Neil Gaiman quote: "Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would."

Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?
NEIL GAIMAN

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning...
NEIL GAIMAN

And there never was an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into ...
NEIL GAIMAN

We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things...
NEIL GAIMAN

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.
NEIL GAIMAN

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
NEIL GAIMAN

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.
NEIL GAIMAN

Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or w...
NEIL GAIMAN

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell u...
NEIL GAIMAN

They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one...
NEIL GAIMAN

I was kidnapped by aliens, they came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by weari...
NEIL GAIMAN

It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning,...
NEIL GAIMAN

Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.
NEIL GAIMAN

I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got ev...
NEIL GAIMAN

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and i...
NEIL GAIMAN

Oh, he'll help us whether he wants to or not. I told the truth. I would not kill him. The death-curs...
NEIL GAIMAN

We are all improved by the glow of memory.
NEIL GAIMAN

There is a madness, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the...
NEIL GAIMAN

I suppose the point you grow up is the point you let the dreams go.
NEIL GAIMAN

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone,
We must speak of other mat...
NEIL GAIMAN

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you k...
NEIL GAIMAN

Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?
NEIL GAIMAN

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they we...
NEIL GAIMAN

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no cl...
NEIL GAIMAN

Love that we can not have is the one that lasts the longest, hurts the deepest and feels the stronge...
NEIL GAIMAN

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only...
NEIL GAIMAN

I've been blogging since February of 2001. When I started blogging, it was a dinosaur blog. It w...
NEIL GAIMAN

The last dead leaves of fall crackled underfoot, winter-crisp.
NEIL GAIMAN

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Proper bread was white, and pre-sliced, and tasted like almost nothing: that was the point.
NEIL GAIMAN

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

Even nothing cannot last forever.
NEIL GAIMAN

You know what happens when you dream of falling? Sometimes you wake up.
Sometimes the fall kil...
NEIL GAIMAN

Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Some things are too big to be seen; some emotions are too huge to be felt.
NEIL GAIMAN

And all the time we spent in this place would fade and vanish, like a dawn dream on waking that colo...
NEIL GAIMAN

I think all geniuses - or the ones thet I've run into - tend to have a faintly tenuous relationship ...
NEIL GAIMAN

It is selfish to love people and expect them to love you back.
NEIL GAIMAN

Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Do not lose hope - what you seek will be found.
NEIL GAIMAN

You might have loved me, if you had known me. If you had ever known my mind. If you would have walke...
NEIL GAIMAN

I try to talk to you, but I don't know what to say. I am afraid you don't want me to say anything. S...
NEIL GAIMAN

exists for him chiefly as a body in a sequence of hotel rooms.
NEIL GAIMAN

So whenever we come together to work together it's because it's fun and because we want to.
NEIL GAIMAN

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to wor...
NEIL GAIMAN

He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in pac...
NEIL GAIMAN

I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.'

'If he didn't care about you, you ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Nearly' only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.
NEIL GAIMAN

Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now mo...
NEIL GAIMAN

You are obvious, boy. You are difficult to miss. If you came to me in company with a purple lion, a ...
NEIL GAIMAN

You're brave. You are the bravest person I know, and you are my friend. I don't care if you are imag...
NEIL GAIMAN

It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Somebody would say, 'Can you do us an article about big, bodice-ripping, blockbusting romance novels...
NEIL GAIMAN

I felt very much like a hooker who had just been told she was a lady of the evening.
NEIL GAIMAN

No, look, there's a blue box. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It can go anywher...
NEIL GAIMAN

I guess when your heart gets broken you sort of start to see cracks in everything. I'm convinced tha...
NEIL GAIMAN

He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and...
NEIL GAIMAN

In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's ...
NEIL GAIMAN

There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the rava...
NEIL GAIMAN

I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it.
NEIL GAIMAN

Fat Charlie wasn't sure that he liked freedom, ... There was too much open air involved.
NEIL GAIMAN

Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere...
NEIL GAIMAN

This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. Th...
NEIL GAIMAN

The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow...
NEIL GAIMAN

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a f...
NEIL GAIMAN

People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take respons...
NEIL GAIMAN

I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who ...
NEIL GAIMAN

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stol...
NEIL GAIMAN

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to k...
NEIL GAIMAN

Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to hims...
NEIL GAIMAN

The imagination is a muscle. If it is not exercised, it atrophies.
NEIL GAIMAN

It is only a gesture," he said, turning back to Shadow. "But gestures mean everything. The death of ...
NEIL GAIMAN

I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to s...
NEIL GAIMAN

So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into yo...
NEIL GAIMAN

While clothes do not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do not ...
NEIL GAIMAN

He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, p...
NEIL GAIMAN

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

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I...
NEIL GAIMAN

You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special ab...
NEIL GAIMAN

We have eyes and we have nerveses
We have tails we have teeth
You'll all get what you dese...
NEIL GAIMAN

You have a very open relationship with your fans."

