QuoteProject
A god's relationship to the world, even a world in which he was walking, was about as emotionally connected as that of a computer gamer playing with knowledge of the overall shape of the game and armed with a complete set of cheat codes.
Neil Gaiman
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote compares a god's detachment from the world to a gamer's dissociated play, suggesting a lack of emotional engagement despite knowledge and power.

In this thought-provoking quote, Neil Gaiman explores the nature of a god's relationship with the world, likening it to a computer gamer who, despite having intimate knowledge of the game's mechanics and access to cheat codes, remains emotionally disconnected from the characters and events within the game. This analogy suggests that omnipotence and knowledge do not necessarily equate to genuine emotional involvement, highlighting a philosophical perspective on divinity and existence.

Themes

DivinityDetachmentKnowledgeGamingPhilosophyEmotion

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on the nature of divinity, this quote can prompt discussions about emotional connection in spirituality.

More from Neil Gaiman

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
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

It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.
Virginia WoolfRead
Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint. The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other.
Jodi PicoultRead
It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
There is no person without a world.
Anne CarsonRead
Footballers' 'lack of loyalty,' for instance, is not an indication of players' moral delinquency. Instead, the capacity to move on quickly without forming lasting attachments is a skill that the contemporary capitalist world inculcates and relies upon.
Mark FisherRead
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Thomas MooreRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.