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

Categorized in : People Life Tragedy

As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

Neil Gaiman

becoming literature morning

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.

Neil Gaiman

freedom-of-speech country world

Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus?

Neil Gaiman

dog fun people

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

Neil Gaiman

fool truth science

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.

Neil Gaiman

sky writing beach

Rock and roll stars have it much better than writers when they're on a tour.

Neil Gaiman

rocks stars journey

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.

Neil Gaiman

parent kids children

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Neil Gaiman

stories writing needs

What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?" "Stories. And they give me hope.

Neil Gaiman

atoms principles giving

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Neil Gaiman

stories writing lying

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.

Neil Gaiman

lasts violence sanctuary

Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.

Neil Gaiman

choices path sometimes

You are young, and in love. Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.

Neil Gaiman

miserable-person positive men

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.

Neil Gaiman

responsibility life believe

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

Neil Gaiman

tangled morning men

I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?

Neil Gaiman

knows

Firstly, there no such person as Death.

Neil Gaiman

horse white death

All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past. We can watch the passage of creatures from the infinity of now, from all the worlds like ours, only fractionally different. And we follow them with our eyes, ghost things, and the humans see nothing.

Neil Gaiman

cat eye past

What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'Cats don't have names,' it said. 'No?' said Coraline. 'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

Neil Gaiman

cat names people

Even the proudest spirit can be broken with love.

Neil Gaiman

coraline broken spirit