"Yes. We have an open relationship. Ob...
NEIL GAIMAN

If you make art, people will talk about it. Some of the things they say will be nice, some won’t. ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality waiting to ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.
NEIL GAIMAN

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, ...
NEIL GAIMAN

You were her way here, and it's a dangerous thing to be a door.
NEIL GAIMAN

I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of t...
NEIL GAIMAN

Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is...
NEIL GAIMAN

It was love, I knew, and it tasted like champagne in my mind.
NEIL GAIMAN

I saw her chewing gum, when I was thirteen, and I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.
NEIL GAIMAN

When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are s...
NEIL GAIMAN

Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.
NEIL GAIMAN

As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.
NEIL GAIMAN

. . . I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories.
I liked that. Books were safer than oth...
NEIL GAIMAN

Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything...
NEIL GAIMAN

That's the trouble with living things. Don't last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And...
NEIL GAIMAN

Dolorita Hunsickle says that the chipmunks tell your fortune if you catch them but I never did. She ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me.
NEIL GAIMAN

I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.
NEIL GAIMAN

Rebirth always follows death.
NEIL GAIMAN

Being a grown up is highly over rated. Just be an author.
NEIL GAIMAN

You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.
NEIL GAIMAN

One thing I've learned: you can know anything, it's all there, you just have to find it.
NEIL GAIMAN

All that I did," she said, "everything I tried to do. All for nothing."

Nothing is done ...
NEIL GAIMAN

But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire...
NEIL GAIMAN

I think the short story is a very underrated art form. We know that novels deserve respect.
NEIL GAIMAN

I don't have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men.
NEIL GAIMAN

Well?" said Loki. "What about you, Heimdall? Do you have any suggestions?"
"I do," said Heimdal...
NEIL GAIMAN

Loki was trying to look serious, but even so, he was smiling at the corners of his mouth. It was not...
NEIL GAIMAN

Cease your weeping!" he said. "It is I, Loki, here to rescue you!"
Idunn glared at him with red...
NEIL GAIMAN

There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles ...
NEIL GAIMAN

What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?"
The marquis sighed. And then he twisted ...
NEIL GAIMAN

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.
NEIL GAIMAN

He..." Richard began. "The marquis. Well, you know, to be honest, he seems a little bit dodgy to me....
NEIL GAIMAN

I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.
NEIL GAIMAN

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
NEIL GAIMAN

If you were to try and pick him out of a group of boys, you’d be wrong. He’d be the other one. O...
NEIL GAIMAN

You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show p...
NEIL GAIMAN

La persona más valiente que conozco, y eres mi amigo. Me importa un pimiento que seas imaginario
NEIL GAIMAN

You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.
NEIL GAIMAN

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It take...
NEIL GAIMAN

But," expostulated Josiah Worthington. "But. A human child. A living child. I mean. I mean, I mean. ...
NEIL GAIMAN

I make things up and write them down.
NEIL GAIMAN

M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them...
NEIL GAIMAN

I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget t...
NEIL GAIMAN

There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, ...
NEIL GAIMAN

She's as old as the hills, evil as a snake, all malevolence and magic and death.
NEIL GAIMAN

You wouldn't have to wash," said Brian, whose parents forced him to wash a great deal more than he t...
NEIL GAIMAN

Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish.
NEIL GAIMAN

In fact, the only things in the flat Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants....
NEIL GAIMAN

We'll win, of course," he said.
"You don't want that," said the demon.
"Why not, pray?�...
NEIL GAIMAN

All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the r...
NEIL GAIMAN

Sister Mary chose that moment to come in with the tea. Satanist or not, she'd also found a plate and...
NEIL GAIMAN

According to my daughters, my most irritating habit is asking for cups of tea.
NEIL GAIMAN

I'm Jill Dumpty."
"So your brother was Humpty Dumpty?"
"And he didn't fall off that wall, ...
NEIL GAIMAN

You’re playing with fire,” she warned him. “That’s how I know I’m alive,
NEIL GAIMAN

Nosotros escuchábamos a los Adverts y a los Jam, a los Stranglers, los Clash y los Sex Pistols. Aun...
NEIL GAIMAN

