"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman

"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections)

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
— Neil Gaiman

"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."
— Neil Gaiman

"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. "
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You)

"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."
— Neil Gaiman

"Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you."
— Neil Gaiman

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time"
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent."
— Neil Gaiman

"Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue."
— Neil Gaiman

"Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all."
— Neil Gaiman

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists)

"That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake)

"She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars."
— Neil Gaiman (Stardust)

"There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts."
— Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)

"Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created."
— Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
— Neil Gaiman

"I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But is this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. "
— Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere: A Novel)

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. -- G.K. Chesterton"
— Neil Gaiman (Coraline)

"Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!"
— Neil Gaiman

"It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning, and it is astonishing how fragile that can be."
— Neil Gaiman (Coraline)

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."
— Neil Gaiman

"Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain."
— Neil Gaiman (Stardust)

"I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 8: Worlds' End)

"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 Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives)

"In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again."
— Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders)

"Lucifer protests he was never to blame for inducing anyone to sin, and that he’s never had an interest in owning souls: 'They die, and they come here – having transgressed against what they believed to be right – and expect us to fulfill their desire for pain and retribution. I don’t make them come here… I need no souls. And how can anyone own a soul? No, they belong to themselves. They just hate to have to face up to it.'"
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists)

"I am selfish, private and easily bored. Will this be a problem?"
— Neil Gaiman (A Study in Emerald)

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused."
— Paulo Coelho

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"I don't know what I've gained from loving you, but the need for anyone else is what I've lost."
— Roo McKuen

"Unrequited love is all right in books and things, but in real life, it completely sucks"
— Meg Cabot (Haunted)

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
— Gabriel García Márquez

"I wondered what happened when you offered yourself to someone, and they opened you, only to discover you were not the gift they expected and they had to smile and nod and say thank you all the same."
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain."
— Carson McCullers

""ammisions of love amuse me especially when unrequited"
"...looking better in black than the widows of our ennemies."
"just ask her so she can turn you down and we can get on with our lives while you fester in miserable humiliation .""
— Cassandra Clare

"And so I wish for patience, and grace, and strength to just let him be happy. Mostly I pray for the strength to not make his life worse because of what I want. That's the toughest part, letting go, you know? That's the part of grace that really sucks."
— One Tree Hill (Peyton Sawyer)

"As long as you're happy, I'll deal with the consequences. "
— Megan Dillion

"She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years."
— Julia Quinn (The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever)

"It’s the Longing that ultimately undoes you. When it finds you, it gnaws at your bones and tugs at your chest. It fills you up inside like rot and makes you dream dreams and it drowns you. The Longing keeps you in bed, clutching at your sheets while the world goes on outside. It smells like old leaves and cigarette smoke, mixed with the scent of far-off places you will hear of, but never see. It’s the gloss on a lover’s lips the moment you realize you will never kiss those lips again. It is the bittersweet, unrequited love of creation and it will break your heart again and again and again. If you know the Longing the way I do, then these words are redundant. We understand each other perfectly, you and I."
— Matthew Sturges (House of Mystery, Part Four, Room and Boredom)

"A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain."
— Abraham Cowley