Nathaniel > Nathaniel's Quotes

“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, Coraline

“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

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
― Neil Gaiman

“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 foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“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

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.”
― Neil Gaiman

“[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...”
― Neil Gaiman

“Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
― Neil Gaiman

“You've got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There's no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point.”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well known
and it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’t
separate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separate
their human and dog natures.”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“How will the ships navigate
without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were
dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,
was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,
unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“Drugs are a bad habit, so why do it? Because, said Dimple, it isn't the heroin that we're addicted to, it's the drama of the life, the chaos of it, that's the real addiction and we never get over it; and because when you come down to it, the high life, that is, the intoxicated life, is the best of the limited options offered.”
― Jeet Thayil

“My religion is no way of knowing me.”
― Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

“There’s been some discussion as to why God created the world.
Let me clear it up.
He made the world because that’s what he does. He makes things.
A more pertinent question, though pertinence is hardly the point at
this point: why did he make humans?
Now there’s a question.
He made us as a bulwark against loneliness and boredom. Too late
he discovered we were in fact the opposite. We augment boredom; we
deepen loneliness.”
― Jeet Thayil, The Book of Chocolate Saints

“You die. You get old and die. Your anger curdles, your grief dries,
your talent fades on the page. Your cells metastasise into an army
dedicated to the overthrow of you. You become dependent on paid
strangers for the maintenance of your blood and your brittle bones.
You understand that thought is the enemy, the source of all lesions,
tumours, and sarcomas; then thought becomes flesh becomes the
emblem of your shame.”
― Jeet Thayil, The Book of Chocolate Saints