“I felt like a Porsche that had learned it wasn't a bicycle anymore but was still taking part in bicycle races.”

“Neil Gaiman on librarians as knowledge navigators over time.“And information was hard to find. And it was hard to find because it was like a flower growing in a desert – you had a long way to walk, but a librarian could take you to the flower. Now it’s more like flowers growing in the Amazon jungle and you’re trying to find a specific flower,” Gaiman said. “Anyone who has spent 5 minutes Googling for information and just sees the amount of noise out there starts to realize that actually someone who knows what they’re doing is incredibly useful. And librarians know what they’re doing.”

“You wanna be the next Tolkien? Don't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. TOLKIEN didn't read big, tolkien-esque fantasies. He read books on finnish philology. You go and read outside your comfort zone, go and learn stuff. And then the most important thing, once you get any level of quality--get to the point where you wanna write, and you can write--is tell YOUR story. Don't tell a story anyone else can tell. Because you always start out with other people's voices... There will always be people who are better or smarter than you. There are people who are better writers than me, who plot better than I do, but there is no one who can tell a Neil Gaiman story like I can.”

“One of the biggest misconceptions remains that Neil Gaiman spent his youth lurching from bedsit to library and back again, subsisting on a diet of blood-temperature baked beans and the wild leeks he managed to pull from the side of a disused railway track. It is a misconception that he nurtures, whether consciously or otherwise, through omission.”

“Neil Gaiman is a star. He constructs stories like some demented cook might make a wedding cake, building layer upon layer, including all kinds of sweet and sour in the mix.”

“We have potential. Who needs medals? I'd rather have potential than medals any day.”

“I felt like a Porsche that had learned it wasn't a bicycle anymore but was still taking part in bicycle races.”

“Sounds like you're trying to say that creation of new alternate worlds is a conscious decision.''I'm not trying to say it - I just said it.”