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"