# The Ocean at the End of the Lane

- Author: [Neil Gaiman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman.md)
- Quotes: 11
- Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane

## Quotes

> I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.

p. 207 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-was-a-normal.md)

> I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-lived-in-books.md)

> Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.

p. 74 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/adults-follow-paths.md)

> I knew enough about adults to know that if I did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway. Why would they believe me about something so unlikely?

p. 37 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-knew-enough.md)

> “Will she be the same?”
>
> The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”

p. 218 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/will-she-be-the.md)

> I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

p. 77 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-went-away.md)

> “Just go with it. It won’t hurt.”
>
> I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.

p. 175 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/just-go-with.md)

> I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.

p. 69 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-liked-myths.md)

> We picked some pea pods, opened them and ate the peas inside. Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good when they were freshly-picked and raw, and put them in tin cans, and make them revolting.

p. 152 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/we-picked-some.md)

> I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.

p. 236 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/i-wondered-where.md)

> Children, as I have said, use back ways and hidden paths, while adults take roads and official paths.

p. 151 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/children-as-i-have.md)