Neil Gaiman is a writer of comics, novels and graphic novels of fiction and non-fiction, with a dark and fantastical tone that plays with the limits of human capacity. Among his most notable works are Coraline, Stardust and The Sandman.
If you are interested in knowing the philosophy of life and thought of this author, keep reading; here we will review Neil Gaiman’s best quotes
Below we will see a compilation of Neil Gaiman’s best personal quotes and about his stories.
1. We owe it to each other to tell stories.
Stories are part of the culture of towns and people.
2. I lived in books more than anywhere else.
Talking about feeling like books are your true home.
3. The world always seems brighter when you have just done something that wasn’t there before.
The power of every writer, bringing new things to life.
4. Imagination is a muscle. If you don’t exercise, you atrophy.
That is why it is important to encourage imagination in children.
5. I get bored easily and, above all, for me writing is not work.
When you do what you love, it stops becoming a job.
6. The most interesting thing happening in the art world of the 80s were comics.
A new art form that became a way of telling stories in a different way.
7. Ultimately you are what others think you are.
Everyone will have a different opinion about you.
8. I don’t want to have everything I want. Nobody wants it, not really.
Sometimes we disguise what we need with things that don’t really make us feel complete.
9. When you’re afraid but you do it anyway, that’s bravery.
Overcoming fear is taking risks despite your insecurities.
10. The old rules are breaking down and no one knows what the new rules are. So make your own rules.
It’s okay to follow your values, but also build your own beliefs.
11. And then only the memories remain. And these fade and blend.
Memories are never completely faithful.
12. Your heart will spend your life longing for something you can’t have, something you can’t even imagine, and that longing won’t let you sleep, and will haunt you throughout your life.
The worst regret is not having had something we never could in the first place.
13. The only thing you have that no one else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.
The greatest attraction of people is what they are capable of doing.
14. I hope that in this coming year you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are doing new things, trying new things, learning, living, trying hard, changing yourself, changing your world.
Mistakes are what drive us to grow and therefore be better.
15. They are made of points of view, images, memories, word games and lost hopes…
Talking about what dreams are made of.
16. It’s amazing how much of us are still immersed in dreams when we wake up every morning and how fragile that moment is.
Dreams can also be a great source of inspiration.
17. If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won’t.
Art is a form of expression and each person perceives it differently.
18. Do what you have to do to continue making art.
Encouraging us not to leave the path of artistic creation.
19. Every story has a happy ending, you just have to know when to stop telling it.
Everything that is started must have its deserved end.
20. Do the things only you can do. The impulse, when starting out, is to copy. And that’s not a bad thing.
Getting inspiration from others is not bad, but it’s up to you to find your own path.
21. Have you been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and ruin you.
There are times when love is a death sentence.
22. I’ve been making a list of things they don’t teach you in school… They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.
School can be restrictive in terms of valuable lessons for everyday life and success.
23. May your next year be full of magic, dreams and good madness.
A very special wish.
24. It’s like people who think they’ll be happy if they go live somewhere else, but learn that it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take it with you.
There is no point in looking for something new if we drag what bothers us everywhere we go.
25. Monsters come in all shapes and sizes.
Fears are individual.
26. Never trust the narrator. Just trust the story.
A good story is one that hooks the audience.
27. Things don’t have to have happened to be true.
Not all truths are empirical.
28. Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes when you fall, you fly.
We must always have an open mind to reality to be able to challenge it.
29. People think that dreams are not real simply because they are not made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real.
They are real because they are part of us.
30. Life is a disease… invariably fatal.
A dark point of view on life.
31. Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good day for writing, and on good writing days nothing else matters.
Every creator finds a valuable space to make some art.
32. Not only could we all know everything. We make. We simply tell ourselves no, so that everything is bearable.
Many of the limitations we believe we have are a product of our mind.
33. There has never been a real war that was not fought between two groups of people who were sure they were right.
Why do you think wars occur?
34. The gods die. And when they really die, they are not mourned or remembered.
They become a memory of what they once were.
35. It’s always worth having tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever.
It is better to know that we tried than to be left wondering what would have happened.
36. Books were safer than other people anyway.
Your favorite refuge.
37. You have the same thing as everyone else; a lifetime.
A life that you can take advantage of in different ways.
38. Children have the right to find their own authors, and I want to be that author, not the material of a course syllabus.
