American Gods Quotes

“As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“It's patterns," he said. "If they think you're a hero, they're wrong. After you die, you don't get to be Beowulf or Perseus or Rama anymore. Whole different set of rules. Chess, not checkers. Go, not chess. You understand?”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good,’“ he sang to the crabs and the spiders and the palmetto beetles and the lizards and the night. ‘“Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, “casualties may rise to a million.” With individual stories, the statistics become people - but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless.”
― Neil Gaiman

“You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you can not have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Are you sure about this?" he asked. Wednesday snorted. "Sure as eggs is eggs," he said. "As the turkey farmer said when he hatched his first turtle.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Shadow could not decide whether he was looking at a moon the size of a dollar, a foot above his head, or whether he was looking at a moon the size of the Pacific Ocean, many thousands of miles away. Nor whether there was any difference between the two ideas. Perhaps it was all a matter of the way you looked at it.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“And then this whole deal of new gods, old gods," said his friend. "You ask me, I welcome new gods. Bring the on. The god of guns. The god of bombs. All the gods of ignorance and intolerance, of self-righteousness, idiocy and blame. All the stuff they try and land me with. Take a lot of the weight off my shoulders.”
― Neil Gaiman

“We all have so many functions, so many ways of existing. In my own vision of myself, I am a scholar who lives quietly, and pens his little tales, and dreams about a past that may or may not have existed. And that is true, as far as it goes. But I am also, in one of my capacities, like so many of the people you have chosen to associate with, a psychopomp. I escort the living to the world of the dead.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“They say this was built by Frank Lloyd Wright's evil twin," said Wednesday. "Frank Lloyd Wrong.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Makes you feel sorry for the gods and goddesses, doesn't it? After their temples fall apart. I wonder what happens to them?

Some of them die. Some of them change. And some of them just keep going. Maybe some even get jobs as dancers.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“It's there to be admired. It's there to be.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“...Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Before that no one thought of us as colored-foreign maybe, exotic and dark, but not colored.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“So you all remember: just because you're small, doesn't mean you got no power.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Look, I don't know why this happened to me. But it's hard. You know why dead people only go out at night, puppy? Because it's easier to pass for real, in the dark. And I don't want to have to pass. I want to be alive.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.”
― Neil Gaiman

“People are in the dark, they don't know what to do
Had a little lantern oh but it got blown out too
I'm reachin out my hands. I know you are too
Cuz I just want to be in the dark with you”
― Greg Brown

“He grinned, like a fox eating shit from a barbed wire fence.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Do you think they're still there?"
"Where?"
"Greece. Egypt. The islands. Those places. Do you think if you walked where those people walked you'd see the gods?"
"Maybe. But I don't think people'd know that was what they'd seen."
"I bet it's like space aliens," she said. "These days people see space aliens. Back then they saw gods. Maybe the space aliens come from the right side of the brain."
"I don't think the gods ever gave rectal probes," said Shadow. "And they didn't mutilate cattle themselves. They got people to do it for them.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“It was made of only one kind of bone, he realized, repeated over and over. Each of the bones was dry and ball-like. He imagined that they might be the eggshells of some huge bird. But another flare of lightning told him differently: they had holes for eyes, and they had teeth, which grinned without humor.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“Iga tund teeb haiget. Viimane tapab”
― vanarahva tarkus

“It's all about the dominant fucking paradigm, Shadow.”
― Neil Gaiman

“What are gods?" asked the buffalo man.
"I don't know," said Shadow.”
― Neil Gaiman

“After that he had more or less stopped reading. You could not trust fiction. What good were books, if they couldn't protect you from something like that?”
― Neil Gaiman