Roderick Burgess's waking dreams are of the power and the glory. And of death,
of course. *Especially* death.
      -- From SANDMAN #1: "Sleep of the Just"

Uh, Father, Magus. I've found something that may cast some light on our guest.
In the _Paginarum Fulvarum_...
      -- Alex Burgess, in SANDMAN #1: "Sleep of the Just"

It was a dark and stormy nightmare...
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #2: "Imperfect Hosts"

The process was slow at first, my lord. Things in the dreamworld began to
transmute. I was aware of it in my library... Slowly, the words began to fade.
Some time after you vanished, my books became bound volumes of blank paper. The
next day the whole library was gone. I never found it again...
      -- Lucien, in SANDMAN #2: "Imperfect Hosts"

    "Atropos? No. Not now. You might as well call me the Morrigan!"
    "She's right, my ducks. Might as well call us Tisiphone, Alecto, and
Magaera -- and that takes us back, eh?"
    "Might as well call us Diana, Mary, and Florence. Ha-ha! Uh, sorry."
      -- The Three, in SANDMAN #2: "Imperfect Hosts"

Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to
tell you somebody?
      -- John Constantine, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

    "Hullo London."
    "Hullo John Constantine."
    "How are you then, London?"
    "All right. Full of people. Raining. You?"
      -- Constantine's internal dialogue, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little
         Dream of Me"

One thing I've learned. You can know anything. It's all there. You just have to
find it.
      -- John Constantine, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

When I got back she was gone along with me stereo, the telly, me Silver Surfers
-- any old junk she could convert to money. And she'd long since converted the
money into junk. Stupid bitch. Sometimes I still miss her.
      -- John Constantine, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

It is *never* "only a dream", John Constantine. Here less than other places...
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

... see the sun set in the hand of the man ...
      -- Rachel, in SANDMAN #3: "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

I sprinkle sand into the waters of night. The grains burn as they fall,
reminding me of another in times long passed away. I watched him even then as
he fell, his face undefeated, his eyes still proud.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

It is time for me to walk the abyss. Time to reclaim my own. I must talk to the
Morningstar. I do not have high hopes for the meeting.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

THere's one at the door, at the gate to damnation. Is it thief, thug or whore?
There's one at the door, and there's room for one more till the end of
Creation.
      -- Squatterbloat, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

The wood of suicides has changed since my last visit to Hell. I remember it as
a tiny grove. Now it resembles a forest.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does...
Ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

One of you has my helm; my mask of pure dream. I crafted it myself, from the
bones of a dead god.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #4: "A Hope in Hell"

I thank you, last Martian. If you wish, you may dream of the City of Focative
Mirrors...
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #5: "Passengers"

Mother said, if you are going to be a criminal, John, you are not going to
bring shame on the family name. I had to change it. I called myself Destiny.
Dee is for destiny...
      -- John Dee, in SANDMAN #5: "Passengers"

Dee is for lots of things. Death. Dust. Darkness. Demons.
      -- John Dee, in SANDMAN #5: "Passengers"

All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop.
She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long
enough, they always end in death.
      -- From SANDMAN #6: "24 Hours"

I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispensing justice fairly, and only
setting nightmares to rip out the minds of the evil and wicked. Or just anybody
I don't like.
      -- John Dee, in SANDMAN #7: "Sound and Fury"

"It is a comfort in wretchedness to have companions in woe." (Marlowe.
_Faust_.) Of course, he was talking about Hell. But it applies equally to
Arkham.
      -- Jonathan Crane, in SANDMAN #7: "Sound and Fury"

Oho, my sainted aunt, have I become a victim of brain fever, the curse of
academia...?
      -- Jonathan Crane, in SANDMAN #7: "Sound and Fury"

Looking back, the process of coming up with the Lord of Dreams seems less like
an act of creation than one of sculpture: as if he were already waiting, grave
and patient, inside a block of white marble, and all I needed to do was chip
away everything that wasn't him.
      -- From Neil Gaiman's afterword in the "Preludes and Nocturnes" TPB

We have seen stranger things in dreams; and fictions are merely frozen dreams,
linked images with some semblance of structure. They are not to be trusted, no
more than the people who create them.
      -- From the introduction to the SANDMAN "The Doll's House" TPB

You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an
anthropomorphic personification in this or any other plane!
      -- Death berates Dream, in SANDMAN #8: "The Sound of Her Wings"

There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each
other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that
the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps
things happened differently. But then, that is a women's tale, and it is never
told to men.
      -- From SANDMAN #9: "Tales in the Sand"

You lot may die. I expect you will, 'cos you're stupid. Not me, though.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

And in the meantime, I've started in a trade. Working with a friend of mine. It
won't last. But it's a new trade. It's called printing. Don't need to be a
guild member -- not yet. Never be a real demand for it, mind you. Hard work.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

Her kind walk amidst the flotsam of lives they have sacrificed, for their own
purposes, till friendless and alone they needs must make the final sacrifice.
      -- Dream, on Lady Johanna Constantine, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good
         Fortune"

    "Death's a capricious thing, innit?"
    "Yes. Yes, she is."
      -- Hob Gadling and Dream, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been
up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from
my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

    "If I hear another of your theological paradoxes, I'll scream. Frankly,
today I don't care if God exists or not."
    "I doubt He feels likewise, Miss Walker."
      -- Rose Walker and Gilbert, in SANDMAN #14: "Collectors"

    "Surely, what the Choirboy is describing is a worst-case scenario, once
they've caught you alive -- and *you* don't get the money, remember that."
    "But, Carrion, we don't *do* it for the money!"
      -- Two serial killers, in SANDMAN #14: "Collectors"

I tell you, I'm sick and tired of women in our line being stereotyped as black
widows or killer nurses. I'm a serial killer, and a woman, and I'm proud of it.
      -- Dog Soup, in SANDMAN #14: "Collectors"

And they left, slowly, one by one, with reluctance, leaving the safety of the
light for the chill certainties of the darkness.
      -- The convention breaks up, in SANDMAN #14: "Collectors"

It seemed like the night sucked them up, took them into its dark heart. It
seemed like the darkness swallowed them... Perhaps it did.
      -- The convention breaks up, in SANDMAN #14: "Collectors"

Zelda has a reassuring moral homily concerning God, difficult times, and a
variable number of footprints in the sand. She told it to me once, and it
cheered me up remarkably.
      -- Chantal, in SANDMAN #15: "Into The Night"

    "Do you know what Freud said about dreams of flying? It means you're really
dreaming about having sex."
    "Indeed? Tell me, then, what does it mean when you dream about having sex?"
      -- Rose Walker and Dream, in SANDMAN #15: "Into The Night"

I left because I was curious. And because I was tired. Life as a human contains
substance I never dreamed of in the Dreaming, Lord. The little victories, and
the tiny defeats. I had my reasons.
      -- Gilbert, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

    "I do not understand--"
    "Of course you don't. You're obviously not very bright, but I shouldn't let
it bother you."
      -- Dream and Unity Kinkaid, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a
lie.
      -- From Rose Walker's diary, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

It means the world's about as solid and as reliable as a layer of scum on the
top of a well of black water which goes down forever, and there are things in
the depths that I don't even want to think about.
      -- From Rose Walker's diary, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down,
we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's
thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too
long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at
night when they're tired, or bored.
      -- From Rose Walker's diary, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

Dreams are weird and stupid and they scare me.
      -- From Rose Walker's diary, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

"And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings.
      -- From Rose Walker's diary, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

Desire, listen to me carefully. Remember this. We of the endless are the
servants of the living -- we are *not* their masters. *We* exist because they
know, deep in their hearts, that we exist.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

Human beings are the creatures of desire. They twist and bend as I require it.
If I thought otherwise, I would crack, like Delirium; or I would abandon my
realm, like our lost brother.
      -- Desire's thoughts, in SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

And Desire walks the endless pathways of its body, certain that he, or she, or
it, is in sole and only control of its destiny. The only inhabitant of the
twilight realm of Desire; and it feels nothing like a doll. Nothing like a doll
at all.
      -- Closing words of SANDMAN #16: "Lost Hearts"

The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden,
you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the
end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path
stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will
wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death
there is no ending to them.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

A family meeting, eh, Destiny? You haven't redecorated in the last 300 years, I
see. Oh well. And *still* wearing basic grey...
      -- Desire, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it.
      -- Delirium, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Oh, just shut up and let me finish. You can shout at me afterwards.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Desire smells almost subliminally of summer peaches, and casts two shadows: one
black and sharp-edged, the other translucent and forever wavering, like heat
haze.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Desire smiles in brief flashes, like sunlight glinting from a knife-edge. And
there is much else that is knife-like about Desire.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes
tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted.
Whoever you are. Whatever you are. *Everything*.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Despair says little, and is patient.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Despair, Desire's sister and twin, is queen of her own bleak bourne. It is said
that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows,
hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in
our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of
Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Destiny is the oldest of the Endless; in the beginning was the Word, and it was
traced by hand on the first page of his book, before ever it was spoken aloud.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Destiny smells of dust and the libraries of night. He leaves no footprints. He
casts no shadow.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

For Delirium was once Delight. And although that was long ago now, even today
her eyes are badly matched; one eye is a vivid emerald green, spattered with
silver flecks that move; her other eye is vein blue. Who knows what Delirium
sees, through her mismatched eyes?
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so.
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 0

    "Well, at least you've got the element of surprise on your side."
    "That would not be honorable, Matthew. I have already sent a messenger to
the Lord of Hell, to let him know that I will be coming. One must do these
things properly."
      -- From SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation
in all things. And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any
other religion. Amusing, isn't it?
      -- Lucifer, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

I move from dreamer to dreamer, from dream to dream, hunting for what I need.
Slipping and sliding and flickering through dreams; and the dreamers will wake
and wonder why this dream seemed different, wonder how real their lives can
truly be.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

I'm sorry, Your Majesty. The bastard hard disk's crashed again, but this
hardware's still better than Roger Bacon's mechanical head.
      -- Hob Gadling dreams of Queen Elizabeth I, in SANDMAN: "Season of
         Mists", episode 1

    "What's the occasion? Is it your birthday?"
    "You must be born, to have a birthday."
      -- Hob Gadling and Dream, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats.
But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but
one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.
      -- Lucifer, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

We do what we must, Lucien. Sometimes we can choose the path we follow.
Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN: "Season of Mists", episode 1

    Neil Gaiman, writer: To set certain popular misconceptions to rest once and
for all:
    1) He was not found wandering the sewers of London as a child during the
winter of 1864, unable to say anything more than "Powerful big rats,
gentlemen."
      -- From the biographies in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

    Neil Gaiman, writer: To set certain popular misconceptions to rest once and
for all:
    4) He did indeed have what most people would commonly understand as "eyes".
      -- From the biographies in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

