# Neil Gaiman's best quotes (with their source)

"When you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave", stories that have to end and the people who are certain of their own rightness: Neil Gaiman's most quoted lines, from The Sandman, American Gods and Coraline to his lectures and introductions, each with its source.

- 74 votes · 15 items
- Jul 31, 2021 · Courtney R.
- https://even.best/en/l/5146/neil-gaiman-s-best-quotes-with-their-source

## Top 15

1. **It is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — Coraline (2002).
2. **Everybody has a secret world inside of them.** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — The Sandman \#37, A Game of You (1993).
3. **When you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.** (6 · ▲7 ▼1) — Coraline (2002).
4. **Stories have to end. It's what gives them meaning.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Afterword to The Sandman \#75 (1996).
5. **Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Foreword to The Stars My Destination (1999).
6. **Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together.** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — Interview, January Magazine (2002).
7. **Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian (2013).
8. **We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian (2013).
9. **Life imitates art, but clumsily, copying its movements when it thinks it isn't looking.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Trigger Warning (2015), introduction ("Feminine Endings").
10. **Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", The Guardian (2013).
11. **Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.** (1 · ▲4 ▼3) — The Sandman \#65, The Kindly Ones (1995).
12. **The people who scare me are the ones who are certain of their own rightness.** (1 · ▲3 ▼2) — Trigger Warning (2015), introduction ("Observing the Formalities").
13. **The world is always ending, for someone.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Signal to Noise (1992).
14. **Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.** (0 · ▲2 ▼2) — American Gods (2001), ch. 3.
15. **The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.** (-2 · ▲1 ▼3) — Neil Gaiman's Journal (5 November 2004).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.