Every child should have the opportunity to explore their imagination.
39. To survive you must believe.
Believe in yourself and that you can achieve it.
40. Are we human because we look at the stars or do we look at the stars because we are human?
A sea of possibilities that we don’t know if we will discover at some point.
41. Write your story as it should be written. Write honestly and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure if there are any other rules. Not any that matter.
His advice to all those who wish to write.
42. I couldn’t be an angel again… Innocence, once lost, cannot be recovered.
Innocence is a valuable treasure that is often underestimated.
43. Better to have burned in the dark, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the dark, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.
Overcoming adversity takes time, but it is not impossible.
44. Ideas are harder to kill than people, but in the end they can be killed.
Ideas die when someone takes advantage of their power and twists them in their favor.
45. Truly dangerous people believe that they do what they do solely and exclusively because it is, without a doubt, the right thing to do. And that’s what makes them dangerous.
People who commit malicious acts believe that this is their reason for living.
46. Being a writer is a very peculiar kind of job: it’s always you against a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and very often the blank sheet of paper wins.
Creative block is the most recurring enemy of every artist.
47. There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.
We break down when we don’t get the esp we long for.
48. Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things and can sometimes pay the rent.
Not only is it his passion but it is his way of making a living.
49. What I’m saying is that a town is not a town without a bookstore. You may call yourself a town, but unless you own a bookstore, you know you’re not fooling anyone.
Emphasizing the need for bookstores to exist in towns.
50. Stories and adventures are the shadows of the truth that will last when mere facts are dust, ashes and oblivion.
It is through stories that we know the adventures of our ancestors.
51. Sometimes the best way to learn something is by doing it wrong and observing what you did.
There is no way to learn if we don’t make mistakes first.
52. Empathy is a tool for forming groups of people, to allow us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.
Empathy helps us have better communication with others.
53. As sure as water is wet and the days are long and a friend will always let you down in the end.
True friends are those who stay until the end.
54. Some of them are things that people are afraid of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be afraid of a long time ago.
Explaining the different ‘monsters’ that exist for people.
55. Face your life, it is pain, it is pleasure, do not leave any path untaken.
Life is not static and therefore it is full of good and bad moments that must be lived.
56. I hope you read good books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art: write, draw, build, sing, or live like only you can. And I hope that, sometime next year, you’ll surprise yourself.
A beautiful message of encouragement and motivation for those who want to make art.
57. Most of us only find our own voice after sounding like many other people. But the only thing you have, that no one else has, is you.
Finding our way can take time and that is why consistency is the key.
58. I know people who love negative reviews because it means they have made something happen and gotten people talking; I know people who have never read any of your reviews, your call. You continue making art.
The important thing is to learn to handle criticism and take it as inspiration.
59. You will have already done that art, and when they are talking about the last thing you did, you should already be doing the next thing.
Speaking about how we should not stay with the old, we must continue to reinvent ourselves.
60. It is the privilege of jesters to tell truths that everyone is silent about.
In honor there is always a small dose of lethal truth.
61. A daughter’s ingratitude is sharper than a reptile’s tooth. But love can break the haughtiest spirit.
Love can take us to the top or drag us to madness.
62. I have never met anyone who was what they seemed; or at least, it was just what he or she seemed like. People carry worlds within them.
No one is one thing because we have all experienced different things in life.
63. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.
Do what your passion guides you to do.
64. I couldn’t control the world I lived in, I couldn’t run away from the things, people or moments that hurt me, but I enjoyed what made me happy like a dwarf.
It is impossible to control the world in our favor, but we can enjoy what we do in it.
65. Sometimes monsters are things that should scare people, but they don’t.
Monsters are the fears that we generate with our minds.
66. This is how you do it: you sit at the keyboard and put one word after another until it’s finished. It’s that easy and that difficult.
The ‘secret’ of how to work to make a story.
67. A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.
A portal to other worlds that nourish our creativity.
68. The key is not to learn from children, but not to forget that we were children.
Use the power of curiosity to create new things.
69. Where would the fun be if I had everything I wanted just like that? It’s that and nothing more, and then what?
The comforting thing about having something is knowing how much we worked to obtain it.
70. Thanks to social networks, teenagers discover titles that are cool, and that sells a lot of books.
The positive power of social networks for writers and as a motivation for young people to approach art.
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