There is quite obviously no "underground kingdom beneath London inhabited by
huge, intelligent rodents". And even if there were, any suggestion of Neil's
involvement in the mazy territorial negotiations between Londons Above and
Below can be considered a joke, and in poor taste at that.
      -- From Neil Gaiman's biography in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

The details of his black life and dubious death are written in certain books,
and the foolish and the curious may seek them out. Nothing could induce us to
elaborate here; by comparision Gilles de Rais was an angel in human form, and
de Sade a weak and simpering child. The world is well rid of him -- if rid of
him it truly is.
      -- P. Craig Russell's biography in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

They say she done them all of them in. They say she done it with an axe.
      -- Karen Berger's biography in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

According to an old New York folk-tale, Alisa Kwitney appears in a bathroom
mirror to people in the final stages of _delirium tremens_, and pleads with
them to mend their ways. In another version of the same story she can be
induced (by threatening to break the mirror) to reveal winning lottery ticket
numbers.
      -- Alisa Kwitney's biography in the SANDMAN "Season of Mists" TPB

The fraternity of critics, in reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites
and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a
critical mass...
      -- Ideas crowd upon Richard Madoc, in SANDMAN #17: "Calliope"

A city in which the streets are paved with time. A train full of silent women,
plowing forever through the twilight. Heads made of light. A small piece of
blue cardboard. A plum, sweet and tart and cold. A were-goldfish who transforms
into a wolf at full moon.
      -- Ideas crowd upon Richard Madoc, in SANDMAN #17: "Calliope"

Two old women taking a weasel on holiday. Gryphons shouldn't marry. Vampires
don't dance. A man who inherits a library card to the library in Alexandria. A
rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog-collar.
      -- Ideas crowd upon Richard Madoc, in SANDMAN #17: "Calliope"

I prayed to the darkness, to the night, to the carrion kind. I prayed to the
king of the cats, the kind's emissary on Earth, he who walks amongst us and we
do not know him. I prayed and I dreamed.
      -- The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

"Justice?" It repeated. "Justice is a delusion you will not find on this or any
other sphere. And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams, lithe walker, though
dreams are a part of the sum of each life's experiences, which is the only
wisdom that matters. But revelation? That is the province of dream."
      -- The skeleton bird, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past. We can watch the passage
of creatures from the infinity of now, from all the worlds like ours, only
fractionally different. And we follow them with our eyes, ghost things, and the
humans see nothing.
      -- The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

They dreamed the world so it always was the way it is now, little one. There
never was a world of high cat-ladies and cat-lords.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

Then a human arose amongst them. A golden-furred male, bred and raised in the
pleasure gardens of one of the sybaritic feline ladies.
      -- The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

But if enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the
world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of
humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.
      -- The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it
truly is. A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is
my message. And I shall keep moving, keep repeating it, until I die. Or until a
thousand cats hear my words, and believe them, and dream, and we come again to
paradise.
      -- The visionary cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

Little one, I would like to see anyone -- prophet, king or God -- persuade a
thousand cats to do anything at the same time.
      -- The cynical cat, in SANDMAN #18: "A Dream of a Thousand Cats"

    "So... we are here on your command, my lord, on Midsummer's Eve, by the
Long Man of Wilmington. An odd choice of a place for us to perform..."
    "Odd? Wendel's Mound was a theatre before your race came to this island."
    "Before the Normans?"
    "Before the humans."
      -- Shakespeare and Dream, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

    "Thou speak'st aright: I am that merry wanderer of the night."
    "'I am that merry wanderer of the night.'? I am that giggling - dangerous -
totally - bloody - psychotic - menace - to - life-and-limb, more like it."
      -- An actor and an audience member, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer
         Night's Dream"

Besides -- if you ask me, none of those women are women at all. They're males.
I can tell. Human males taste more like rabbit than the females -- and they
stick in your teeth. Oh yes.
      -- Skarrow, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

You played me well, mortal. But I have played me for time out of mind. And I do
Robin Goodfellow better than anyone.
      -- Robin Goodfellow, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

    "Not even Kit Marlowe will be able to gainsay that."
    "You have not heard? Marlowe is dead, Will. He died in Deptford, three
weeks back, of a knife wound to the head."
      -- Shakespeare and Dream, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Things have changed, and will change more; and Gaia no longer welcomes us as
once she did.
      -- Auberon, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

During your stay on this Earth the faerie have afforded me much diversion, and
entertainment. Now you have left for your own haunts. And I would repay you all
for the amusement. And more. They shall not forget you. That was important to
me: that King Auberon and Queen Titania will be remembered by mortals, until
this age is gone.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the
shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

They say that cigarettes will kill you, eventually. Fine. That's just fine. I
only wish they'd do it faster.
      -- Element Girl, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

I like smoking cigarettes. It's something normal people do. I smoke a
cigarette, and pretend I'm normal. And I wish I was dead.
      -- Element Girl, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

    "And you've come for *me*? Blessed, merciful death. You've come to make it
all stop?"
    "No. I haven't come for you, Rainie. There was a woman upstairs, changing
the light bulb in her kid's room. The stepladder slipped... Like I said, I was
passing and I heard you crying, and, well, the door was open..."
      -- Element Girl and Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do
it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and
guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats
and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a
release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the
end, I'm there for all of them.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

When the first living thing existed, I was there, waiting. When the last living
thing dies, my job is finished. I'll put the chairs on tables, turn out the
lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a
kind of dream country that affects all of you.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

It's his never-ending battle against Apep, the serpent that never dies. Dumb. I
*told* him, "The serpent that never dies is *dead*. I took her three thousand
years ago! The never-ending battle ended..."
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

No, Mister Mulligan. I really can't get a message to her. I'm sorry. Who am I?
Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe. Sorry I couldn't help any. Be seeing you...
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #20: "Façade"

I'm going stir-crazy, and I've joined the ranks of the walking brain-dead, but
otherwise I'm just peachy.
      -- Lyta Hall on parenthood, in SANDMAN #40: "Parliament of Rooks"

    "Hi Gregory. How they hanging?"
    "UWURRRK."
    "Yeah? You should try being a bird sometime."
      -- Gregory the gargoyle, and Matthew the Raven in SANDMAN #40:
         "Parliament of Rooks"

It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make
the attempt.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN: "Fear of Falling"

    "I hesitate to tell you this, Sam, but there are certain individuals who
have accused me of. Mm. Well, being *mad*."
    "You shock me, Your Majesty."
      -- Norton I, Emperor of the United States, and Samuel Langhorne
         Clemens, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

    "I am pleased to see that you are healthy."
    "Healthy? I'm dead, Norton. You ever swallowed aconite? You don't get up
and walk away again."
      -- Norton I, Emperor of the United States, and the King of Pain in
         SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

I am the Emperor of the United States, Pain. I am content to be what I am. What
more than that could any man desire?
      -- Norton I, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

    "Desire? You disappoint me. This evening's display: bringing back a dead
man to offer Norton the pleasures of the world. It was not very subtle."
    "Go screw yourself, big brother."
      -- Dream and Desire, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

I'll bring the Kindly Ones down on his blasted head.
      -- Desire, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints - 36 unselfish
men and women. Because of them the world continues to exist. They are the
secret kings and queens of this world.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

I've met a lot of kings, and emperors and heads of state in my time, Joshua.
I've met them all. And you know something? I think I liked you best.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

It's a great hat. Can I try it on?
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

    "I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear."
    "Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out."
      -- Norton I and Death, in SANDMAN #31: "Three Septembers and a
         January"

Aye, Master Orpheus. Well, they do say that two heads are better than one.
      -- Lady Johanna Constantine, in SANDMAN #29: "Thermidor"

    "Will you kill all the poets, then, St. Just? Will you kill all the
dreamers?"
    "When they have served their purpose, yes. Fabre D'Eglantine devised our
calendar, and he died with Danton last Germinal."
      -- Lady Johanna Constantine and St. Just, in SANDMAN #29: "Thermidor"

[Thomas] Paine is useful as a rabble-rouser; but rabble-rousers are needed
before revolutions, not after.
      -- St. Just, in SANDMAN #29: "Thermidor"

Your son's head is valuable to you, and I am attached to mine. Indeed, hitherto
we have been inseparable.
      -- Lady Johanna Constantine, in SANDMAN #29: "Thermidor"

And from that Time on, the Song of Orpheus has always hovered at the Edge of my
Perception; a Melody I can never fully recover, try howsoever I will. And do
not doubt that there are many in Authority to whom I would sing it, if 'twere
within my Power.
      -- Lady Johanna Constantine, in SANDMAN #29: "Thermidor"

And I suppose if everybody cut off their heads and stuffed asafoetida into
their mouths and buried their hearts at crossroads, then you'd do it too?
      -- The grandfather in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

    "Trees there were, old as trees can be, huge and grasping with hearts black
as sin. Strange trees that some said walked in the night --"
    "Okay. It was a forest. It had trees in it. I'm not stupid. I got it."
      -- Grandfather and granddaughter in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

The young man's mother had died bringing him into the world; she gave him life,
a small wooden finger-ring, and the name Vassily. There have been worse
legacies.
      -- The grandfather's tale in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

    "A small bone that he had *what*?"
    "Carved into the shape of a small bone."
    "But it was a small bone already."
    "He carved it into the shape of a different small bone. All right?"
      -- Grandfather and granddaughter in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

    "Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I
believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and
forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian.
All right?"
    "Mm. It all sounds suspiciously post-modern to me, Grandpa. Are you sure
this is really a story from the old country?"
      -- Grandfather and granddaughter in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

Listen, blood of my blood, although I'm a hard man to anger, and I love you
deeply, if you interrupt me again so help me I'll rip out your throat with my
teeth.
      -- The grandfather gets annoyed in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

You shouldn't trust the story-teller; only trust the story
      -- The grandfather in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

In the black shadow of the Baba Yaga babies screamed and mothers miscarried;
milk soured and men went mad.
      -- In SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

Do you know how long it's been since I mislaid a book? Well, let's just say the
continents weren't in their current shapes, not that that means anything to
you.
      -- Lucien in SANDMAN #38: "The Hunt"

Actors... I don't like actors. It's a profession based on lies and disrespect.
Pretending to be what you are not.
      -- The emperor Augustus in SANDMAN #30: "August"

It will be good to be dead - to be a god.
      -- The emperor Augustus in SANDMAN #30: "August"

We write our names in the sand, and then the waves roll in and wash them away.
      -- The emperor Augustus in SANDMAN #30: "August"

    "There's a few thousand square miles of central Australia, a couple of
Pacific islands, a field in Ireland, an occasional mountain in Arizona..."
    "An occasional mountain?"
    "It's not a very big mountain, but it's only there occasionally."
      -- Fiddler's Green and Rustichello, in SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

