Neil Gaiman
THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.Collection: Eye
You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.Collection: Life
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.Collection: Travel
My heart… It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it’s trying to escape because it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you.Collection: Love
It was a perfectly normal gerbil. It appeared to be living in an exciting construction of cylinders, spheres and treadmills, such as the Spanish Inquisition would have devised if they'd had access to a plastics molding press.Collection: Perfectly Normal
I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.Collection: Ocean
I remember making that vow, the one not to forget. Not to remember what happened, but to remember who I was and how I felt.Collection: Reflection
What do I do now?” “I don’t know. Fade away, perhaps. Or find another role.Collection: Roles
If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.Collection: Writing
Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.Collection: Loyalty
We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.Collection: Lying
And did I pass?" The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left the younger woman said, "You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.Collection: Gathering
Dreams are composed of many things, my son. Of images and hopes, of fears and memories. Memories of the past, and memories of the future.Collection: Dream
I was not scared of anything, when I read my book.Collection: Book
Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths.Collection: Children
There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.Collection: Heart
The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.Collection: Writing
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there'll always be better writers than you and there'll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.Collection: Inspiring
A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.Collection: Couple
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.Collection: Writing
Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.Collection: Clever
There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.Collection: Thinking
Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.Collection: Book
People tend to find books when they are ready for them.Collection: Book
Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.Collection: Writing
You know what my mum once said?’ said Rosie… ‘She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.’ And this means…?’ Well’, she said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Dream
We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.Collection: Writing
Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.Collection: Song
I think most things are pretty magical, and that it's less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.Collection: Thinking
A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.Collection: Inspirational
Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.Collection: Graduation
Be wise, because the world needs more wisdom. And if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.Collection: Graduation
The stuff you bring back from dreams is free.Collection: Dream
There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.Collection: Fall
The real world has no obligation to be convincing, so it throws up some very weird moments sometimes.Collection: Real
Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.Collection: Writing
Leave no stone unturned. Deeply explore the beauty of your life.Collection: Stones
Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.Collection: Dream
I hope the strong women out there aren't quiet and they don't go away, because when people attack you for speaking, the best way to drive them nuts is to smile and carry on speaking, louder, more wisely, more intensely, more articulately than ever.Collection: Strong Women
It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.Collection: Two
Never trust the storyteller. Only trust the story.Collection: Stories
Let her tell stories and dance in the rain, somersault, tumble and run, her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep, let her grow like a weed in the sun.Collection: Running
I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.Collection: Inspirational
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.Collection: Women
First rule of magic: Don't let anyone know your real name. Names have power.Collection: Real
We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.Collection: Dream
Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.Collection: Phoenix
People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghost, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.Collection: Life