14 Neil Gaiman Quotes for Writers and About Writing

Neil Gaiman is an English writer who works in several genres, including short stories, novels, comics (and graphic novels), screenwriting, and nonfiction. A few of his popular works include Good Omens, American Gods, Coraline, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Personally, I first discovered him as the writer of The Sandman comic series.

(Click here for 4 graphic novel best practices to blend text and art to tell a story.)

He's won several awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Carnegie and Newbery medals. Plus, he's one of the hottest tickets around when it comes to watching author performances.

Here are 14 Neil Gaiman quotes for writers and about writing.

"Growing up is highly overrated. Just be an author."

"A book is a dream that you hold in your hands."

"I learned to write by writing."

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"Everybody has a secret world inside of them."

"Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent."

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

"Kids will make their nightmares up out of anything, and the important thing in fiction, if you're giving them nightmares, is to demonstrate that nightmares are beatable."

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're doing something."

"The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you."

"You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."

"Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story."

"This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard."

"Most of us find our own voices only after we've sounded like a lot of other people."

"Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose."