The Sandman (comic book)
180 quotes
"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."
"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..."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."