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
When things go wrong, this is what you should do. Make good art.
Interpretation
What this quote means
In difficult times, channel your experiences into creativity and expression.
Neil Gaiman's quote emphasizes the importance of harnessing one's challenges and adversities to create something meaningful. Rather than succumbing to despair when faced with difficulties, the quote encourages individuals to transform their struggles into art, suggesting that creative expression can be a powerful outlet for processing emotions and experiences.
Themes
ArtCreativityAdversityExpressionStruggle
In practice
Example use cases
During a talk about coping with life's challenges, you might say, 'As Neil Gaiman puts it, when things go wrong, we should strive to make good art.'
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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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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.
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Similar quotes
Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else's aesthetics. I think you're born an artist or not. I couldn't have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.
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What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.
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Every film is a political act; it's how you see the world.
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