Neil Gaiman

Recounting the strange is like telling one's dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one's entire day.

There was nowhere they could have gone and they went there anyway.

Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian. All right?

I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.

It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best.

Some of the things are the same no matter which world you're in, kid. One of 'em is this: The quickest way out of something is usually straight through it.

You are an analog girl, living in a digital world.

Are you scared?’ asked Mr. Ibis. ‘Not really.’ ‘Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand.

You musn’t be afraid of the dark.’ ‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.

There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world

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

It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.

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

On the whole, stories don't write themselves.

In reality the world is made of thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It's not even coincidence. It's just the way the world works, with no regard for individuals or propriety.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don't have their own song.

I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispencing justice fairly, and only setting nightmares to rip out the winds of the evil and the wicked. Or just anybody that I don't like.

When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember. Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. And rest.

Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.