The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes
The Sandman: The Dolls' House
The Sandman: Dream Country
The Sandman: Season of Mists
The Sandman: A Game of You
The Sandman: Fables & Reflections
The Sandman: Brief Lives
The Sandman: Worlds' End
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones
The Sandman: The Wake
Death: The High Cost of Living
Death: The Time of your Life
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"No-one has even attempted what we will achieve tonight, Alex.
To summon and imprison Death."
-Magus Burgess
"I give you coin I made from a stone,
I give you a song I stole from the dirt,
I give you a knife from under the hills,
And a stick that I stuck through a dead man's eye.
I give you a claw I ripped from a rat,
I give you a name, and the name is lost,
I give you the blood from out of my vein,
And a feather I pulled from an angel's wing.
I call you with names, Oh my lord, Oh my lord.
I summon with poison and summon with pain.
I open the way and I open the gates,
I summon you in the names of the old lords.
Namtar. Allatu. Morax. Naberius.
Klesh. Vespar. Maymon. We summon.
Ashema-Deva calls you. Maborym calls you.
Horvendile calls you.
Coin and Song, Knife and Stick,
Claw and Name, Blood and Feather,
Here in the Darkness, Here in the Darkness,
Here in the Darkness, Here in the Darkness,
Here in the Darkness. We summon you, together.
COME!"
-Magus Burgess
"Lord, what fools these mortals be."
-Dream
"I'm Abel, my lord. From the, hmmm, first story. The, er, victim."
-Abel
"The DREAMS that pass through the gate of IVORY are LIES, FIGMENTS and DECEPTIONS. The OTHER admits the TRUTH."
-Dream
"arwk?"
-Goldie a.k.a. Irving
"The witching hour. And they come. The one who is three. The we who are they. The HECATAE."
-Dream
"It's only blood, little brother. Only blood."
-Cain
"Morpheus. The Oneiromancer. You know; the Sandman. 'E's back."
-Mad Hettie
"Watch out for the human."
"What do you mean, watch out for - Aaah!"
-Morpheus and John Constantine
"There's one at the door, At the gate to damnation,
Is it a thief, thug or whore? There's one at the door.
And there's room for one more 'till the end of creation,
There's one at the door, At the gate of damnation."
-Squatterbloat
"I have many names."
-Dream
"Back to your gate and duty, Squatterbloat!
I'll take the Dreamlord, play his guardian.
For innocents abroad need guides of note
And who notes more then me? Then Etrigan?"
-Etrigan
"Never trust a demon. He has a hundred motives for anything he does.
Ninety-nine of them, at least, are malevolent."
-Dream
"There are many ways to lose the oldest game. Failure of nerve, hesitation... Being unable to shift into a defensive shape. Lack of imagination."
-Dream
"I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds...of everything. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?"
"I am hope."
-Choronzon and Dream, playing the oldest game
"Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar. Ask yourself, all of you,
What power would HELL have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"
-Dream
"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."
-John Dee
"It's over, child. You can wake up now."
-Dream
"Lemme see, Batman? Nope, it's 3:30 am. He'll be at work."
-Scott Free
"Lord L'zoril, I greet you humbly: may you guard us in the darkness and on the pathway between waking hours, and protect us in dreams from the flames of you wrath."
-J'onn
"You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plane!"
-Death, of Dream
"You get what anyone gets; you get a life time."
-Death
"My sister has a function to perform, even as I do. The Endless have their responsibilities. I have responsibilities.
I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from my soul.
I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings..."
-Dream
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"For this is the way it has always been, each of us hears the tale once, in this place, and each of us tells the story once in this place...if Grandmother Death spares us long enough to tell it..."
-Native Storyteller
"For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel."
-Native Storyteller
"And every living thing that dreamed, dreamed that night of her face, and of her body, and of the warm salt taste of her sweat and her skin...and every living thing that could dream dreamed of Love."
-Native Storyteller
"Oh, that's nice."
-Rose Walker
"I keep feeling like I've strayed into a remake of The Addams Family"
-Rose Walker
"Downsatairs are a couple called Ken and Barbie -- they're normal. Terrifyingly, appalingly normal -- like they've gone through normal and come out the other side."
