Neil Gaiman’s “Neverwhere” Quotes (25 Quotes)

He felt her heart beating against his chest. The moment began to transmute, and he wondered if there was something he should do. He wondered if he should kiss her. He wondered if he wanted to kiss her, and he realized that he truly didn't know.

The thin girl was gulping down one of Richard's bananas in what was, Richard reflected, the least erotic display of banana-eating he had ever seen.

He tried to listen to the conversations going on at the table and he found that he could no longer concentrate on what anyone was saying and which was worse that he was not interested in any of what he was able to hear.

The young woman was crying, in the way that grownups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way.

I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept.

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.

I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But is this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.

There was no moon but the night sky was a riot of crisp and glittering autumn stars. There were streetlights too and lights on buildings and on bridges which looked like earthbound stars and they glimmered repeated as they were reflected with the city in the night water of the Thames. It's fairyland thought Richard.

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.

When angels go bad they are worse than anyone else. Remember Lucifer used to be an angel.

I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.

Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.

Mr. Vandemar showed them his teeth, demonstrating his sunny and delightful disposition. It was unquestionably the most horrible thing Richard had ever seen.

You've got a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.

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.

Richard wondered how the marquis managed to make being pushed around in a wheelchair look like a romantic and swashbuckling thing to do.

She had forgotten them all; forgotten Richard down in the mud, and the marquis and his foolish crossbow, and the world. She was delighted and transported, in a perfect place, the world she lived for. Her world contained two things: Hunter, and the Beast. The Beast knew that too. It was the perfect match, the hunter and the hunted. And who was who, and which was which, only time would reveal; time and the dance.

So many things to see, people to do.

The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.

The next morning he boarded the train for the six-hour journey south that would bring him to the strange gothic spires and arches of St. Pancras Station. His mother gave him a small walnut cake that she had made for the journey and a thermos filled with tea; and Richard Mayhew went to London feeling like hell.

The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.

For a moment he thought she was about to hit him, which would have been bad, or even start crying, which would have been much, much worse.

The price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted.