Neil Gaiman

"In last year's commencement speech at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, Neil Gaiman likened a life in the arts to being on a desert island, putting messages in bottles and sending them out, hoping against hope someone might find them, appreciate what's inside and send something back - 'a commission, or money, or love'. Don't be discouraged, he told the audience, if in the beginning you send out hundreds of bottles for every one you get back. Eventually if you are persistent and lucky, the tide will turn."

by Tim Elliott in "Breaking Boundaries" - The Saturday Age - June 22, 2013.

Neil Gaiman's 2012 commencement speech - Philadelphia University of the Arts


Sleep my little babby-oh

Sleep until you waken

When you wake you’ll see the world

If I’m not mistaken…

Kiss a lover

Dance a measure,

Find your name

And buried treasure…

Face your life

Its pain, its pleasure,

Leave no path untaken.

by Neil Gaiman, "The Graveyard Book"

My daughter when a baby © Jennifer Phillips

"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." 

by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing." 

by Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself." 

by Neil Gaiman

"I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck."

by Neil Gaiman, American Gods

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."

by Neil Gaiman

Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1221698.Neil_Gaiman

Neil Gaiman