Neverwhere Quotes

“He 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, Neverwhere

“You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“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

“Beware of Doors.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. ”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“The price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“So many things to see, people to do.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Richard wrote a mental diary in his head.
Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiance, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as an life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement and I tried to be Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiance, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruit fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Nice' in a bodyguard is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“He..." Richard began. "The marquis. Well, you know, to be honest, he seems a little bit dodgy to me."

Door stopped. The steps dead-ended in a rough brick wall. "Mm," she agreed. "He's a little bit dodgy in the same way that rats are a little bit covered in fur.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Mind the gap!”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“...Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth...”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said.
"Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats."
Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?"
The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, "Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“We have to get the... the thing I got... to the Angel. And then he'll tell Door about her family, and he'll tell me how to get home."
Lamia looked at Hunter with delight. "And he can give you brains," she said, cheerfully, "and me a heart.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Metaphors failed him, then. He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“He felt her heart beating against his chest. The moment began to transmute, and he wondered if there was something he should do. He wondered if he should kiss her. He wondered if he wanted to kiss her, and he realized that he truly didn't know.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“I want to go home. Then he mentally underlined the last sentence three times, rewrote it in huge letters in red ink, and circled it before putting a number of exclamation marks next to it in his mental margin.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“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, Neverwhere

“For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere