Neil Gaiman Quotes

I'm a person who is always trying to write in a different vein.

I wanted each of my books to be very different from the others, each to be special and uncategorizable, and I knew I could only do that a few times before I was in danger of repeating myself.

I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.

Some writers are writing one great, big book and just taking all these different avenues towards it. They might seem on the outside to be different, but they're really not. And that's a different kind of mindset. I don't know why it is, but I just feel like I really want to escape myself as much as I can - myself as the artist, or as the writer, or as the thinker - with each new project, because one, it's just boredom, but also, I guess I just feel most comfortable starting a new book if I just feel a little in the dark about it.

I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I've always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

Don't ever try and be like anybody else and don't be afraid to take risks.

Every time, I try to make something different.

I could never be like Hitchcock and do only one kind of movie. Anything that's good is worthwhile.

I think it's more important to make a lot of different things and keep coming up with new images and things that were never made before, than to do one thing and do it well.

The thing I'm most proud of about - not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies - is that you might love 'em, you might hate 'em, but most of the time, they're trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important.

I always try to incorporate something in every book that I've never used before. Hopefully, spontaneity will keep readers reading.

I just want to keep pushing the envelope without it feeling forced.

I always try to do movies that are different from the ones I've done before.

I see myself more like a novelist or a polygamist than a musician in terms of my output.

We wanted to write songs that we really like that incorporate everything. It seems a lot of bands want to stick with one thing. We didn't want to be scared to do anything that we wanted to do. We didn't want anything to hold us back. We wanted no boundaries.

You have to support people who want to do weird, different, fun stuff. Otherwise, it'll get very homogenous.

One of the things with the second record, a word I held close to my chest was 'brave.' To take chances to go outside the box and explore. To continue to toss off any expectation that our fans or anyone else might have of us, to just tap into who I am as a writer and artist and really just operate within that freedom of creation.

At the end of the day we need to experiment and if we start being too cautious, we'll end up working with the same actors and doing the same roles. That's how people get stereotyped.

Not writing the same kind of book over and over again is to me the real pleasure of what I do.

As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.

I didn't think of myself as importing, I thought it was more interesting to write about things people didn't know about than what they did. When I became aware that I was in fact "importing", I stopped doing it.

Somebody said that writers are like otters... Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they'll do a better trick or a different trick because they'd already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We've done it, so let's do something different.

Just because I had a winner, it doesn't mean I'm gonna be like, "OK, I need a new 'Successful.'" That's silly. I just don't want anything to sound like anything else, which I hope is everybody's vision.

For me, my criteria for making films is all about trying to do something different from the last time. So if I catch myself doing too much of one thing, I'm always trying to move away from that, because it's not going to be challenging enough to keep my attention and focus.