Fiction Quotes by Neil Gaiman

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

— Neil Gaiman

“Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”

— Neil Gaiman

Children's fiction is the most important fiction of all.

— Neil Gaiman

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

— Neil Gaiman

Being a writer of fiction isn't like being a compulsive liar, honestly.

— Neil Gaiman

“She had a face which was not so much freckled as one big freckle with occasional areas of skin.”

— Neil Gaiman

I'm sure there's an alternate universe where I got to become a pulpy science fiction writer.

— Neil Gaiman

“Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it.”

— Neil Gaiman

Fictions are merely frozen dreams, linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no more than the…

— Neil Gaiman

It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.

— Neil Gaiman

“Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through…

— Neil Gaiman

“No two readers can or will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author.”

— Neil Gaiman

I was thinking one of the great things about fiction is we, as a race, only get to look out of our…

— Neil Gaiman

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

— Neil Gaiman

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up…

— Neil Gaiman

You can tell the date of an old science fiction novel by every word on the page. Nothing dates harder and faster…

— Neil Gaiman

“I hope, that in the days, and weeks, and years to come, the question of where the dividing lines between adult and…

— Neil Gaiman

This is a work of fiction. Still, given an infinite number of possible worlds, it must be true on one of them.…

— Neil Gaiman

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the…

— Neil Gaiman

Doctor Who has never pretended to be hard science fiction … At best Doctor Who is a fairytale, with fairytale logic about…

— Neil Gaiman

I personally have a great deal of respect for readers. I have a great deal of respect for the human race. I…

— Neil Gaiman

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to…

— Neil Gaiman

“It seemed to us that the fantastic can be, can do, so much more than its detractors assume: it can illuminate the…

— Neil Gaiman

“Prose fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using…

— Neil Gaiman

I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where…

— Neil Gaiman

“I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an…

— Neil Gaiman

“People think--wrongly--that speculative fiction is about predicting the future, but it isn’t; or if it is, it tends to do a rotten…

— Neil Gaiman

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read…

— Neil Gaiman

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and…

— Neil Gaiman

“We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered…

— Neil Gaiman

“Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those…

— Neil Gaiman

“The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.'…

— Neil Gaiman

“Fiction is dangerous because it lets you into other people's heads. It shows you that the world doesn't have to be like…

— Neil Gaiman

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

— Neil Gaiman

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't.

— Neil Gaiman

Fiction takes us to places that we would never otherwise go, and puts us behind eyes that are not our own.

— Neil Gaiman

“Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where…

— Neil Gaiman

My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It's just where they think it will…

— Neil Gaiman

Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back.…

— Neil Gaiman

“You’re also finding out something as you read that will be vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s…

— Neil Gaiman