"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"