    "You look terrible. White as the man in the moon. Are you always so pale?"
    "That depends on who's watching."
      -- Marco Polo and Dream, in SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

And forewarned is seldom forearmed. Not even in the shifting zones.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

He found himself able to see each falling grain, distinct and unique; and he
knew then he was dreaming.
      -- From SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

There are really patterns. It was a revelation, of a kind. Dreams and sand and
stories. Deserts and cities and time.
      -- From SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

    The grains fell slowly, tumbling down from the dream-king's pale fingers
into his own travel-stained hands.
    The patterns they formed as they fell illuminated his mind: a landscape
strobed by flashes of distant lightning.
      -- From SANDMAN #39: "Soft Places"

You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead
farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life.
      -- From SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and
you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on.
      -- From SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

She has lots of things, although she seldom has much use for them. You should
see her floppy hat collection.
      -- Destruction talks about Death in SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

And Herakles was full of it. He just got dead drunk for a couple of weeks in
Phrygia and told everyone he'd been to the land of the dead.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

    "I thought you could foretell the future?"
    "I don't need to know the future. When the future's over, then it's me..."
      -- Orpheus and Death, in SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

    "Mortal man?"
    "Yes?"
    "Beware of the dog."
      -- Charon warns Orpheus, in SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

Thou hast made the Furies cry, Orpheus. They will never forgive you for that.
      -- Queen Persephone, in SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

Orpheus watched through tear-stung eyes until he was out of sight. His father
never even tried to look back.
      -- The final line of SANDMAN: "The Song of Orpheus"

And there was also in that room the Other Egg of the Phoenix. (For the Phoenix
when its time comes to die lays two eggs, one black, one white: From the white
egg hatches the Phoenix-bird itself, when its time is come, but what hatches
from the black egg no one knows.)
      -- From SANDMAN #50: "Ramadan"

There were paths through the palace that none but Haroun Al Raschid knew; and
this was because those who had drawn up the plans, and those who had built the
paths, had all long since gone to their final reward: for it is seldom healthy
to know the secrets of a king.
      -- From SANDMAN #50: "Ramadan"

Imagine a thousand thousand fireflies of every shape and color; Oh, that was
Baghdad at night in those days.
      -- From SANDMAN #50: "Ramadan"

You have called me here, Haroun. It is unwise to summon what you cannot
dismiss.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #50: "Ramadan"

And he prays as he walks (cursing his one weak leg the while), prays to Allah
(who made all things) that somewhere, in the darkness of dreams, abides the
other Baghdad (that can never die), and the other egg of the Phoenix. But Allah
alone knows all.
      -- From SANDMAN #50: "Ramadan"

Dave McKean: Buy him a Margarita and he'll tell you why cats smile.
      -- From the biographies in the SANDMAN "Fables and Reflections" TPB

    "I look a mess."
    "You're talking. With those cheekbones? I'd kill for those cheekbones. Mm.
Well, *maim*, maybe."
      -- Barbie and Wanda, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on Fifth Avenue"

Interesting. Great winds are coming, Matthew, and darkness, and much pain. Do
you see? One of the skerries is dying... I fear only grief can be the outcome.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on Fifth Avenue"

    "Don't you just love the subway? I just have to set foot on a subway train,
and it's like a magic carpet, y'know? It could take you anywhere."
    "Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of."
      -- Wanda and Barbie, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on Fifth Avenue"

This is a bright place, filled with frightened people, and fast hard things
that hurt and wound. No matter. I swore I would remain by her side forever, and
until death divided us. I must walk until once more we are reunited.
      -- Martin Tenbones, lost in New York, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on
         Fifth Avenue"

My death hovers near me, screeching and fluttering and giggling: a ghost death,
in a ghost world. I tell myself I feel only ghost pain, and I will not let it
hurt me.
      -- Martin Tenbones, lost in New York, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on
         Fifth Avenue"

I am not afraid. O Princess Barbara, protect me now as I have protected you in
days long past. O Murphy watch over me. I will not be afraid.
      -- Martin Tenbones, lost in New York, in SANDMAN #32: "Slaughter on
         Fifth Avenue"

The present I won with my ticket is in the box. I go to open it. The baby
smells of formaldehyde, not unpleasant. It is cold and slightly clammy to the
touch. The autopsy scar is sewn together with black thread. It has been dead
exactly seventy years.
      -- Hazel dreams, in SANDMAN #33: "Lullabies of Broadway"

    "Wanda?"
    "Yeah?"
    "You've got a thingie."
    "Hazel, didn't anyone ever tell you that it's not polite to draw attention
to a lady's shortcomings?"
      -- Hazel and Wanda, in SANDMAN #34: "Bad Moon Rising"

You see, there are two ways into another's dreams. We can go through the dream
king; or we can go by the moon's road. But the dream king has little time for
you women, and even less for my kind; while the moon is ever ours. It's time to
draw down the moon.
      -- Thessaly, in SANDMAN #34: "Bad Moon Rising"

Where others ask timorously, Thessalian, your kind commanded, directed,
ordered. It galled us. But the others are dust now, and less than dust. And one
day you, in your turn, will join them. And then our compact will be over, and
you will be ours, as they are.
      -- The moon, in SANDMAN #34: "Bad Moon Rising"

It's like we fell down the rabbit hole, woke up in ... I don't know. Stephen
King's basement.
      -- Wanda, in SANDMAN #34: "Bad Moon Rising"

... and there's no love lost between the trees and the Cuckoo. Not that they're
on our side, mind you, although most of the trees are all right. Keep
themselves to themselves, unless they're bothered, and only an idiot bothers a
tree.
      -- Wilkinson, in SANDMAN #35: "Beginning to See the Light"

    "I remember the Hieromancer. I met him, when I was here before. He was a
sweet old guy. Kind of like my grandfather. What happened to him?"
    "He's dead. I expect that he's dead. If he's *lucky* he's dead."
      -- Barbie and Wilkinson, in SANDMAN #35: "Beginning to See the Light"

I've been doing a lot of face-painting recently. Originally I was going to get
a tattoo, but I don't want anything permanent anymore. It's like I can be a
different person every day.
      -- Barbie, in SANDMAN #35: "Beginning to See the Light"

    "Wilkinson? What's the Hierogram?"
    "It's um. Well, it's um. It's sort of more like an um. Well..."
      -- Barbie and Wilkinson, in SANDMAN #35: "Beginning to See the Light"

I was one of seventeen children. We were all named Wilkinson -- I suppose it
was roughest on the girls, but we all got used to it in the end. I blame the
parents, really. ... It was just when they found a name they liked, they stuck
with it.
      -- Wilkinson, in SANDMAN #35: "Beginning to See the Light"

    "And what's your name, caller?"
    "Jim. Jim Morrison. Not the famous one."
    "Hey, wouldn't that be a coup for my show if you were?"
      -- New York talk radio, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

All sense of where I am, of who I am and where I'm going, has been swallowed by
the dark. And I walk through the stars and sky, a trinity of dreams beneath the
moon.
      -- Walking the moon's road, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

Poor dead Luz, my little Judas. I could not find it in my heart to blame her:
I, too, had been one of the servants of the Cuckoo, felt the overpowering need
to protect and nurture her; to do anything that would make her happy. Luz got
up. She stumbled. And then she walked into the blackness of his robe and she
was gone. Murphy's peace be with you, Luz, if he has peace to give.
      -- Dream uncreates the Land, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

There were giants and centaurs and witches and fauns; bears and trolls; even a
handful of giant spiders. I saw Wilkinson and Prinado, walking together. They
waved when they saw me. They walked past me, the living and the dead, and one
by one they vanished into the darkness of his cloak.
      -- Dream uncreates the Land, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

And then he reached out his hand and picked up the Land. I don't know how... It
was like a little jewelled world. It didn't matter that it was tiny -- if it
*was* tiny. I could see every waterfall and stream, every leaf on every tree. I
could see everything.
      -- Dream uncreates the Land, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

And then it crumbled in his hand. It was just dust, sand, a glittering
multicolored sand that fell away into the chilly wind at the end of the world.
      -- Dream uncreates the Land, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

    "That's kind of my uh sort of a joke."
    "That's right, George. It differs from the usual kind of joke only in the
vast gulf between it and any kind of a sense of humor."
      -- George's face and Wanda, in SANDMAN #36: "Over the Sea to Sky"

    "You missed the open coffin at his folks' place -- Alvin looked pretty
good, after the morticians were through with him. They cut his hair and put him
in a suit and everything."
    "But... Wanda was always so proud of her hair..."
      -- Wanda's aunt and Barbie, in SANDMAN #37: "I Woke Up and One of Us
         Was Crying"

The service drones to its end. I realize that I'm already beginning to forget
what Wanda looked like. Is identity that fragile? The thought scares me.
      -- Barbie, in SANDMAN #37: "I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying"

I never knew that places around here had such beautiful names. ... Cloverdale,
Florissant, Mulberry Grove, Boonville, Salina, Aurora and Goodland. They sound
like the names of magic kingdoms, don't they?
      -- Barbie, in SANDMAN #37: "I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying"

And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we
should take our goodbyes whenever we can.
      -- Barbie, in SANDMAN #37: "I Woke Up and One of Us Was Crying"

I spent more than half a year with Barbie and Wanda and Hazel and Foxglove and
Wilkinson and Thessaly and the rest of them wandering around in my head. Some
nights I still miss them.
      -- From Neil Gaiman's afterword in the SANDMAN "A Game of You" TPB.

Neil Gaiman's favorite toys were mostly books. His favorite game was to find
somewhere inaccessible and out of the way, and go read there for hours. He knew
that he could go to Narnia or Oz or Cimmeria or New York if he just said the
right thing or rubbed the right magic charm, but it just never happened.
      -- Neil Gaiman's biography, in the SANDMAN "A Game of You" TPB.

Dave McKean's favorite toy was a wooden fish. It was called Fish. These days
his favorite game is trying to get color copiers to do things they were never
intended for, nor ever dreamed of doing.
      -- Dave McKean's biography, in the SANDMAN "A Game of You" TPB.

Colleen Doran lived on a corner known as Crash Corner; one day she saw a child
on a bicycle get hit by a car and fly 20 feet through the air. She was sitting
in a tree in the front yard at the time. Her favorite book was _The Secret
Garden_ by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
      -- Colleen Doran's biography, in the SANDMAN "A Game of You" TPB.

    "She was a remarkable woman."
    "All women are remarkable."
      -- Orpheus and Andros, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

Blossom for a lady -- Rain in the doorway -- Not her sister -- Want/not want --
The views from the backs of mirrors -- Journal of the plague year -- "The
number you have dialled..."
      -- Title of SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

Change. Change. Change. Change... Change. Change. Chaaange. When you say words
a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and
we just think they do.
      -- Delirium, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

She'll phone you up, and hang around your house. When you ask her to leave you
alone she'll just cry and not *say* anything -- look at you with hurt eyes and
follow you around. Eventually this will make you so angry you'll find yourself
needing desperately to make her say something. To make her react. To *hurt*
her. To get her eyes out of your mind. After that it will be just a matter of
time.
      -- Desire to an unnamed partygoer, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

Delirium has, from time to time, visited Despair's grey realm. It is the
antithesis of her own churning domain: formless and silent and still. Apathy
hangs like damp mist in the chill air.
      -- From SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

Today he's sitting in their family room. Realizing that his life is over,
wondering if he has the courage to physically end it. He doesn't. Isn't it
beautiful?
      -- Despair, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

In her world there are so many windows. Each opening shows her an existence
that's fallen to her -- some only for moments, others for lifetimes.
      -- Despair's realm, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

On the empty street, a corpse lay, waiting for the cart to take it to the
plague pit; next to it lay a poor piper, untouched by disease, but dead drunk.
He would come to his senses in the early hours of the following morning, in the
plague pit, with soft earth on his face, and cold flesh beneath him, and
believe himself in hell...
      -- The London plague of 1665, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

"Let me observe here," said Defoe, writing somewhat after the event, "... The
people were brought into a condition to despair of life." When Despair read
that, through a mirror, she nodded with the satisfaction of one who had
performed her duty with diligence and care.
      -- From SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

    "Some things are changeless. People love, and die, they dream, destroy,
despair, go mad. They fulfill their destinies, live out the course of their
lives. We fulfill our function, as they fulfill theirs... That will not
change."
    "You think not?"
      -- Despair and Destruction, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

You know how she is when she gets an idea into her head. I mean, when one
finally penetrates.
      -- Desire describes Delirium, in SANDMAN #41: "Brief Lives:1"

It always rains on the unloved -- Wet dreams -- A fishing expedition -- She
kisses wyverns (The Disneyland analogy) -- Dinner etiquette and chocolate
lovers -- Desire swears by the first circle -- "Things are changing" -- What
can possibly go wrong?
      -- Title of SANDMAN #42: "Brief Lives:2"

    "I mean, does this *always* happen when a girlfriend walks out on him?"
    "Not at all. For example, after the Nada affair he razed the Dreaming. It
was a bleak, lonely desert for centures. I remember the first flower that grew.
The first time he smiled again...
      -- Matthew and Lucien, in SANDMAN #42: "Brief Lives:2"

She was no longer Delight, and the blossoms had already begun to fall in her
domain, becoming smudged and formless colours, and she had no one to talk to...
      -- Delight becomes Delirium, in SANDMAN #42: "Brief Lives:2"

There are roughly seventy people walking the Earth, human to all appearances
(and in a few cases, to all medical tests currently available), who were alive
before the Earth had begun to congeal from gas and dust.
      -- Some backstory, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

There are less than five hundred living humans who remember the human
civilizations that predated the great lizards. (There were a few; fossil
records are unreliable. Several of them lasted for millions of years.)
      -- Some backstory, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "But I did okay, didn't I? I mean I got, what, fifteen thousand years.
That's pretty good, isn't it? I lived a pretty long time."
    "You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No
less."
      -- Bernie Capax and Death, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

The people who remember Atlantis -- Concerning mammoths, and falling walls --
Who controls transportation? -- Bored, she makes little frogs -- Truth Or
Consequences, and other places -- Ancestral voices prophesying -- The dogs of
art -- "When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly."
      -- Title of SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that
you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked
a long time ago."
    "There isn't one."
    "Oh. I thought maybe there was."
      -- Delirium and Dream, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "Can I have a name?"
    "Don't you have one? ... If you don't have a name, what do people call you?
I mean, do they just wave and smile, or jingle little silver bells or what?"
      -- The receptionist and Delirium, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

Well, there are these two people here, Sir. The man says he drank wine with you
somewhere called Babylon, and the lady... she's making little frogs.
      -- The receptionist, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "I'm not asking for art criticism, Barnabas. Merely for a few honest words
of appreciation."
    "Honestly? Well, the perspective's shot to hell, the colours could be
better chosen, and the olive tree on the left looks like an overgrown stinging
nettle."
      -- Destruction and Barnabas, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "Hmph. What the hell would you know? You're a dog."
    "Did I ever say I wasn't?"
      -- Destruction and Barnabas, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "'The colours could be better chosen my foot.' Anyway -- I thought dogs
were colour blind."
    "Yeah? That's a coincidence. I mean, looking at that painting I thought
*you* were colour blind."
      -- Destruction and Barnabas, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "You know, Barnabas, there are those who claim that for unquestioning
respect and eternal devotion, all one needs is a dog."
    "Hey, schmuck, devotion you've got. Perjury isn't in the job description."
      -- Destruction and Barnabas, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly. You just lift one leg, then you
lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly.
      -- Chloe Russell, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

    "So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to
fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?"
    "When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget."
    "But that's not fair..."
    "No."
      -- Chloe and Dream, in SANDMAN #43: "Brief Lives:3"

The other side of the sky -- A bear and his shadow -- Departed secrets --
"Twinkle's a nice word. So's viridian." -- Three keys -- A treatise on optics
-- The perils of smoking in bed.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #44: "Brief Lives:4"

    "Listen, I couldn't help overhearing you earlier. You said destiny was
blind. Well, didn't you mean love? It's 'Love is blind'. That's the saying,
isn't it?"
    "The subject is one I find entirely lacking in interest."
      -- Ruby and Dream, in SANDMAN #44: "Brief Lives:4"

Capax is dead. There is no doubt of that. There is nothing in his space but
darkness and cold and silence.
      -- Delirum checks on their quarry, in SANDMAN #44: "Brief Lives:4"

Etain of the Second Look: things moving fast. Strange impressions, difficult to
locate. No longer where she was. Is she still even in this plane? Refuge. She's
taken refuge somewhere. Delirium extends her flickering consciousness. An old
power? Something obscuring her vision? Possibly.
      -- Delirum checks on their quarry, in SANDMAN #44: "Brief Lives:4"

Do they think that they can impale the soul of it on their knives? That if they
cut deep enough they can extract its dreams, naked and writhing and screaming,
from its head? Reason is a flawed tool at best, my brother.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #44: "Brief Lives:4"

The things we do to be loved -- Her hands do not go to the moon -- The driving
instructor -- Tiffany watches I -- White knights and/or pond scum -- Are
dalmatians flowers? -- Nancy displays her erudition -- Wham bam thank you ma'am
-- Tiffany watches II.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

    "You. Out of the car, and keep your hands where I can see them."
    "You mean not make my hands go to the moon or anywhere?"
      -- A state trooper and Delirium, in SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

    "Matthew. When you were a man, were you able to drive a motor vehicle?"
    "Could I? Hey, I killed myself drunk driving, didn't I? I mean, the first
time."
    "I am not convinced that is any recommendation. However..."
      -- Dream and Matthew, in SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

She finds herself thinking once more about the women in the temple courtyard.
There is a magic generated by money given for lust. Once on a time, she could
use that magic, draw it to her. Create an aspect, take the power to herself.
Now, she uses a shadow of it to survive. Even a little worship is better than
nothing.
      -- Ishtar, in SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams
into the land. We are worshipped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And
then one day there's no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god
and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams... and what comes after,
not even *we* know.
      -- Ishtar, in SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

I'm going to dance now, I'm afraid.
      -- Ishtar ends it all, in SANDMAN #45: "Brief Lives:5"

Life isn't pleasant, petrified -- The parting of the ways -- The trouble with
mortals -- Dreamings of meeting or meetings of dreaming? -- The trouble with
gods -- Mervyn sets him straight -- "Have you got anything with a happy
ending?" -- Tempus frangit.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #46: "Brief Lives:6"

    "Ruby's dead?"
    "Yes."
    "Ah me. That's the trouble with mortals. They do that. Not to worry, eh?"
      -- Dream and Pharamond, in SANDMAN #46: "Brief Lives:6"

At the edge of the desert is the City of Bubastis. The City is Bubastis as she
never was, save in the dreams of a long-dead builder; and in the dreams of a
blind child dead four thousand years, who had never seen the city she lived in
all her short life; and in the dreams of the goddess of that place. The dreams
of Bast.
      -- Dream builds a dream city, in SANDMAN #46: "Brief Lives:6"

These are the ghosts of those of my folk who were embalmed, that they would
live forever in the world beyond. But their physical forms were exhumed, over a
hundred years ago, ground up and used to fertilize the land. Now they are only
memories, slowly fading from the land and the world. Dreams of ghost cats, and
cats of ghost dreams... sss. I know how they feel.
      -- Bast, in SANDMAN #46: "Brief Lives:6"

Cooking considered as one of the fine arts -- "My envelope isn't any good
anymore" -- Where all mazes meet -- The other side of the coin -- Life as a
glass of bitter wine -- Cherries are counted, and a bargain is made -- An
unlikely growth.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #47: "Brief Lives:7"

Dream respects his brother, but the garden of Destiny disturbs him. It is
usual, however, for the Endless to feel uncomfortable in each other's realms;
only Death travels wheresoever she must, without misgiving.
      -- From SANDMAN #47: "Brief Lives:7"

The garden of Destiny. Look behind you: shadow-plays of memory are forever
being enacted, on paths you walked too long ago.
      -- From SANDMAN #47: "Brief Lives:7"

Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? *I* do. There are things
not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. You would do well to
remember that.
      -- Delirum berates Destiny, in SANDMAN #47: "Brief Lives:7"

Journey's end -- Brains, a heart, a ride in a balloon -- Dinner -- Something
new -- The illusion of permanence -- A wreath of bright stars -- Echoes of
darkness -- Up. Out.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

Ah, yes. You must have grown on a particularly penetrating and incisive branch
of the family tree.
      -- Barnabas to Delirium, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

I suppose I had vaguely hoped that you had changed, my brother. That you'd
noticed that there were other people in the world. That you had begun to see
people as other than things that dream, as creatures of stories.
      -- Destruction to Dream, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

Destruction did not cease with my abandonment of my realm, no more than people
would cease to dream should you abandon yours. Perhaps it's more uncontrolled,
wilder. Perhaps not. But it's no longer anyone's responsibility.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're
always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...
I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than
moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds
don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle
like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #48: "Journey's End"

The Endless? The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The
Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are
echoes of darkness, and nothing more. We have no right to play with their
lives, to order their dreams and their desires.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

    "And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer
than this version of the universe."
    "Except our sister."
    "So we suppose."
      -- Destruction, Delirium, and Dream in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

