"Death’s a funny thing. I used to think it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don’t anymore. I think it’s a slow thing. Like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths until the last big one."
Quote collection
Neil Gaiman quotes (page 34 of 61)
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"Never mind. There. For good or bad. It's done."
"I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again."
"For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse."
"Writing imaginative tales for the young is like sending coals to Newcastle. For coals."
"The converse held reassuringly true: daylight was safe. Daylight was always safe."
"When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."
"If a Devil is one who dares, when others hold back, then I am happy to play the Devil in this Mystery, boy."
"Being a writer of fiction isn't like being a compulsive liar, honestly."
"The cartoon me writes the books cartoon people read in the cartoon world, because they need things to read there too."
"HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS, CROWLEY. And suddenly he knew. He hated that. They could just as easily have told him, they didn't suddenly have to drop chilly knowledge straight into his brain."
"CHOW^TM contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly, the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman."
"And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristan Thorn traveled beyond the fields we know."
"Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island."
"In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence."
"Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?"
"The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward freedom, the drive to escape?"
"Amy: This time can we... lose the bunk beds? The Doctor: No Bunk beds are cool, a bed with a ladder, you can't beat that!"
"The Doctor: Sorry, do you have a name? Idris: Seven hundred years and finally he asks. The Doctor: But what do I call you? Idris: I think you call me... Sexy? The Doctor: [embarrassed] Only when we're alone. Idris: We are alone. The Doctor: Oh. Come on then, Sexy."
"Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own."