Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman; November 10, 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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All scientifically possible technology and social change predicted in science fiction will come to pass, but none of it will work properly.
All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.
Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over.
Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.
Honestly, if you're given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don't say 'what kind of tea?'
I think... I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt.
I tweet, therefore my entire life has shrunk to 140 character chunks of instant event and predigested gnomic wisdom. And swearing.
I've known ambitious people with no aptitude for the thing they did. Most of whom, rather terrifyingly, tended to succeed.
If one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.
It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
It's like the people who believe they'll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn't work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realizing that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.
People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.
Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.
Sometimes the best way to learn something is by doing it wrong and looking at what you did.
The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.
The great thing about Batman and Superman, in truth, is that they are literally transcendent. They are better than most of the stories they are in.
The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.
The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.
The world is always ending, for someone.
There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.
We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.
We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world.
We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we've shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.
You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.
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(Also born November 10: Oliver Goldsmith and John Marquand)
Categories: Neil Gaiman, Quotes of the day
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