Desire was right. Also untrustworthy, acerbic, dangerous, and cruel. But right.
You would have been better off leaving well enough alone.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

Still, what's done can't be undone. Or very rarely. And definitely not this
time.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #48: "Brief Lives:8"

Farewells -- Answered prayers -- The flowers of romance -- Journey's end -- The
gates of horn -- Things unlooked for -- Brief lives.
      -- Title of SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

I am so scared. It's strange. For many thousand years I have prayed for death.
I have prayed to all the gods for peace and relief and... I have prayed for an
ending.
      -- Orpheus, in SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

    "You cannot seek Destruction and return unscathed."
    "Delirium has."
    "Delirium has been scathed enough in her time."
      -- Despair and Desire, in SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

And from the horns of the youngest, he carved a gate that he reserved for true
dreams. This because he had some little regard for her, and had, perhaps, in
some small measure, regretted the course of action he had found necessary. But
all this was long ago; and the truth of it all has not ever been told on this
world.
      -- From SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

At rest in the temple of its body, Desire, who would be darkly amused to hear
itself described as an angel, floats in an eyeball larger than a cathedral, and
remembers its lost brother in its own way. Desire's thoughts are private. It
holds a small red flower, very tightly.
      -- From SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

Andros takes the linen-wrapped bundle from his son. We will put him to rest,
thinks Andros Rhodocanakis, beneath the cherry tree, and perhaps his spirit is
in Elysium, with his beloved Eurydice. And perhaps his spirit has returned to
darkness, or to nothing... And perhaps he is at rest.
      -- Orpheus's burial, in SANDMAN #49: "Brief Lives:9"

I don't really like driving in snow. There's something about the motion of the
falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throwing my sense of balance all to
hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars.
      -- Brant's thoughts on driving, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two
         Cities"

Matey, if you asks my opinion, a-sitting there in the snow is not eggzackerly
the smartest thingie as you could be a-doing of, all things considerable.
      -- A passing hedgehog offers some advice, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of
         Two Cities"

You need help, matey. You and that there young lady. That red stuff, that's
*blood* that is. Meant to be on the inside, it is. Bad sign if it's not on the
inside, that's what I says.
      -- Medical advice from a hedgehog, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two
         Cities"

Up the lane aways is the Inn. You just have to be *sure* it's there, though. If
you aren't sure, then fizzlywinks, it's only goin' to be fireflies and treeses.
      -- Giving directions, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

    "What's going on?"
    "We're telling stories. You just missed a really good one about a man who
won November 1937 in a poker game."
      -- Brant and Charlene, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

In the subway train, in the morning, he would read a newspaper, and wonder what
would happen were the subway carriage to be transported to a distant planet:
how long would it take before the passengers began to speak, one to another;
who would make love to whom; who would be eaten should they run out of food. He
felt vaguely ashamed of these daydreams.
      -- Robert's daily life, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

A carving on a wall above a door on a condemned house; a bright flash of
sunlight reflecting off the railings of a park, making them serried spears to
guard the green grass and running children; a gravestone in a churchyard,
eroded by wind and rain and time until the words on the stone had been lost but
the mosses and lichens still spelled out letters from forgotten alphabets...
all these sights, and many others, he treasured and collected.
      -- Robert's lunchtime walks, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

The roads mixed him up, turned him around. Here, he would pass a cathedral or
museum, there, a skyscraper or a fountain -- always hauntingly familiar. But he
never passed the same landmark twice, could never find the road to return him
to the landmark again.
      -- Wandering a city of dreams, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.
That is where I believe we have come. We are in the dreams of the city. That's
why certain places hover on the brink of recognition; why we almost know where
we are.
      -- The old man's theory, in SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

"If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not
fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and
estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless
things. What I fear," he said, "is that one day he cities will waken. That one
day the cities will rise."
      -- From SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

    I like to believe it was only the cold that made me shiver, only a strand
of fog in my throat that caused me to catch my breath.
    Robert walked away across the moor and I never saw him again. Since that
time I have walked with less comfort in cities.
      -- From SANDMAN #51: "A Tale of Two Cities"

    "So... where are you from?"
    "Seattle. You?"
    "The Necropolis Litharge."
      -- Bathroom conversation, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

I lack the ability to embellish. Thus you would perforce needs content all
yourselves, one and all, with a rather sparse and uninteresting narrative.
      -- Cluracan warms up, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

    "Sometimes I wish that my ambassador was not quite so... let me see.
Feckless?"
    "You reign over a feckless dominion, My Lady."
      -- Queen Titania and Cluracan, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

Well, you are the best I have, Cluracan, and to say that is to say little
indeed.
      -- Queen Titania, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

We of Faerie are of the wild magic. We are not creatures of spells and
grimoires. We *are* spells, and we are written of in grimoires.
      -- From SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

Cluracan, it is one to me whether you live or die. It is not one to your
sister, and she serves me well and faithfully. I would not see her needlessly
distressed.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

    "Was that the truth, Cluracan?"
    "All of it except the sword-fight with the palace guard, which I threw in
to add verisimilitude, excitement, and local color to an otherwise bald and
insipid narrative."
      -- The innkeeper and Cluracan, in SANDMAN #52: "Cluracan's Tale"

I stood there sweating with the line in my hands, and the sun broke above the
horizon, and the gulls mewed and the grey sea turned to sapphire: and I knew
this would be a good voyage.
      -- The Sea Witch sets sail, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

    "You're a romantic."
    "Why be a sailor if you're not?"
      -- First mate Canby and Jim, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

    "Why does the water glow like that?"
    "The dream magic of the sea."
    "Phosphorescent algae."
      -- One question, two answers, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

Some of it's the voice, and some of it's the hands, and a lot of it's learning
to see what you see and not what you think you see, if that makes any sense.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

    "How old are you, sir?"
    "Old enough to have learned to keep my mouth shut about seeing a bloody
great snake in the middle of the ocean."
      -- Jim and Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

Given time, you'll spin a yarn of what we saw in the ocean. Given time I'll
tell the tale of the handsome cabin boy. But given enough time and the right
audience, the darkest of secrets scum over into mere curiosities.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

But I'm getting too old for the trick, which troubles me, for the sea is in my
blood like a fever and I don't know how I can leave.
      -- Jim's envoi, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

    And when, some day soon, I forsake the sea -- like a sailor leaving his
lady-love on the shore -- I shall take another name to me and build another
life.
    But -- for now -- you can call me Jim.
      -- Jim's envoi, in SANDMAN #53: "Hob's Leviathan"

My people have, of old, divided the world into two kinds of people: hedgehogs
and foxes. Hedgehogs know one big thing. Foxes know lots of little things.
      -- The storyteller paraphrases Isaiah Berlin, in SANDMAN #54: "The
         Golden Boy"

In the White House is a tiger skin rug, shot and killed many years ago by Teddy
Roosevelt. The feet of the great walk over that tiger skin each day. It listens
to policy being formed and secrets being spoken. Now do you think that tiger
would rather be dead and in the seat of power, or alive, and walking the jungle
of India, sniffing the wind for the scent of game?
      -- Prez Rickard, in SANDMAN #54: "The Golden Boy"

Some people said the woman who killed his Kathy returned to finish off the task
she had begun years before. And these people knew that the killer had in her
turn been executed. But still, they said, it was her.
      -- From SANDMAN #54: "The Golden Boy"

    "So what are you? God? Or the Devil?"
    "I'm just Boss Smiley. I run your world."
    "So that girl was right. You're *not* the watchmaker."
    "If only."
      -- Prez Rickard and Boss Smiley, in SANDMAN #54: "The Golden Boy"

Firstly, earth burial or interment. Variants are boxed, wrapped or naked,
embalmed or otherwise; lying, seated or standing; grave, sepulchre, vault or
cairn.
      -- Part one of Petrefax's answer, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

Secondly, disposal through fire. Variants: clothed, boxed, pyre, vessel, or
ship. Also there are different procedures that can be adopted to dispose of the
ashes.
      -- Part two of Petrefax's answer, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

Thirdly: mummification. Variants: salting, mineral baths, dehydration. There's
the thing with pitch and bitumen and...
      -- Part three of Petrefax's answer, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

Fourthly, disposal through water. Variants include feeding to water animals or
fish; disposal in sacred river or sea, boxing, bagging with rocks,
dismemberment...
      -- Part four of Petrefax's answer, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

Fifth... Air burial, sir. Variants include dismemberment and otherwise;
ingestion by raptors or scavengers; complete or partial disposal.
      -- Part five of Petrefax's answer, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

It is a fearful thing to be haunted by those who loved us once. It is a fearful
thing to haunt those one loves.
      -- Destruction orates about death (small 'd'), in SANDMAN #55:
         "Cerements"

We were here before any other city that now stands. And we will sing the
funeral songs that are sung for cities for them when they die.
      -- The role of the Necropolis Litharge, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

And then she found herself in a huge room, somewhere beneath the city. There
were six silver cerements hanging in that room, shining in the darkness; and a
huge book, locked closed, on a lectern. And a voice said to her: "WHICH OF THEM
IS DEAD?"
      -- Young Mistress Veltis makes a discovery, in SANDMAN #55:
         "Cerements"

    "We're all dead. That's why we're here."
    "Young man. If you were dead, I think I would know it. I have some
experience in these matters."
      -- Brant Tucker and Master Klaproth, in SANDMAN #55: "Cerements"

I think that the Cluracan has had enough. I know he prides himself on his
capacity for alcohol, but there's a thin line between intoxication and
unconsciousness, and he's just about to cross it.
      -- The innkeeper, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

When a world ends, there's always something left over. A story, perhaps, or a
vision, or a hope. This inn is a refuge, after the lights go out. For a while.
      -- The innkeeper, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

It is, however, a difficult hypothesis to test empirically. This is only the
second of these storms in my lifetime, and we centaurs consider ourselves a
long-lived folk indeed.
      -- Chiron, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

    So, like everyone else, I was staring out of one of the windows of the inn
at the end of the words.
    Worlds. I meant worlds.
      -- Brant Tucker, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

The words said over my father's body were hollow and dumb, and I couldn't find
it in me to cry, not then. I knew I was watching the real thing here. There was
true grief in each step they took across the sky, and they shouldered the
casket as if they were shouldering the weight of the world.
      -- Brant Tucker, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She
probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life.
      -- Brant Tucker sees Death, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of
person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you,
because they know you.
      -- Brant Tucker sees Death, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

    "Hey. Thanks for listening. I suppose you must think I'm crazy."
    "No. I don't. Maybe I ought to. But I don't. You hear a lot of weird
stories behind a bar."
      -- Brant Tucker and the bartender, in SANDMAN #56: "World's End"

