Neil Gaiman — People

Graduates in gowns throw their caps in a grand gothic hall as a speaker stands at the lectern before tall stained-glass windows. — Original artwork

And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.

Neil Gaiman

Painterly small wooden writing desk with an open book, quill, pale flower and red wax seal. — Original artwork

I decided that I would do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn’t get the money, then you didn’t have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn’t get the money, at least I’d have the work.

Neil Gaiman

One fresh footprint in a small smooth patch of fine white sand, surrounded by pale blue. — Original artwork

If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.

Neil Gaiman

A small paintbrush drawing a curling teal stroke that divides into two, on a warm white background. — Original artwork

If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.

Neil Gaiman

A fountain pen leans in a glass of water with a small pale bulb hanging beside it against a coral background. — Original artwork

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Neil Gaiman

A dark-blue flag stands on a rocky mound beside a round brass shield beneath storm clouds. — Original artwork

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do.

Neil Gaiman

Three carved theatrical masks in black, charcoal and pale grey show different degrees of frowning against slate. — Original artwork

New messages: END IT ALL was one of them. PUT YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR MISERY. BE A MAN – DO YOURSELF IN. HAVE A FATAL ACCIDENT TODAY.

Neil Gaiman

A tilted blue ceramic cup and a small white column partly submerged in a shallow glass dish of water. — Original artwork

“No wonder Atlantis sank,” muttered Richard. “If they all felt like this in the morning it was probably a relief.”

Neil Gaiman

Small folded paper foxes peek from behind an upturned terracotta flowerpot on a yellow surface. — Original artwork

Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn’t occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.

Neil Gaiman

A burlap sack spills folded paper scraps onto a red velvet stool and the ground beneath it. — Original artwork

Rubbish! screamed a fat, elderly woman, in Richard's ear, as he passed her malodorous stall. "Junk!" she continued. "Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe and useless piles of shit. You know you want it."

Neil Gaiman

A tall stack of index cards and a magnifier next to a small gray owl figurine in big round glasses. — Original artwork

So be wise, because the world needs more wisdom, and if you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise, and then just behave like they would.

Neil Gaiman

A small wooden ladder leans against a cardboard crescent moon with a brass compass at its base, in navy and saffron tones. — Original artwork

Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

Neil Gaiman

Small empty slate chair facing a standing oval mirror — Original artwork

The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you.

Neil Gaiman

A small girl in a yellow raincoat peers through a little door in the wallpapered hall of an old house, a black cat watching from the stairs. — Original artwork

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

Neil Gaiman

A toddler in a nightshirt stands among leaning headstones in a moonlit hilltop graveyard, ghostly figures nearby and a hooded man below. — Original artwork

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

Neil Gaiman

A cloaked figure at a lectern watches an open book pour a spiral of stars and mist into a dreamlike gothic sky. — Original artwork

A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.

Disputed attribution: Neil Gaiman