You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?” (1997)
Full essay.
Later, he wondered if he could have changed things, if that gesture would have done any good, if it could have averted any of the harm that was to come. He told himself it wouldn’t. He knew it wouldn’t. But still, afterward, he wished that, just for a moment on that slow flight home, he had touched Wednesday’s hand.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
American Gods, ch. 10 (2001)
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. 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.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
American Gods, ch. 13 [Sam] (2001)
“You’re fucked up, Mister. But you’re cool.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
“I believe that’s what they call the human condition,” said Shadow.
American Gods, ch. 7 (2001)
Crowley thumped the wheel. Everything had been going so well, he’d had it really under his thumb these few centuries. That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens “Eleven Years Ago” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens, “Eleven Years Ago” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
He’d been an angel once. He hadn’t meant to Fall. He’d just hung around with the wrong people.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens, “Eleven Years Ago” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
Most of the members of the convent were old-fashoned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They’d been brought up to it and weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens, “Eleven Years Ago” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
They had once — at Adam’s instigation — tried a health food diet for a while one afternoon. Their verdict was that you could live very well on healthy food provided you had a big cooked lunch beforehand.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens, “Thursday” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Good Omens, “Wednesday” [with Terry Pratchett] (1990)
I’ve never been convinced that there’s any meaningful division between high culture and pop culture — I think there’s good stuff out there, and there’s stuff that’s not much good, and that Sturgeon’s Law applies to high culture and popular culture: 90% of it will be crap, which means that 10% of it will be amazing.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neil Gaiman’s Journal (2 Apr 2009)
Full text.
I think any argument that states that comics (or radio or film or a musical or the novel or insert your favourite medium here…) by its nature trivialises its subject matter is foolish, shortsighted, dim, lazy and wrong. You can say, “This is a bad comic.” You can’t say, “This is bad because it’s a comic.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neil Gaiman’s Journal (21 Feb 2008)
Entry
You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art. Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neil Gaiman’s Journal, “Why defend freedom of icky speech?” (1 Dec 2008 )
Full text.
Richard had noted that events were cowards: they didn’t occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neverwhere, ch. 1 (1996)
And Islington said nothing, but it smiled, in the manner of a cat who has not only devoured the cream and the canary, but also the chicken you were saving for dinner, and the crème brûlée that would have been dessert.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neverwhere, ch. 17 (1996)
“I am impressed. What a brain, Mister Vandemar. Keen and incisive isn’t the half of it. Some of us are so sharp,” and he leaned in closer to Richard, went up on tiptoes into Richard’s face, “we could just cut ourselves.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neverwhere, ch. 2 [Mr. Croup] (1996)
Richard did not believe in angels. He never had believed in angels. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you, and saying your name.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neverwhere, ch. 9 (1996)
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.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 1, Preludes and Nocturnes, “24 Hours” (#6) (1989)
“And then she woke up.” I suppose there are worse endings.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 2, The Doll’s House, “Lost Hearts” [Rose Walker] (#16) (1990)
Little one, I would like to see anyone — prophet, king or God — persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 3, Dream Country, “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” [Cynical Cat] (#18) (1990)
It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 3, Dream Country, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” [Dream] (#19) (1990)
Perhaps because the story includes William Shakespeare as a character and is named after Shakespeare's play (which is performed in the story), this line has been misattributed to Shakespeare himself.
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgotten.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 3, Dream Country, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” [Dream] (#19) (1990)
Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 4, Season of Mists, Prologue (#21) (1991)
“I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
“Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out.”
The Sandman, Vol. 6, Fables and Reflections, “Distant Mirrors – Three Septembers and a January” [Norton I and Death] (#31) (1991)
It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 6, Fables and Reflections, “Fear of Falling” [Dream] (Vertigo Preview) (1992)
“But I did okay, didn’t I? I mean I got, what, fifteen thousand years. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? I lived a pretty long time.”
“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 7, Brief Lives, “Chapter 3″ [Bernie Capax and Death] (#43) (1992)
“Was that the truth, Cluracan?”
“All of it except the sword-fight with the palace guard, which I threw in to add verisimilitude, excitement, and local color to an otherwise bald and insipid narrative.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 8, World’s End, “Cluracan’s Tale” [Innkeeper and Cluracan] (#52) (1993)
Can’t say I’ve ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending any time. You know where you are with an ending.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 9, The Kindly Ones, “Chapter 1″ [Eldest Fate] (#57) (1994)
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
The Sandman, Vol. 9, The Kindly Ones, “Chapter 4″ [Dream] (#60) (1994)
Make mistakes. Make great mistakes, make wonderful mistakes, make glorious mistakes. Better to make a hundred mistakes than to stare at a blank piece of paper too scared to do anything wrong, too scared to do anything.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Speech, Harvey Awards (2004)
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