# Quote — Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

> There are things that upset us. That’s not quite what we’re talking about here, though. I’m thinking rather about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked.
>
> And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practicing their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way.
>
> The monsters in our cupboards and our minds are always there in the darkness, like mold beneath the floorboards and behind the wallpaper, and there is so much darkness, an inexhaustible supply of darkness. The universe is amply supplied with night.
>
> What do we need to be warned about? We each have our little triggers.

- Author: [Neil Gaiman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman.md)
- Book: [Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Trigger_Warning_(2015)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/there-are-things

## More from this book

> “There are those who think it’s devil worship,” said Oliver. “And I think they are wrong. But then, one man’s god is another’s devil. Eh?”

p. 323 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/there-are-those.md)

> “You’re very good. Are you a professional artist?”
>
> “I dabble,” she said.
>
> Shadow had spent enough time talking to the English to know that this meant either that she dabbled, or that her work was regularly hung in the National Gallery or the Tate Modern.

p. 310 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/youre-very-good.md)

> “I suppose you must be looking forward to them sorting all this out,” he said. “Er. The Palestinian situation. The politics.”
>
> She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to Jerusalem,” she said. “The people come. The people believe. Then they kill each other, to prove that God loves them.”
>
> “Well,” he said. “How would you fix it?”
>
> She smiled her whitest smile. “Sometimes,” she said, “I think it would be best if it was bombed. If it was bombed back to a radioactive desert. Then who would want it? But then I think, they would come here and collect the radioactive dust that might contain atoms of the Dome of the Rock, or of the Temple, or a wall that Christ leaned against on his way to the Cross. People would fight over who owns a poisonous desert, if that desert was Jerusalem.

p. 160 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/trigger-warning-short-fictions-and-disturbances/i-suppose-you.md)