Por muy lejos que te vayas, nunca podrás huir de ti mismo.
NEIL GAIMAN

È come quando c’è chi crede di essere felice andando a vivere da qualche altra parte, ma poi imp...
NEIL GAIMAN

7 Somewhere
NEIL GAIMAN

Someone had once told her that if you look up at the sky from the bottom of a mine shaft, even in th...
NEIL GAIMAN

Thank you,” said the dog.
NEIL GAIMAN

Spiders’ webs only have to be large enough to catch flies.’ Coraline
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline sighed. ‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ she said. ‘I don’t want whatever I...
NEIL GAIMAN

Stay here with us,” said the voice from the figure at the end of the room. “We will listen to yo...
NEIL GAIMAN

The air was alive with yellow wasps. We must have stepped on a wasps' nest in a rotten branch as we ...
NEIL GAIMAN

In the flat above Coraline’s, under the roof, was a crazy old man with a big mustache. He told Cor...
NEIL GAIMAN

I don’t want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got ...
NEIL GAIMAN

You people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't ne...
NEIL GAIMAN

It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline's father stopped working and made them all dinner.

Coraline was disgusted. "Dadd...
NEIL GAIMAN

She said, ‘You know that I love you.’ And, despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the ot...
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who th...
NEIL GAIMAN

No one had hugged her like that since she had retired from the theater.
NEIL GAIMAN

Cats don't have shoulders, not like people do. But the cat shrugged, in one smooth movement that sta...
NEIL GAIMAN

Realmente no lo entiendes, ¿verdad?. No quiero tener todo lo que deseo. Nadie lo quiere, no de verd...
NEIL GAIMAN

It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back agai...
NEIL GAIMAN

It seemed to Coraline that it was crouching, and staring down at her, as if it were not really a hou...
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline went over to the window and watched the rain come down. It wasn't the kind of rain you coul...
NEIL GAIMAN

It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon ...
NEIL GAIMAN

How big are souls anyway?" asked Coraline.
The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and l...
NEIL GAIMAN

Oh ... My twitchy witchy girl I think you are so nice, I give you bowls of porridge And I give you b...
NEIL GAIMAN

But how can you walk away from something and still come
back to it?"
"Easy," said the cat....
NEIL GAIMAN

o non voglio tutto ciò che desidero. Nessuno lo vuole. Non veramente. Che divertimento sarebbe, se ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline’s father stopped working and made them all dinner. Coraline was disgusted. “Daddy,” s...
NEIL GAIMAN

Coraline tried drawing the mist. After ten minutes of drawing she still had a white sheet of paper w...
NEIL GAIMAN

Small world," said Coraline. "It's big enough for her," said the cat. "Spiders' webs only have to be...
NEIL GAIMAN

Cats don’t have names,” it said.

“No?” said Coraline.

“No,” said t...
NEIL GAIMAN

Old but contented, the face of a man who had sipped life’s vinegar and found it, by and large, to ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, pe...
NEIL GAIMAN

I believe [...] that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death pe...
NEIL GAIMAN

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that NEIL GAIMAN

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it�...
NEIL GAIMAN

Fair enough,” said Thor. “What’s the price?” “Freya’s hand in marriage.” “He just wa...
NEIL GAIMAN

It would have been hard for Fat Charlie to say exactly when the accumulation of birds on the wire me...
NEIL GAIMAN

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.
NEIL GAIMAN

You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.
NEIL GAIMAN

In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glitt...
NEIL GAIMAN

Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?
NEIL GAIMAN

She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap...
NEIL GAIMAN

The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be...
NEIL GAIMAN

The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.
NEIL GAIMAN

Oh- my twitchy witchy girl
I think you are so nice,
I give you bowls of porridge
And ...
NEIL GAIMAN

Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to...
NEIL GAIMAN

I am the mother of Odin's stallion, Sleipnir. I am the father of Fenrir Sun-Eater, and of Hel Half-R...
NEIL GAIMAN

We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves.
NEIL GAIMAN

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and i...
NEIL GAIMAN

You're a poem?' I repeated.

She chewed her lower lip. 'If you want. I am a poem, or I am ...
NEIL GAIMAN

We...we could be friends.'

We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing Afric...
NEIL GAIMAN

What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,'...
NEIL GAIMAN

Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as ...
NEIL GAIMAN

When you smiled you had my undivided attention. When you laughed you had my urge to laugh with you. ...
NEIL GAIMAN

To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, bu...
NEIL GAIMAN

Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe...
NEIL GAIMAN

Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and free...
NEIL GAIMAN

My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ...
NEIL GAIMAN

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you ar...
NEIL GAIMAN

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

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Neil Gaiman

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

Neil Gaiman

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