreams is free. — Neil Gaiman

The real problem with stories–if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death. — Neil Gaiman

Without our stories we are incomplete. — Neil Gaiman

We owe it to each other to tell stories. — Neil Gaiman

She’s realized the real problem with stories––if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death. — Neil Gaiman

Stories are the things that allow us to persuade each other that we’re human. — Neil Gaiman

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect. — Neil Gaiman

I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were. — Neil Gaiman

Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story. — Neil Gaiman

The important thing about songs is that they’re just like stories. They don’t mean a damn unless there’s people listenin’ to them. — Neil Gaiman

I like stories where women save themselves. — Neil Gaiman

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories. — Neil Gaiman

We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories. — Neil Gaiman

Start telling the stories that only you can tell. — Neil Gaiman

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent. — Neil Gaiman

What would be the fun in doing things you know are going to work? — Neil Gaiman

I think that is something that I always like in my work–the sense of inclusion rather than the sense of otherness. — Neil Gaiman

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There’s the magic of it. — Neil Gaiman

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. — Neil Gaiman

You can always cheat an honest man, but it takes more work. — Neil Gaiman

I think there are several aspects of our marraige we’re going to have to work on.’ ‘Babes,’ he told her. ‘You’re dead.’ ‘That’s one of those aspects, obviously. — Neil Gaiman

In comics, collaboration saves your life. How well you can work with an artist, a colorist, a letterer, is how good your comic is. — Neil Gaiman

I’ve learned over the years that everything is more or less the same amount of work, so you may as well set your sights high and try and do something really cool. — Neil Gaiman

Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps. — Neil Gaiman

There are a lot of artists who’ve said they’d like to work with me. To be honest, I’m not sure there is such a thing as an inappropriate artist. The trick is matching the artist with a story. — Neil Gaiman

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It’s that easy. — Neil Gaiman

I was a scholarship minor public school day boy at Ardingly College and later Whitgift School. Then, straight into work as a journalist–a wonderful thing for a writer. — Neil Gaiman

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. — Neil Gaiman

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I’d go and work my way through the children’s area. — Neil Gaiman

Books were safer than other people anyway. — Neil Gaiman

I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you’re probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there. — Neil Gaiman

People tend to find books when they are ready for them. — Neil Gaiman

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else. — Neil Gaiman

When I was 7, my proudest possession would have been my bookshelf–’cause I’d alphabetized all of the books on my bookshelf. — Neil Gaiman

Going off the grid is always good for me. It’s the way that I’ve started books and finished books and gotten myself out of deadline dooms and things. — Neil Gaiman

I was a book–y child. I was much more book–y than dark. — Neil Gaiman

Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. — Neil Gaiman

Agnes was the worst prophet that’s ever existed. Because she was always right. That’s why the book never sold. — Neil Gaiman

I still love the book–ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishist–books to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there are. — Neil Gaiman

Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world! — Neil Gaiman

Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. — Neil Gaiman

You need more than a beginning if you’re going to start a book. If all you have is a beginning, then once you’ve written that beginning, you have nowhere to go. — Neil Gaiman

Books are defensive, not offensive (unless you’re the puzzled adult trying to make the kid with the book interact). — Neil Gaiman

A novel seemed the easiest way to get what I had had in my head into the inside of other people’s heads. Books are good that way. — Neil Gaiman

What I’d love to do is every now and then go, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got this amazing idea for ‘Doctor Who.’ — Neil Gaiman

I love CGI if it’s invisible. I don’t like it when it’s there and obvious. — Neil Gaiman

Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it. — Neil Gaiman

I really don’t know what ‘I love you’ means. I think it means ‘Don’t leave me here alone. — Neil Gaiman

Death is the second oldest of the Endless. It’s hard not to love her. She loves you, after all. — Neil Gaiman

Love belongs to Desire. And Desire is always Cruel.–Old Man — Neil Gaiman

For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel. — Neil Gaiman

I have no plans to love you,’ said Coraline. ‘No matter what. You can’t make me love you. — Neil Gaiman

You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show part is that you never stop loving someone. There’s always a piece of them in your heart. — Neil Gaiman

You are young, and in love. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived. — Neil Gaiman

I am the most miserable person who ever lived,’ he said… ‘You are young, and in love,’ said Primus. ‘Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived. — Neil Gaiman

When you love something you just don’t want to stop talking about it. — Neil Gaiman

You know I love you,’ said the other mother flatly. ‘You have a very funny way of showing it,’ said Coraline. — Neil Gaiman