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Neil Gaiman

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It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.
From Anansi Boys
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Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.
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For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
From The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
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Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.
“Hello, Bod,” she said.
“Hello,” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”
“Names aren’t really important,” she said.
“I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”
“He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”
“Can I ride him?” asked Bod.
“One day,” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”
“Promise?”
I promise.
From The Graveyard Book
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I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.
Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out.
From The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
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All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
From The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
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In ten years time I’ll be… (dead) sixty.
From Signal to Noise
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Let's start a new tomorrow, today.
From Anansi Boys
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Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’

Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.
From The Graveyard Book
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He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.
From Stardust
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Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')
From Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
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You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
From The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
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One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.
From The Graveyard Book
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If you want to call it that. But it is a very specific sort of magic. There's a magic you take from death. Something leaves the world, something else comes into it.
From The Graveyard Book
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Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.
From The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake
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It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
From Coraline
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Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'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.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
From American Gods
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Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.
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Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.
From American Gods
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What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
From Neverwhere
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Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
From M Is for Magic
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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.
From American Gods
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I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?
From The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.
From Anansi Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
From The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.
“Hello, Bod,” she said.
“Hello,” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”
“Names aren’t really important,” she said.
“I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”
“He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”
“Can I ride him?” asked Bod.
“One day,” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”
“Promise?”
I promise.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.
Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out.
From The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
From The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In ten years time I’ll be… (dead) sixty.
From Signal to Noise
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let's start a new tomorrow, today.
From Anansi Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’

Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.
From Stardust
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')
From Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
From The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you want to call it that. But it is a very specific sort of magic. There's a magic you take from death. Something leaves the world, something else comes into it.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.
From The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
From Coraline
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'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.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
From Neverwhere
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
From M Is for Magic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?
From The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it's true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.
From Anansi Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
From The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Each of the dancers took a partner, the living with the dead, each to each. Bod reached out his hand and found himself touching fingers with, and gazing into the grey eyes of, the lady in the cobweb dress. She smiled at him.
“Hello, Bod,” she said.
“Hello,” he said, as he danced with her. “I don’t know your name.”
“Names aren’t really important,” she said.
“I love your horse. He’s so big! I never knew horses could be that big.”
“He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well.”
“Can I ride him?” asked Bod.
“One day,” she told him, and her cobweb skirts shimmered. “One day. Everybody does.”
“Promise?”
I promise.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.
Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out.
From The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
From The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In ten years time I’ll be… (dead) sixty.
From Signal to Noise
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let's start a new tomorrow, today.
From Anansi Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Name the different kinds of people,’ said Miss Lupescu. ‘Now.’

Bod thought for a moment. ‘The living,’ he said. ‘Er. The dead.’ He stopped. Then, ‘... Cats?’ he offered, uncertainly.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.
From Stardust
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')
From Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
From The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you want to call it that. But it is a very specific sort of magic. There's a magic you take from death. Something leaves the world, something else comes into it.
From The Graveyard Book
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.
From The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It doth not hurt", whispered a faint voice, "She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
From Coraline
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Read. Read anything. Read the things they say are good for you, and the things they claim are junk. You'll find what you need to find. Just read.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'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.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You will die with a kiss on your lips and a lie in your heart.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?
From Neverwhere
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
From M Is for Magic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I think, well, I've had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn't fair. Everyone I've ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time... But I think, any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night... 'Strewth, well, you've got to respect the old bastard, haven't you?
From The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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