-Rose Walker
"What he was saying was that he wantes Hal to bring him a six-foot-long pencil, since he was going to stay in bed for a week, and wished to draw on the ceiling"
-Rose Walker (of Gilbert)
"Gentlemen, it would seem to me that the young lady desires to retain both her purse and honor. You'll excuse me if I intrude?"
-Gilbert
"Would you like to kick them, miss, er...?"
"Mmm. No. No, thank you. These are nice shoes."
-Gilbert and Rose Walker
"Hoom."
-Gilbert
"I intend to accompany you on your travels, Miss Walker. I belive America is a very large and excitable place, and a young woman travelling alone could get into all sorts of scrapes.
Witness the other night.
I am here in my role as amateur knight errant. I have brought my sword-stick, and an ancient but serviceable, revolver.
Shall we be off?"
-Gilbert
"They know the LAW. MY law. And they have wantonly defied it.
Did they think they could hide from ME?
I do not know what game they are playing. But I know this.
I am ANGRY, Lucien.
And it's my move."
-Dream
"Ohhh. Humanity, I love you. You never cease to amaze me. This has been amusing, little ghost, and that was not something I expected. But every playtime must come to an end.
This dream is over."
-Dream
"The only reason people die, is because everyone does it. You all just go along with it.
It's rubbish, Death. It's stupid. I don't want nothing to do with it."
-Robert 'Hob' Galding
"Let us meet here again, Robert Galding. In this tavern of the White Horse. In a hundred years."
-Dream
"Do you know...KHAHK...How hungry a man can get? If he doesn't die? But doesn't eat?"
-Robert 'Hob' Galding
"That will not last. The Great Stories will always return to their original form."
-Dream
"It is a poor thing, to enslave another."
-Dream
"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 ought? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes."
-Robert 'Hob' Galding
"You DARE? You dare imply that I might befriend a mortal? That one of my kind might need companionship?
You dare to call me lonely?"
-Dream
"I have always heard it was impolite to keep one's friends waiting."
-Dream
"Would you like me to tell you a story?"
-Gilbert
"I have written a name on this paper, Rose. Read it to yourself. Do not say it aloud. If...if things get bad, call the name, Rose Walker. Call him...and may God have mercy on us all."
-Gilbert
"You say you came to us to learn. Very well. We'll teach you. Teach you that it isn't the sex; isn't the power; isn't the cruelty. We are soldiers of darkness, Philip. Gladiators, Warriors, and Gods. And we'll teach you."
-The Corinithian
"We are Gladiators, and we are Soldiers of Fortune, and we are Swashbucklers and Heroes and Kings of the Night. We are the Living. And that's a triumph. Our Triumph. And Our Glory."
-The Corinithian
"You were my masterpiece, or so I thought. A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart."
-Dream
"For this is my judgement on you: that you shall know, at all times, and forever, exactly what you are. And you shall know just how little that means."
-Dream
"He terminates their physical existence, little bird. To protect the Dreaming. It's the only time he is empowered to take human life, you see...it's one of the Rules."
-Gilbert
"Aeons ago, and half a universe away. I...failed in my duty. A whole world perished. It will never happen again."
-Dream
"I am the Lord of this Realm, and my wishes are paramount. But I am not omnipotent."
-Dream
"I must apologize to you, Miss Walker. Apologize for not being a very good human being. Not even a very good copy of a human, perhaps I should say."
-Gilbert/Fiddler's Green
"You're obviously not very bright, but I shouldn't let it bother you."
-Unity Kinkaid to Dream
"Dreams are weird and stupid and they scare me."
-Rose Walker
"Someone has been meddling in my affairs, Desire. And this has your stink about it."
-Dream
"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. When the last living thing has left his universe, then out task will be done.
And we do not manipulate them.
If anything, they manipulate us.
We are their toys. Their dolls, if you will."
-Dream
"Mess with me or mine again, and I will forget that you are family, Desire.
Do you believe yourself strong enough to stand against ME? Against DEATH? Against DESTINY?"
-Dream
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"Gracious ladies, Mother of the Camenae, Hear my prayer. Melete, Mneme, Aiode, attend my suplication"
-Caliope
"I have come to request that you set her free."
