Sameer > Sameer's Quotes

“There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.

And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.

The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

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.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

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.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Birds are the last of the dinosaurs. Tiny velociraptors with wings. Devouring defenseless wiggly things and, and nuts, and fish, and, and other birds. They get the early worms. And have you ever watched a chicken eat? They may look innocent, but birds are, well, they're vicious. ”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Let's start a new tomorrow, today.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Everybody going to be dead one day, just give them time.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Of course, everyone's parents are embarrassing. It goes with the territory. The nature of parents is to embarrass merely by existing, just as it is the nature of children of a certain age to cringe with embarrassment, shame, and mortification should their parents so much as speak to them on the street. ”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“The important thing about songs is that they're just like stories. They don't mean a damn unless there's people listenin' to them.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life. These are wine, women and song.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Black as night, sweet as sin.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“You'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds."
"What, a phobia?"
"Sort of."
"Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds."
"What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Songs remain. They last...A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“That's the trouble with you young people. You think because you ain't been here long, you know everything. In my life I already forgot more than you ever know.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“The right song can turn an emperor into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“I am frightened of nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Are you extremely frightened of nothing?"
"Absolutely terrified of it."
"I have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?"
"No, I most definitely would not.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“You know what my mum once said?’ said Rosie… ‘She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.’
And this means…?’
Well’, she said. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Stories are webs, interconnected strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end. Each person is a strand of the story.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“It's not sipping wine. It's a mourning wine. You drain it. Like this.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“It begins, as most things begin, with a song. In the beginning, after all, were the words, and they came with a tune. That was how the world was made, how the void was divided, how the lands and the stars and the dreams and the little gods and the animals, how all of them came into the world. They were sung.
The great beasts were sung into existence, after the Singer had done with the planets and the hills and the trees and the oceans and the lesser beasts. The cliffs that bound existence were sung, and the hunting grounds, and the dark.
Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emperor into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“A voice from the creature, smooth as buttered oil. "He-llo," is said. "Ding-dong. You look remarkably like dinner."
I'm Charlie Nancy," said Charlie Nancy. "Who are you?"
I am Dragon," said the dragon. "And I shall devour you in one slow mouthful, little man in a hat."
Charlie blinked. What would my father do? He wondered. What would Spider have done?...
Er. You’re bored with talking to me now, and you’re going to let me pass unhindered,” he told the dragon, with as much conviction as he was able to muster.
Gosh. Good try. But I’m afraid I’m not,” said the dragon, enthusiastically.
Actually, I’m going to eat you.”
You aren’t scared of limes, are you?” asked Charlie, before remembering that he’d given the lime to Daisy.
The creature laughed, scornfully. “I,” it said, “am frightened of nothing.”
Nothing?”
Nothing,” it said.
Charlie said “Are you extremely frightened of nothing?”
Absolutely terrified of it,” admitted the Dragon.
You know,” said Charlie, “Have nothing in my pockets. Would you like to see it?”
No,” said the dragon, uncomfortably, “I most definitely would not.”
There was a flapping of wings like sails, and Charlie was alone on the beach. “That,” he said, “was much too easy.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“A god's relationship to the world, even a world in which he was walking, was about as emotionally connected as that of a computer gamer playing with knowledge of the overall shape of the game and armed with a complete set of cheat codes.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“So, she said. You met your brother.

You know, said Fat Charlie, you could have warned me.

I did warn you that he is a god.

You didn't mention that he was a complete and utter pain in the arse, though.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“He ordered a family pack of chicken, and sat and finished it off without any help from anyone else in his family.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Cómo tomas el café?
Negro como la noche y dulce como un pecado.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“I think there should be more black characters, and more of all kinds of characters, in fiction. Almost all of the main characters in my novel Anansi Boys are black. And there are black characters in featured roles in all the other novels except Stardust and Coraline. (Something I was happy to see was not the case in Henry Selick’s film.)”
― Neil Gaiman

“There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life,” said Spider. “These things are wine, women and song"...

"Curry’s nice too" pointed out Fat Charlie”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys