Neil Gaiman

“The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.”

“Adults follow paths. Children explore.”

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

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.”

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.”

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes.”

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”

“Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank sheet of paper wins.”

“You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.”

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

“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.”

“Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.”

“Books were safer than other people anyway.”

“You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

“I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”