"But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living ... for the price of wisdom is above rubies."

"You, uh, p-promise it isn't going to, hmmm, explode? Promise?" "Now, why would I give you an exploding present? What kind of brother would I be if I did that?" "My kind of b-brother."

"Death is the only major character whose visuals didn't spring from me; that credit goes to Mike Dringenberg. In my original Sandman outline, I suggested Death look like rock star Nico in 1968, with the perfect cheekbones and perfect face she has on the cover of her Chelsea Girl album. But Mike Dringenberg had his own ideas, so he sent me a drawing based on a woman he knew named Cinnamon—the drawing that was later printed in Sandman 11—and I looked at it and had the immediate reaction of, "Wow. That's really cool." Later that day, Dave McKean and I went to dinner in Chelsea at the My Old Dutch Pancake House and the waitress who served us was a kind of vision. She was American, had long black hair, was dressed entirely in black—black jeans, T-shirt, etc.—and wore a big silver ankh on a silver necklace. And she looked exactly like Mike Dringenberg's drawing of Death."

"Roger Zelazny died as I completed the first chapter of The Wake and his memorial informed the second chapter."

"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."

"Look, I'm sorry it's over too. But good things have to end; stories have to end. It's what gives them meaning."

"I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who ... leaves his kingdom. ... About a man who turns his back on magic. ... I am Prince of Stories, Will; but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever. ... I thank you."

"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." "But that is precisely where you are now, Will."

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost."

"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."

"But truth or no, still I behaved 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We were never lovers, 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered by the evening: You can be me when I'm gone."

"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..."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"Sorry, sweetheart. I don't do funerals. Life is, as they say, too short. And I can't wear black. I'm an autumn." "Asshole, Hal. The word you're looking for is asshole."