The Sandman (comic book)

"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."

"It was a dark and stormy nightmare..."

"Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?"

"It is never "only a dream", John Constantine. Here less than other places..."

"...See the sun set in the hand of the man..."

"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."

"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 'til the end of creation."

"The wood of suicides has changed since my last visit to Hell. I remember it as a tiny grove. Now it resembles a forest."

"Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does... ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent."

""The Hellfire Club." It feels like a bad joke. And like everything else in Hell, it is deadly serious."

"I am anti-life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?" "I am hope."

"The million lords of Hell stand arrayed about you. Tell us why we should let you leave? Helmet or no, you have no power here—what power have dreams in Hell?" "You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly... but—you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar... ask yourselves, all of you... what power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"

"One day, my brothers... one day I shall destroy him."

"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."

"I will be a wise and tolerant monarch, dispensing justice fairly, and only setting nightmares to rip out the minds of the evil and the wicked. Or just anybody I don't like."

"You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification in this or any other plane!"

"I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her."

"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."

"For love is no part of the dream-world. Love belongs to desire, and desire is always cruel."

"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."

"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."

"Death's a capricious thing, innit?" "Yes. Yes, she is."

"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."

"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."

"And they left, slowly, one by one, with reluctance, leaving the safety of the light for the chill certainties of the darkness. It seemed like the night sucked them up, took them into its dark heart. It seemed like the darkness swallowed them... perhaps it did."

"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?"

"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."

"I do not understand—" "Of course you don't. You're obviously not very bright, but I shouldn't let it bother you."

"If my dream was true, then everything we know, everything we think we know is a lie. 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. 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."

""And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Little one, I would like to see anyone—prophet, king or God—persuade a thousand cats to do anything at the same time."

"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."

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"'I am that merry wanderer of the night'? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it." "Shush, Peaseblossom. The puck might hear you!"

"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."

"This is magnicifent—and it's true! It never happened, yet it is still true! What magic art is this?"

"You played me well, mortal. But I have played me for time out of mind. And I do Robin Goodfellow better than anyone."

"Things have changed, and will change more; and Gaia no longer welcomes us as once she did."

"But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... but the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted."

"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."