A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil GaimanRead
We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes individual responsibility in making choices and facing their consequences.
Neil Gaiman's quote reminds us that each person is accountable for their own life decisions. It underscores the importance of personal agency, asserting that we have the power to make choices that define our lives, and that we must also be prepared to face the outcomes of those choices, whether positive or negative.
Themes
ChoicesConsequencesResponsibilityAgencyLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech to inspire students about their future.
More from Neil Gaiman
All quotes →Jesus. Low-Key Lyesmith," said Shadow. and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-smith." "You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and the embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.
Neil GaimanRead
As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.
Neil GaimanRead
The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.
Neil GaimanRead
Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.
Neil GaimanRead
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
Neil GaimanRead
Similar quotes
Europe and the world are waiting for us to defend the spirit of the enlightenment everywhere.
Emmanuel MacronRead
I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
A. E. HousmanRead
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry MillerRead
The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection.
Mahatma GandhiRead
A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
Reinhold NiebuhrRead
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead