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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Stories impact us deeply, staying in our memories long after the details fade.
Neil Gaiman reflects on the profound and lasting effect that stories can have on us, particularly when we encounter them at pivotal moments in our lives. Even when we forget specifics like the title or author, the emotional resonance of a story can linger in our minds, influencing our thoughts and feelings in ways that may not be immediately apparent. This speaks to the power of literature to shape our inner worlds and memories.
Themes
StoriesMemoryLiteratureImpactEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a literary festival, one might say, 'As Neil Gaiman reminds us, stories we encounter at the right time resonate with us forever.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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