There's a moment of fear in the returning to sleep. A hesitation: there are
darknesses beyond the curtain of waking, and the shadow-plays clutch at my
heart... Too late. I'm gone.
      -- The unnamed dreamer, in SANDMAN: "The Castle"

Get your head outta the clouds! Not you, kiddo. I was talking to Tiny. He gets
his head in the clouds, he'll be sneezing for days.
      -- Mervyn Pumpkinhead, in SANDMAN: "The Castle"

I'm Matthew. I'm the raven. Not a raven -- *the* raven. That's one of the weird
things about the Dreaming -- it's a kind of one-raven-at-a-time sort of place.
      -- Matthew introduces himself, in SANDMAN: "The Castle"

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things.
Give me a good ending any time. You know where you are with an ending.
      -- The eldest of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

Why, that's what I like about making things for people. You can start off in
Birmingham and finish in, well, Tanganyika or somewhere.
      -- The middle of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they
like it less than ever. "I never thought it would be like this." "Why can't it
be like the one I had before?" I don't know why we bother.
      -- The eldest of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

We bother because we have no choice. Because that is what we are, in this
aspect.
      -- The youngest of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly
         Ones:1"

There are no gryphons, no wyverns, no winged horses in the waking world, raven.
Not anymore. But we are here...
      -- The gryphon at the door, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

"Mervyn, build an ocean over here, knock down that city under the willow tree
over there, and incidentally, Mervyn, this time remember that ice is
customarily cold." Like I don't have enough to do.
      -- Mervyn complains about his boss Dream, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly
         Ones:1"

    "Whatcha reading?"
    "An unwritten play by John Webster. _A Banquet for the Wormes_."
    "Any good?"
    "Yes. Very good. 'Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull
beneath the skin.' He did, you know, he really did."
    "Yeah? You mean like he had some sort of X-ray vision?"
    "No, nothing like that."
      -- Matthew and Lucien, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

    "Lucien? Were you ever alive?"
    "I don't think so, no."
    "You don't *think* so?"
    "I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this
library, Matthew. Every book that's ever been dreamed. Every book that's ever
been imagined. Every book that's ever been lost. Millions upon millions of
them. That's what I remember. It's my job. Other things... I forget sometimes."
      -- Matthew and Lucien, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

    Imagine that you woke in the night and rose, and seemed to see before you
another person, whom slowly you perceived to be yourself. Someone had entered
in the night and placed a mirror in your sleeping place, made from a black
metal. You had been frightened only of your reflection. But then the reflection
slowly raised one hand, while your own hand stayed still...
    A dark mirror... That was always the intention...
      -- Dream explains the Corinthian, in SANDMAN #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

No, I'm afraid not. It is a song I find entirely devoid of interest. The melody
is trite, while the awkward paraphrases of lesser Eliot poems in the lyrics are
grating in the extreme.
      -- Lucifer gives his opinion of Andrew Lloyd Webber, in SANDMAN #57:
         "The Kindly Ones:1"

    "Are you sure it's a finger? It's very small."
    "It was a very small baby."
    "Ditch-delivered?"
    "And birth-strangled. Just like it says in the recipe."
      -- From Lyta's dream of the three Ladies, in SANDMAN #58: "The Kindly
         Ones:2"

    "I didn't know that there was a downstairs, here."
    "There's a downstairs in everybody. That's where we live."
      -- Lyta and the youngest of the Three, in SANDMAN #58: "The Kindly
         Ones:2"

    "Here -- have a porkie pie instead."
    "It -- it's covered in mud."
    "Everyone's got to eat a peck of dirt before they die."
      -- One of the Three and Lyta, in SANDMAN #58: "The Kindly Ones:2"

    "Fairy gifts traditionally are double-edged knives."
    "And are your own gifts always without consequence, Sire?"
      -- Dream and Cluracan, in SANDMAN #58: "The Kindly Ones:2"

    "Many years ago I convinced Thor of the Aesir that the reason for his
impotence was that he was pregnant."
    "*Pregnant?*"
    "Mm. He's not very bright."
      -- Loki and Puck, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

Somebody once told me you don't really die until everyone that you knew is
dead, too. Think of all the people I'm keeping alive, eh?
      -- Hob Gadling at a graveside, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

I wish I could have told you about Peg. You'd've liked her. She died in the
Blitz. We were trapped in a cellar. I held her hand, as she stopped
breathing... Ah, but that's the past, and done with.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

It was then that Delirium noticed that she had absent-mindedly transformed into
a hundred and eleven perfect, tiny multicoloured fish. Each fish sang a
different song.
      -- In SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

Dreams are tricky buggers. You can't trust them.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

Watch me. This is me going to the door, just like I've done thousands and
thousands of times in the past and none of those times was important, I can't
even remember them as individual times, who remembers walking to the door...?
And then I open the door.
      -- Lyta Hall, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

This is me walking into the family room. This is me just standing here
listening to the voices in my head. One of them's saying "this is me just
standing here..." And the other one's going "Eeeeeee..." in one long ceaseless
scream. And the last one doesn't say anything at all.
      -- Lyta is told her son is dead, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

I must be strong. And in my head a voice says, Yes, Dear, you must. And in my
head another voice is muttering Oh that I were a man, or that I had power to
execute my apprehended wishes: I would whip some with scorpions... And a voice
says, You know what you must do.
      -- Lyta is told her son is dead, in SANDMAN #59: "The Kindly Ones:3"

    "The early bird catches the worm, Star of Morning. The, um, worm that dieth
not, in this case. Eh? Haha..."
    "How remarkably funny, Remiel. Not actually *original* though, of course."
      -- Remiel and Lucifer, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

Been there, Remiel. Done that, wore the tee-shirt, ate the burger, bought the
original cast album, choreographed the legions of the damned and orchestrated
the screaming...
      -- Lucifer, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

You didn't join the rebellion, not because you felt I was wrong, but because
you were too damned scared. What would you have done, had I won? Told me that
you'd always supported me ideologically? That you were secretly cheering me on
the whole time?
      -- Lucifer berates Remiel, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

    "Do you want to come with me, kitty-cat?"
    "I can't. I'm on my way to that castle. It's owned by a shape-changing
ogre. I intend to wager the silver collar around my neck that the ogre cannot
change itself into three things that I shall name for it."
    "Will the third shape be a mouse?"
    "Of course."
    "But... don't they ever learn?"
    "They can't. They're part of the story, just as I am."
      -- Lyta and a passing cat, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

I didn't say it was my fault. I said it was my responsibility. I know the
difference.
      -- Rose Walker, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

    "Y'see, my grandmother was Carmilla Bristol."
    "Who?"
    "Carmilla Bristol. She played, like, every black ladies' maid in every
crappy Hollywood film made between 1925 and 1950. "Now dere, Missy, you hush up
wid' yo' cryin'." She didn't get to demonstrate much dramatic range, but she
had a great eye for a land deal."
      -- Carla and Rose, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

Our sister died. But we never took revenge. We knew there'd be trouble one day,
her being mortal. It's not as if we never said anything. We still miss her. We
still mourn.
      -- Stheno, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

Take apples, by all means -- I'm guardian -- to be honest, don't give a toss
who has them -- no one ever comes here. Just rot on the ground -- worms get
them -- pity.
      -- Geryon, guardian of the Tree of Life, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly
         Ones:4"

    "A complete what, Mervyn?"
    "A, uh, just a... *complete*, Boss."
    "Completeness is a virtue, is it not?"
      -- Dream and Mervyn, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that
the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the
emperor remains an emperor.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #60: "The Kindly Ones:4"

The gods we prayed to when we were young used up their time so long ago. They
cannot answer anymore.
      -- Euryale, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

    "They never liked us, did they?"
    "Gods don't 'like'. They love and they hate and they ignore."
      -- Stheno and Euryale, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

    "It was good to be three. I haven't forgotten... Twos don't work. Twos hurt
and crumble. Twos fall into ones, and then into dust and nothings."
    "We're still here."
    "That's because we haven't given up hope of being a three again."
      -- Euryale and Stheno, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

If you go looking for the Ladies... well, I don't know that that's such a good
idea. You might find them.
      -- Euryale, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

Can I have more water, please? My hair drank most of it.
      -- Lyta Hall, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

    "You know, there's a three-headed snake out in the garden. I don't think it
trusts you two. It was rude about you."
    "Well, then the next time we see it, we'll glare at it."
      -- Lyta Hall and Euryale, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

    "If you had stayed with us, we could have given you life until death."
    "Don't I get that anyway?"
      -- Stheno and Lyta Hall, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

There's a theory that for a human to be killed by a god is the best thing that
could possibly happen to the human under discussion. It eliminates all
questions of belief, while manifestly placing a human life at the service of a
higher power.
      -- Loki, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

You don't have to believe in God. But what about gods? Eh? The plurality of
powers and dominions. The lords and ladies of field and thorn, of asphalt and
sewer, gods of telephone and whore, gods of hospital and car-crash?
      -- Loki, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

And do you know your tragedy, Carla? ... It's that, for all your goodwill, for
all your willingness to help, you never knew what any of this was all about.
What was going on. You don't know how it ends. And you'll never get to find
out.
      -- Loki, in SANDMAN #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

I stay awake the whole way, this time, while Jack does the conversation thing
that the English do so well, where they can talk forever and never tell you a
thing.
      -- Rose Walker, in SANDMAN #62: "The Kindly Ones:6"

And as soon as he was sure that he was dead, he got up and shook himself, and
looked around, and there waiting for him on the bed was his wife, with long
claws out, and her eyes blazing like a green cat ready to spring.
      -- Magda's story, in SANDMAN #62: "The Kindly Ones:6"

    And he screams, "Kill me, for god's sake, just get it over with." But she
licks her lips with a long worm tongue, and she shakes her head. "A meal this
good must never be hurried," she says. "Just hold still, boy, and let me enjoy
myself." And she takes her first, gentle bite from his cheek with her sharp
sharp teeth...
    And that's the story, as my mother used to tell it.
      -- Magda's story, in SANDMAN #62: "The Kindly Ones:6"

Well, there was this doggy. He was a very clever doggy. He said things like...
like... "I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would
agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested
options."
      -- Delirium describes her dog Barnabas, in SANDMAN #63: "The Kindly
         Ones:7"

A raven walks slowly about her house, its frock-coated gait that of an elderly
gentleman, leaning forward as it struts. A black hound waits by the door. In
the garden by the stream a little girl plays with something yellowed and round
that might conceivably be a ball.
      -- The house of the Morrigan, in SANDMAN #63: "The Kindly Ones:7"

And then, to conclude the day's work, he gave an elderly tortoise, alone on her
island these past two centuries, a dream of her love, roasted by passing
sailors long since for his rich green flesh.
      -- From a week in Dream's life, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

