It’s an artist’s job to show people the world they live in. We hold up mirrors. Neil Gaiman More Quotes by Neil Gaiman More Quotes From Neil Gaiman Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly. Neil Gaiman failure inspirational life Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Whatever you're scared of doing, Do it. Neil Gaiman new-year mistake years Often the adult book is not for you, not yet, or will only be for you when you're ready. But sometimes you will read it anyway, and you will take from it whatever you can. Then, perhaps, you will come back to it when you're older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child. Neil Gaiman adults book children Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art. Neil Gaiman stupid art thinking Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right. Neil Gaiman play heart writing 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. Neil Gaiman junk claims needs 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. Neil Gaiman mind inspirational life Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant. Neil Gaiman reading book children Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. Neil Gaiman eye lying people A world in which there are monsters, and ghosts, and things that want to steal your heart is a world in which there are angels, and dreams and a world in which there is hope. Neil Gaiman angel dream heart Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving. Neil Gaiman perfection writing moving The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. Neil Gaiman design made world I hope the strong women out there aren't quiet and they don't go away, because when people attack you for speaking, the best way to drive them nuts is to smile and carry on speaking, louder, more wisely, more intensely, more articulately than ever. Neil Gaiman strong-women nuts people I know that this is the internet, and we're all anonymous and all that, but really. It doesn't hurt to try to be nice. Neil Gaiman nice hurt trying I don't think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it's raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn't mean you have to write directly about the bad thing; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it. Neil Gaiman hurt mean art THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong. Neil Gaiman eye people thinking You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things. Neil Gaiman finishing design writing I'm somebody who considers happiness a journey, not a destination. Neil Gaiman destination journey 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 differences writing ideas Not only are there no happy endings,' she told him, 'there aren't even any endings. Neil Gaiman happy-endings
