Quotes By Letter: G

“When we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt -- we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts, my dear, then we are myths. But still we are together. We are the past together, we are a distant past. Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars, I still hear your voice.”

-Maya, Jostein Gaarder

~

“You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly...

But - you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar, ask yourselves, all of you... what power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?”

-A Hope in Hell (The Sandman #4), Neil Gaiman

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“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes--forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

Without individuals we see only numbers.”

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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“Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people - but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing heat beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?”

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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“You're walking on gallows ground, and there's a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging.”

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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“Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.

She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny Frenchwoman with white hair, with a daughter and a granddaughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.

Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.

Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.

There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.

There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones.”

-Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman

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“In a perfect, perfect world you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you'll never see again.

Until walking (waking? calling?) on your own is unsupportable.”

-Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman

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“Know that diamonds and roses

are as uncomfortable when they tumble from

one's lips as toads and frogs:

colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.”

-Instructions, Neil Gaiman

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“He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.”

-Stardust, Neil Gaiman

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“'I don't know about the girl in the books,' says the professor, 'but remaining behind would also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers' and her little sister's bodies. There were a lot of people dead in that crash. I was taken to a nearby school--it was the first day of term, and they had taken the bodies there. My older brother looked okay. Like he was asleep. The other two were a bit messier.'

'I suppose Susan would have seen their bodies, and thought, they're on holidays now. The perfect school holidays. Romping in meadows with talking animals, world without end.'

'She might have done. I remember thinking what a great deal of damage a train can do, when it hits another train, to the people who were traveling. I suppose you've never had to identify a body, dear?'

'No.'

'That's a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if I'm wrong, what if it's not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well . . . he's enjoying himself a bit too much, isn't he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse.'”

-The Problem of Susan, Neil Gaiman

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“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”

-The Sandman, Neil Gaiman

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“I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible.

Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. I wake up.

The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything's fine. I'm still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine.

And then I wake up. And I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.”

-The Sandman - Dream Country, Neil Gaiman

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“I want to kuh-kill myself. And -- and I can't. It's not that I'm too scared to kill myself. I -- I'm scared of lots of things. I'm scared of noises in the night-time, scared of telephones and closed doors, scared of people... scared of everything. Not of death. I want to die. It's just that I don't know how.”

-The Sandman - Dream Country, Neil Gaiman

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“And people ask,
does Despair despair,
does Dream dream,
does Desire desire?

It is simpler than that.
He is Dream.
It is Desire.
She is Depair.
Take away the despair and there is nothing left.”

-The Sandman - Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman

~

“Her eyes are grey.

Her hair is straggly and wet.

Her fingers are stubby.

The nails are chewed and broken.

Her teeth are crooked, jagged things.

Her sigil is the hooked ring.

One day her hook will catch your heart.

Describing her, we articulate what she is and why she is: when hope is past, she is there.

She is in a thousand thousand waiting rooms and empty streets, in grey comcrete buildings and anonymous hotels.

She is on the other side of every mirror.

When the eyes that look back at you know you too well, and no longer care for what they see, they are her eyes.

She stands and waits, and in her posture the pain no longer tells you to live, and in her presence joy is unimaginable.”

-The Sandman - Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman

~

“She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy.

She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper.

Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else.

Eventually it begins to get dark."”

-The Sandman - Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman

~

“...and sometimes I have really bad days...when, you know, I just want to hide or scream or bleed or something...”

-The Sandman#42, Neil Gaiman

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“A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

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“Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

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“I will lie for you
Beg and steal for you
I will crawl on hands and knees until you see
You're just like me

Violate all the love that I'm missing
Throw away all the pain that I'm living
You will believe in me
And I can never be ignored

I would die for you
I would kill for you
I will steal for you
I'd do time for you
I will wait for you
I'd make room for you
I'd sail ships for you
To be close to you
To be part of you
'Cause I believe in you
I believe in you
I would die for you.”

-#1 Crush, Garbage

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“If flesh could crawl
My skin would fall
From off my bones
And run away from here.”

-As Heaven Is Wide, Garbage

Recommended by Ami.

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“Avalanche is sullen and too thin
She starves herself to rid herself of sin
And the kick is so divine when she sees bones beneath her skin
And she says:
Hey baby can you bleed like me?
C'mon baby can you bleed like me?

Chris is all dressed up and acting coy
Painted like a brand new Christmas toy
He's trying to figure out if he's a girl or he's a boy
He says:
Hey baby can you bleed like me?
C'mon baby can you bleed like me?

Doodle takes dad's scissors to her skin
And when she does relief comes setting in
While she hides the scars she's making underneath her pretty clothes
She sings:
Hey baby can you bleed like me?
C'mon baby can you bleed like me?

Therapy is Speedie's brand new drug
Dancing with the devil's past has never been too fun
It's better off than trying to take a bullet from a gun
And she cries:
Hey baby can you bleed like me?
C'mon baby can you bleed like me?”

-Bleed Like Me, Garbage

Recommended by Suggested by Libby.

~

“I smoke your brand of cigarettes
And pray that you might give me a call
I lie around in bed all day just staring at the walls
Hanging round bars at night wishing I had never been born
And give myself to anyone who wants to take me home.”

-Cup Of Coffee, Garbage

Recommended by nikola.sydney.

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“Somebody get me out of here
I'm tearing at myself
Nobody gives a damn about me
Or anybody else.”

-Medication, Garbage

Recommended by nikola.sydney.

~

“I only smile in the dark.”

-Only Happy When It Rains, Garbage

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