Dancing salamanders brought the children silver plates filled with exotic
ice-creams of various flavors, and with fruits they had never seen before and
would never see again... although they would dream of them, on rare occasions,
until they died.
      -- From a week in Dream's life, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

He spoke to the embryonic silicon dreams who clustered in a far ballroom, and
whispered to them, briefly, about the other machines that had dreamed in the
distant past.
      -- From a week in Dream's life, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

He spoke to the scar-dancers, to the straw-dust-women, to the old man with a
swan's arm who tends the back stairs, to the three children of the autopsy, to
the painters and the scriveners and the walls.
      -- From a week in Dream's life, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

I know lots of things. People think I don't but I really do. I know more about
us than any of us. That's just one of the things I know.
      -- Delirium, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

Sometimes old memories surface, like flotsam on the churning surface of the
sea. And then they are gone.
      -- The Corinthian, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

Some were larger than eagles. Some were older than gods. They stayed in the
shadows, kawwing and tokking. Waiting.
      -- The ravens arrive in the Dreaming, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly
         Ones:8"

Gryphon, you are old. Your flesh is meat, and the meat is decaying. Your bones
are dry and brittle. Within you now, lion and eagle abandon their battle for
dominance, and surrender to time and to the grave.
      -- The Furies kill the gryphon, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly Ones:8"

"I am honor-bound to warn you to stay on the path through the castle. Straying
from the path could mean your destruction. ... You killed my friend, woman.
Stray from your path."
      -- The guardian dragon warns the Furies, in SANDMAN #64: "The Kindly
         Ones:8"

Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying
in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or
"how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your
heart.
      -- Rose Walker's soliloquy, in SANDMAN #65: "The Kindly Ones:9"

    "I... I did not intend to hurt you."
    "And what if you did not? Intent and outcome are so rarely coincident."
      -- Dream and Larissa, in SANDMAN #65: "The Kindly Ones:9"

The thing you ought to remember about ravens, is that we belong equally to both
genders. You don't see *that* every day. But we're as likely to be the
Morrigan's as Odin's, as likely to be Eve's as Dream's.
      -- Noah's raven, in SANDMAN #65: "The Kindly Ones:9"

    "So, young Matthew. You want to go first?"
    "I can't. He was my friend. I just came down to say goodbye."
    "So? Listen, an eye's just an eye. A few more days, and he'll be something
not even a raven would eat. Over to the ants..."
      -- Noah's raven and Matthew, in SANDMAN #65: "The Kindly Ones:9"

It was like a bad TV show. "He's a reincarnated serial killer -- his partner's
a bird. They're cops."
      -- Matthew the raven, in SANDMAN #65: "The Kindly Ones:9"

A Puck is harder by far to hurt than some little lord of malice from the lands
of ice and snow. We Pucks are old and hard and wild...
      -- Robin Goodfellow, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

I am the Puck, called Robin Goodfellow. I am a trickster, an antic prankster, a
will o' the wisp. "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is
loose upon the world." That's me.
      -- Robin Goodfellow, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

    "You can't kill me."
    "We can. If we want to. You scarcely exist. You're a dream of a ghost of a
memory of someone who, one suspects, never existed in the first place."
      -- Abel and the Furies, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

You mustn't kill me. You don't love me. You d-don't even know me.
      -- The Furies kill Abel, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

I swear on my name, soon he will be remembered only by antiquaries. But then,
we are all improved by the glow of memory.
      -- Robin Goodfellow predicts Dream's demise, in SANDMAN #66: "The
         Kindly Ones:10"

    "You? What are you?"
    "Me? Lady, I'm your worst nightmare -- a pumpkin with a gun."
      -- The Furies and Mervyn, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

They say I'm a bastard, and I'll tell you what. I *am* a bastard. A hard, tough
bastard. A tough, hard bastard with a pumpkin for a head.
      -- Mervyn rallies his troops, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

    "Gods fear us. Demons fear us. We have hounded kings and angels. We have
taken vengeance on worlds and universes. We are the Kindly Ones. We are the
Eumenides."
    "Yeah? Well, Eumenides this!"
      -- The Furies and Mervyn, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

    "How... how dare you let that happen, Lord? *How dare you?*"
    "You will not speak to me like that, Lucien."
    "I doubt I'll be alive tomorrow, Lord. On that basis I find it particularly
easy to say exactly what I think."
      -- Dream and Lucien, in SANDMAN #66: "The Kindly Ones:10"

Things have been a little turbulent of late. *Late* being the operative word.
      -- Cain watches the Dreaming crumble, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly
         Ones:11"

    "On reflection, while I cannot give you the thing itself, I could give you
a dream of my love."
    "I already have that, my Lord."
      -- Dream and Nuala, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

I remember waiting for his return. I remember the strange strained grey days
that stretched into years and into decades. The slow crumbling of walls... the
rooms that were no longer there...
      -- The Corinthian remembers Dream's absence, in SANDMAN #67: "The
         Kindly Ones:11"

This will be felt across worlds and days as a reality storm; and, as it plays
its course, conflicting realities will fall and spin and shatter across time
and existence.
      -- Destiny, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

All around me darkness gathers, fading is the sun that shone, we must speak of
other matters, you can be me when I'm gone...
      -- The train's clattering, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

Such a train it becomes, oh! a gleaming black and silver Deco dream of a train
that clacks along the silver tracks with the unchanging rhythm of a nursery
rhyme, and perhaps, if you listened hard enough, you could imagine that you
could tease words from the pulsing clatter...
      -- Dream's conveyance, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

Above the entrance is a frieze: a wyvern and a winged horse are frozen in
bas-relief, and there is an empty space, where a third carving might once have
been.
      -- The train terminus, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

And this occurs at the same moment that a customer at Lux's, drunk and
flirtatious, peeks beneath Mazikeen's half-mask. He satisfies his curiosity, as
he loses, one after the other, his drink, his lunch, and his sanity. Mazikeen
has no patience with men.
      -- A brief aside, in SANDMAN #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

Hmph. If you don't let me in, I will turn you into a demon half-face waitress
night-club lady with a crush on her boss, and I'll make it so you've been that
from the beginning of time to now and you'll never ever know if you were
anything else and it will itch inside your head worse than little bugses.
      -- Delirium threatens Mazikeen, in SANDMAN #68: "The Kindly Ones:12"

So: exeunt the spider women, stage left. Look on their works, ye mighty, and
clean yours with bleach.
      -- Hal's reaction to Zelda's death, in SANDMAN #68: "The Kindly
         Ones:12"

    "You're crying."
    "Lord Shaper is in dire need, and he doesn't love me."
    "Would it be better if he was in dire need, and *did* love you?"
      -- Cluracan and Nuala, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

Since I killed my son... the Dreaming has not been the same ... or perhaps I
was no longer the same. I still had my obligations... But even the freedom of
the Dreaming can be a cage, of a kind, my sister.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

And the poison spills into Loki's mouth and eyes; he writhes, and a city falls:
and in the moment of pain he gains a certain clarity. The master manipulator
realizes how, ultimately-- how strangely, how elegantly-- he too had been
manipulated. Perhaps the sound he makes is laughter.
      -- Another aside, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

Dream? Give me your hand.
      -- Death, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

    "But I did look for you. All over."
    "Hmph. Where were you looking? Patagonia? Mars? The Emerald City?"
    "Um. Places like that."
      -- Delirium and Barnabas, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

I had the hubris originally to regard myself as a collaborator, as a co-author.
Very rapidly I found myself reduced to the status of character, following
something of a disagreement in the fundamental direction of the Creation.
      -- Lucifer, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

    "So you see, it was innocent. It really was. Just bad luck."
    "Rosalita... there isn't any innocent. There isn't any guilty. There's just
dead."
      -- Rose and Hal, at Zelda's funeral in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly
         Ones:13"

    "What did we make? What *was* it, in the end?"
    "What it always is. A handful of yarn; a little weaving and stitching; some
embroidering perhaps. A few loose ends, but that's only to be expected."
      -- The Fates, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

It's the same old story... Whatever it turns into on the way, whatever it is
you originally undertake to spin or knit or weave, keep it going long enough
and, in the end, my lilies, it's always a winding sheet.
      -- One of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

<snf> At least it's not a moral. Worse than beginnings, morals. I've got no
time for them. No time at all.
      -- One of the three Fates, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

Never mind. There. For good or bad. It's done.
      -- It all comes down to this, in SANDMAN #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

The family did not send to ask from whom the messenger had come; it was not the
first time that messengers had visited them, after all. And there are some
powers that no one, not even the Endless, seeks to inquire into too deeply.
      -- Invitations are delivered in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

One for sorrow, two for sorrow, three for sorrow, four for for for I don't know
but I'm all bored of sorrow, five for three two one, six for gold, seven for a
magpie who tells me where to go...
      -- Delirium, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

Our brother is dead. We have come for the cerements and for the books of
ritual, which are in your keeping.
      -- Desire, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

And the state of his bathroom -- I'm not one to gossip, but there are things
crusted on his sink that have not simply developed intelligent life but have in
all probability by now evolved their own political systems.
      -- Cain describes Abel in in SANDMAN #70, "The Wake" part one

Eblis O'Shaughnessy: you were created and gifted by five of the Endless, but
you can neither dream nor, ultimately, destroy, and that shall be your triumph
and that shall be your tragedy.
      -- Destiny, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

If you bring me back to life, my death will have no meaning. I had a fine
existence. I was a good place. I spent a little time in the waking world. I
even fell in love, once, a little. I lived a good life and it ended. Would you
take that away from me?
      -- Fiddler's Green, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

And the Lady Bast, her fur thinning and her eyes milky and dim, summons all the
power at her disposal, pulls together tiny strands of belief, a handful of
instants of half-hearted worship. At a cat show in Glasgow, a teenage boy
stares at a one-year-old Abyssinian and, for a moment, he sees a goddess. Head
held high, eyes clear, fur sleek, she walks to the Dreaming.
      -- Bast prepares for the wake, in SANDMAN #70, part one of "The Wake"

Somewhere in the night, entities bigger than storm-clouds are building a house
of remembrance. The people on the ground are waiting for the building to be
finished before they go inside. They wait awkwardly, shuffling and making
small-talk, in the wasteland that was once the heart of the Dreaming.
Everybody's here. You're here.
      -- Preparations, in SANDMAN #71, part two of "The Wake"

I am not here to mourn him. I mourned the loss of my love a long time ago. I am
here to say goodbye to a stranger who once did me a good turn. And to the man
who gave my son the death he craved.
      -- Calliope, in SANDMAN #71, part two of "The Wake"

