A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick -- a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.
Neil GaimanRead
Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading and literature are essential for growth and development, while libraries serve a unique role in fostering knowledge rather than merely being spaces for supervision.
In this quote, Neil Gaiman emphasizes the significance of reading and books in personal and intellectual development, highlighting the crucial role that librarians play in guiding individuals through literature. He also subtly remarks on the environment of libraries, contrasting the ideal purpose of these institutions with the chaotic reality that sometimes unfolds within them, as children may find solace and freedom among books while navigating their own self-discovery.
Themes
ReadingBooksLibrariesEducationKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the importance of literacy, this quote can highlight the value of reading.
More from Neil Gaiman
All quotes →Jesus. Low-Key Lyesmith," said Shadow. and then he heard what he was saying and he understood. "Loki," he said. "Loki Lie-smith." "You're slow," said Loki, "but you get there in the end." And his lips twisted into a scarred smile and the embers danced in the shadows of his eyes.
Neil GaimanRead
As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.
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The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.
Neil GaimanRead
Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.
Neil GaimanRead
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
Neil GaimanRead
Similar quotes
Learn to listen with your fingers.
Helen B. TaussigRead
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
Cynthia OzickRead
I was the youngest girl among my siblings, a simple village girl, who perhaps was luckier than other siblings as I have the chance to go to school.
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The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.
Henry HazlittRead
I believe that access to a university education should be based on the ability to learn, not what people can afford. I think there is no more nauseating a sight than politicians pulling up the ladder of opportunity behind them.
Charles KennedyRead
By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.
Walter GilbertRead