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
Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Stories impact us deeply, staying in our memories long after the details fade.
Neil Gaiman reflects on the profound and lasting effect that stories can have on us, particularly when we encounter them at pivotal moments in our lives. Even when we forget specifics like the title or author, the emotional resonance of a story can linger in our minds, influencing our thoughts and feelings in ways that may not be immediately apparent. This speaks to the power of literature to shape our inner worlds and memories.
Themes
StoriesMemoryLiteratureImpactEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at a literary festival, one might say, 'As Neil Gaiman reminds us, stories we encounter at the right time resonate with us forever.'
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.
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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
I get a lot of moral guidance from reading novels, so I guess I expect my novels to offer some moral guidance, but they're not blueprints for action, ever.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
By God, if women had written stories, As clerks had within here oratories, They would have written of men more wickedness Than all the mark of Adam may redress.
Geoffrey ChaucerRead
One of my biggest peeves is when the writer hasn't given you enough information to figure everything out. You should be able to go back to the beginning of 'Gone Girl,' after you've already read it and you know everything, and say, 'Check - check - yes, she gave us that information.'
Gillian FlynnRead
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.
Ernest HemingwayRead
When we're done with it, we may find—if it's a good novel—that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having meet a new face, crossed a street we've never crossed before.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Amy LowellRead