    "Your predecessor, he told me there weren't any gryphons left in the waking
world."
    "Arimaspia is as far from the waking world as it is from the Dreaming,
great lord."
      -- Matthew and the new gryphon, in SANDMAN #71, part two of "The
         Wake"

    "The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version
of my life. Have you ever had that dream?"
    "Doesn't everyone?"
    "I don't."
      -- Superman, Batman, and Martian Manhunter, in SANDMAN #71, part two
         of "The Wake"

We were never loves, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however.
I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I
regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company.
The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now
regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
      -- Lady Bast, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

The bonds of family bind both ways. They bind us up, support us, help us, and
they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to
extricate oneself.
      -- Desire, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the
rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him.
He was a creature of hope, for dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes, and I am
a creature of despair.
      -- Despair, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

I think of the first Despair sometimes, said Despair. It must be over a hundred
thousand years since anyone thought of her but me. An eyeblink, and she is
forgotten. And you will forget: death or life will take him from your minds. I
know, whispered Despair, in her distant, empty voice. But I shall remember him.
      -- Despair, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

Something Dian used to say to me. She'd say, "Wes, don't say anything unless
you've got something to say." Advice I took to heart. She would also say, "It's
a long, long trail that has no turning." And how right she was.
      -- Wesley Dodds, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

I'm not a young man anymore. I'm retired now. But I sometimes think that all
the things in my life that have made it worth the living have been as a result
of my connection to the dead gentleman.
      -- Wesley Dodds, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it.
And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply
assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best.
      -- Destruction, in SANDMAN #72, part three of "The Wake"

For a start, we never even noticed the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a load
of bloody Italians poncing around claiming to be the golden age of the Greeks
come around again. Nobody in England had even heard of the Renaissance until it
had been over for centuries.
      -- Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #73, epilogue to "The Wake"

    "C'mon, Robbie. There weren't any black queens of England."
    "Catherine of Aragon."
    "She wasn't black. She was Spanish."
    "There were a lot of Moors and Africans in Spain and Italy in the old days.
Remember Othello? Trust me, if Catherine of Aragon had been in Alabama in the
1950s they'd have made her ride in the back of the bus."
      -- Guenevere and Hob, in SANDMAN #73, epilogue to "The Wake"

    "When I first met you I thought you were gay."
    "Why? 'Cos I'm English?"
    "Uh-uh. Because you seemed to know so many people who were dead."
    "... That's not funny."
    "No. It's not, is it?"
      -- Guenevere and Hob, in SANDMAN #73, epilogue to "The Wake"

    "They're all having a marvelous time. It's great."
    "Well, thank you, little Miss Sunshine."
      -- Death and Hob Gadling, in SANDMAN #73, epilogue to "The Wake"

Birds of a thousand colours danced in the sky when I was a boy. They brightened
the day with their intricate songs. "We are who we choose to be," sang the
goldfinch, when the sun was high. "I dream about dreams about dreams," sang the
nightingale, under the pale moon.
      -- Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

Old friend, in my mind only do I write you this letter, but it is a splendid
letter, with perfect brushwork. Old hands do not shake or cramp when the letter
is written on the air.
      -- Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

    "Father? I am your son. That is only a kitten. Why do you abandon me to
chase after it?"
    "When you were alive, you were all my joy. Now you are dead. I see you only
in my dreams. And when I awake my pillow is wet with tears. The kitten is
living, and it needs my help."
      -- Reality shifts in the Soft Places, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

Why are you here, in this home of demons? Are you lost? Or are you also a
demon? Forgive my bluntness, but I am an old man, and my flesh is sure to be
stringy and lacking in taste: I doubt even a demon would relish it.
      -- Master Li is frightened of Dream, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

I have no liking for prisons, Master Li. Sometimes I suspect that we build our
traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.
      -- Dream, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

    "Lord -- what was it the barbarian said, as the riders vanished?"
    "'_Omnia mutantur, nihil interit._' 'Everything changes, but nothing is
truly lost.' Fare you well, Master Li."
      -- Master Li and Dream, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

But truth or no, still I believe in the correct manner, and correctness in
behaviour is one of the cardinal virtues. I place the kitten in my sleeve once
more. I have saved his life, as he saved mine, and am responsible for him. We
cannot evade our responsibilities.
      -- Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

I am banished to the grey waste at the end of the world, but I mourn myself no
longer; I cherish the pain in my hand. I imagine the taste of the mulberries in
the violet dusk. And tomorrow I shall arrive in the town of Wei.
      -- Master Li, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And
nothing is truly lost.
      -- The true end of the series, in SANDMAN #74, "The Exile"

    "Where does this one come from? Have you been raiding poor Holinshed again?
Or does Plutarch bear the brunt of your depredations?"
    "Bits of things, here and there, but it's mostly mine, for once."
      -- Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, in SANDMAN #75, "The Tempest"

Well, my own fine words notwithstanding, life is no play. We meet people once,
and never see them again. There is no shape to events, no point at which we
turn to the audience for their praise. No time at which we step behind the
stage, to see the actors changing their wigs, and painting their faces, and
muttering their lines.
      -- William Shakespeare, in SANDMAN #75, "The Tempest"

    "Nothing to fear? I thought I heard the beating of mighty wings, as in a
nightmare that rode me when I was a boy..."
    "You do. But have no fear of them."
      -- Shakespeare and Dream, in SANDMAN #75, "The Tempest"

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died, and I
was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and relished it, a little, for now I could
write a real death, a true loss.
      -- William Shakespeare, in SANDMAN #75, "The Tempest"

    "All we know for sure is that we don't know anything for sure."
    "That is a particularly foolish thing to say, John Constantine. Light and
darkness, life and death. These things are eternally certain."
      -- John Constantine and Dr Occult, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

The past is always knocking at the door, trying to break through into today.
      -- Dr Occult, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

    "Wow. That's wicked! Like _Star Wars_."
    "A strange analogy, child, but indeed, there was a war in heaven, and you
see the vanquished now, burning as they fall, like stars. In the darkness
before the first dawn, theirs was the first folly; theirs the first rebellion."
      -- Tim and Dr Occult, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land
is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and
myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the
birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but
remains forever, true birthplace and true goal.
      -- The Atlantean sorceror, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

It's all going to be a dreadful mess. I mean, I'll get Arthur up and running,
swords out of stones, all that. Create the fleeting wisp of glory called
Camelot, like a firework, a Roman candle, that sputters its light through the
dark ages and then fades from sight once more. If I saw it through I'd make it
work, you see. It'd all work just fine. But I won't.
      -- Merlin, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a
common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it
cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible.
      -- Dr Occult, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

My life is strobed like lightning by a follow-spot, and looking backwards I can
only see the corpses of the animals and birds who strutted with me on the
darkened stage and helped me fool them all.
      -- Zatara, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

I wrote my name, but I can find it no longer; my ashes blow like dust around
the invisible labyrinth.
      -- Zatara, in BOOKS OF MAGIC #1

    "Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by the finished film?"
    "Not... really. Probably because I know how far they are from what I had in
my head. That's where the real films are. Then I put them on paper and finally
I have to shoot them... put them out of their misery."
      -- A questioner and the film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger." That's as maybe. But that which
does kill us kills us, and ain't that a bitch...
      -- The dying film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

How do you make sense of your life? Signal to noise: What's signal? What's
noise?
      -- The dying film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

Perhaps they are leaving the village. They are going up to the high place, to
wait there for the end of their world. And here in my room (I will be fifty
soon. I wonder if I will see that birthday, if I will be here to celebrate?)...
all alone, I am going with them.
      -- The director's last screenplay in SIGNAL TO NOISE

I assume he was an actor. In Hollywood the man who cleans your pool is an
actor. The man who sells you your copy of _Variety_ is an actor. I don't think
there's a real person left in the place.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

When I was a child I used to draw people as animals - elephants, giraffes,
mice. Was I retreating into childhood? I kept thinking of my doctor as a big
cat. A snow leopard. A beautiful predator.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

    The walls of my study are covered with faces. Film faces. Actors.
Directors. Extras. Old faces I've bought in film and junk shops on three
continents. A patchwork of the nameless and the ones that interested me, with,
here and there, a sprinkling of stars.
    They are my frame of reference, the world in which I move. I can stare at
them for hours, wondering about the people behind the faces, their lives before
and after the frozen second they are trapped in.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

Inanna talking, saying things, she's sorry, doctors make mistakes, she's so
sorry, new treatments every day, if there's anything she can do, so very sorry,
on and on, saying nothing at all. Just noise.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial
breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by
bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my
worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being
honest.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

The world is always ending, for someone. It's a good line. I give it to the
father of the child. He says it to his wife. "The world is always ending, for
someone", he says. She is trying to quieten the baby, and does not hear him. I
doubt it would matter if she did.
      -- From the director's final screenplay in SIGNAL TO NOISE

    I toyed briefly with an image someone once mentioned to me, of a village in
the shadow of a twin-peaked mountain. In the morning the sun rises. At lunch it
sets behind the mountain. In the early afternoon it rises once more. The cocks
crow for the second time, and later the sun sets again.
    No. One peak. Metaphors should not be belaboured.
      -- From the director's final screenplay in SIGNAL TO NOISE

Only, I don't believe in Apocalypses. I believe in Apocatastases. I think it
may be the title for The Film. It's a bitch to pronounce, and no-one knows what
it means, but otherwise it's a great title.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

    Apocatastasis. What it means:
    1) Restoration, re-establishment, renovation
    2) Return to a previous condition
    3) (Astronomy) Return to the same apparent position, completion of a period
of revolution.
    Think about it.
      -- The film director in SIGNAL TO NOISE

We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or
much, much less until the end of your world.
      -- From SIGNAL TO NOISE

    "For Inanna: Apocatastasis"
    "You always did pick rotten titles."
      -- Inanna begins to read the director's final screenplay in SIGNAL TO
         NOISE

The old woman took the umbrella, gratefully, and smiled her thanks. "You've a
good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever
you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, it's not."
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Neverwhere_

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.
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Neverwhere_

Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but
instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Neverwhere_

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

"Can't make an omelette without killing a few people."
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Neverwhere_, said by Mr Croup

Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She
sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Coraline_

    She flipped through a book her mother was reading about native people in a
distant country; how every day they would take pieces of white silk and draw on
them in wax, then dip the silks in dye, then draw on them more in wax and dye
them some more, then boil the wax out in hot water, and then finally, throw the
now-beautiful cloths on a fire and burn them to ashes.
    It seemed particularly pointless to Coraline, but she hoped that the people
enjoyed it.
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Coraline_

    The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of
astounding pinkness. "Cats don't have names," it said.
    "No?" said Coraline.
    "No," said the cat. "Now, *you* people have names. That's because you don't
know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."
      -- Neil Gaiman, _Coraline_