Quotes from Neverwhere

Neil Gaiman ·  370 pages

Rating: (331.4K votes)


“You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. ”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere



“When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“So many things to see, people to do.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Richard did not believe in angels, he never had. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere



“He had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Richard wrote a diary entry in his head.

Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiancée, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as any life makes sense). Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement, and I tried to be a Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiancée, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal fruitfly.
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth...”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“She smiled again. "Do you like cat?" she said.
"Yes," said Richard. "I quite like cats."
Anaesthesia looked relieved. "Thigh?" she asked, "or breast?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere



“It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Nice' in a bodyguard is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“He..." Richard began. "The marquis. Well, you know, to be honest, he seems a little bit dodgy to me."

Door stopped. The steps dead-ended in a rough brick wall. "Mm," she agreed. "He's a little bit dodgy in the same way that rats are a little bit covered in fur.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Can I help you?" said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere



“The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Can't make an omelette without killing a few people.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Metaphors failed him, then. He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“What's it like then?" asked Old Bailey. "Being dead?"
The marquis sighed. And then he twisted his lips up into a smile, and with a glitter of his old self, he replied, "Live long enough, Old Bailey, and you can find out for yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“I want to go home. Then he mentally underlined the last sentence three times, rewrote it in huge letters in red ink, and circled it before putting a number of exclamation marks next to it in his mental margin.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere



“I already killed you once today, what does it take to teach some people?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“Rubbish!" screamed a fat, elderly woman, in Richard's ear, as he passed her malodorous stall. "Junk!" She continued. "Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. You know you want it.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


“We have to get the... the thing I got... to the Angel. And then he'll tell Door about her family, and he'll tell me how to get home."
Lamia looked at Hunter with delight. "And he can give you brains," she said, cheerfully, "and me a heart.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Neverwhere


About the author

Neil Gaiman
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