Neil Gaiman Quotes

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

It turned out I really didn't like journalism. I wanted to make up stories, not cover real events.

Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief.

Character is always my driving force. And to tell a good story and to provide an entertaining read.

Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.

NI love watching science fiction because I feel like when it's done well, it's not just monsters, but philosophy. Really good science fiction like, '2001,' for example, or the first 'Matrix.' But it takes someone who's got a brain and thinks in order to do really good science fiction.

Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid.

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

Everyone seems quite good at stories and making them up.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.

Getting to share the stories in my head with other people and have them enjoy those stories, and having them come to see my characters as real. That's so cool.