G

The secret to getting my wife to be less inhibited had more to do with me than her. It wasn’t until I started listening to what she wanted from me outside the bedroom that changes happened inside the bedroom. I needed to show that I loved her by talking to her and treating her as my equal in all aspects of life. Once she became secure and felt deeply loved by me, all her inhibitions disappeared. Damn, I wish I had figured that out sooner.

Danny G, 58, accountant, husband for 24 years

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream, in

Well, there was this doggy. He was a very clever doggy. He said things like...like...”I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.” He said that. I only remembered it. In my head.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Delirium, in The Kindly Ones

“The Devil made me do it.” I have never made one of them do anything.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Lucifer, in Season of Mists

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream, in Dream Country

You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream in

I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams into the land. We are worshiped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And then one day there’s no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams, and what comes after, not even we know. I’m going to dance now, I’m afraid.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Ishtar, in Brief Lives

You say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... Ask yourselves, all of you... What power would Hell have if those imprisoned here were not able to dream of Heaven?

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream in A Hope in Hell

Nobody’s creepy from the inside, Hazel. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they’re the only real thing in the whole world. But they’re not creepy.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Death, in The Wake

...The price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream, in Dream Country

We of the Endless are the servants of the living -- We are not their masters. We exist because they know, deep in their hearts, that we exist.

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Dream, in The Doll’s House

You get what anyone gets; you get a lifetime...

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Death, in Brief Lives

When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights, and lock the universe behind me as I leave...

Neil Gaiman, spoken by Death in

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mr. Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, 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 wrinkledy 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 the Martians in the 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 thousand 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 bumblebee 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 a impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know 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 that 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

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author London Guardian (28 July 1989)

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson: to conserve my anger, and, as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power which can move the world.