-Dream
"You have met Oneiros, whom the Romans called the Shaper of Form. He was once my lover, and was the father of my son."
-Caliope
"You have changed, Oneiros. In the old days, you would have left me to rot forever, without turning a hair..."
-Caliope
"I felt them from afar, in the dark, as the cold water took them. Felt them thresh and claw sightlessly; felt them call me, in their panic and their fear. And then they were gone."
-The Wandering Cat
"Justice? 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. It can be yours, but only is your heart is strong."
-The Dead Crow
"I walked through the darkness, through the void, where everything was sucked from me -- everything that makes me what I am. But even in the emptiness of pure nothing, no longer knowing why I was walking or what I was seeking, I walked onwards."
-The Wandering Cat
"A cat may look at a king, or so they say. Look into my eyes then, little sister. Look into my eyes."
-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 out eyes, ghost things, and the humans see nothing."
-The Wandering Cat
"They say the seven Endless are forever, mighty Dream. You and the other six, until the death of Time itself.
What do you say to that, King of the Riddle-Realms?"
-Puck
"Nay, good Auberon. It is a fools prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
-Dream
"What's this? What means this prancing chattering mortal flesh? Methinks perhaps the Dreamlord brought us here to feed."
The Faerie Skarrow
"I am that merry wanderer of the night? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it."
The Faerie Peaseblossom, of the Puck and his actor-couterpart
"The price of getting what they want, is getting what they once wanted."
-Dream
"You people always hold onto old identities, old faces, and masks, long after they've served their purpose."
-Death
"Anyway, I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it."
-Death
"When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."
-Death
"Dumb. I told him, The serpent that never dies is dead. I took her three thousand years ago! The never-ending battle ended..."
-Death
"Who am I? Just a friend. Sometimes. Maybe."
-Death
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"Walk any path in Destiny's Garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once, but many times."
-The Narrator
"Nothing begins in this place. This place is beyond beginings and endings, Grey Ladies."
-Destiny
"Next thing, you're going to be moaning that I ought to get a sythe."
-Death
"Dream casts a human shadow, when it occurs to him to do so."
-The Narrator
"But if I have commited a wrong, then I have but one course:
it must be made right."
-Dream
"Don't do anything stupid."
"I am afraid it is too late for that admonition. But I shall do my best. I can do no more."
-Death and Dream
"That would not be honourable, Matthew."
-Dream
"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods and the seaon of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."
-Robert "Hob" Galding
"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
"Innocence, once lost, can never be regained."
-Lucifer Morningstar, Erstwhile Lord of Hell
"There is a cavern beneath the world. (This is true. You must know in your bones that this is true, although all logic argues against it.)"
-The Narrator
"Before the first dawn, the Silver City was. It is not paradise. It is not heaven. It is the silver city, that is not part of the order of created things."
-The Narrator
"I'm the Amazing Cain. If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. If you didn't, I trust you get throat cancer and die without ever again uttering another word."
-Cain
"The time has come to go to the rooms I have assigned to you. I hope you will all find them to your liking.
I suggest you leave this room at this time. It will cease to exist shortly."
-Dream
"You misunderstand me, Dream-King. I'm not offering you anything. What I'm doing... What I'm doing is threatening you. Give us the Hell of Lucifer, Morpheus, or the entire host of chaos will be at your throat until the end of time. From the Shivering Brigade to the Laughing Dancers. All of us."
-Shivering Jemmy of the Shallow Brigade, a Princess of Chaos
"You look like you haven't slept a wink all night."
"I don't sleep, Matthew."
"I didn't say you did. I just said that was what you looked like."
-Matthew the Raven and Dream
"They all want it. I don't. I never thought that disposing of the unwanted could be so hard."
-Dream
"This is my home, Azazel; my place of power. This is the Heart of the Dreaming. Reality here conforms to my wishes; it is what I wish it to be -- No more, no less."
-Dream
"Alright, I admit it. He's got a point. The sunsets are bloody marvelous, you old bastard."
-Lucifer Morningstar, Erstwhile Lord of Hell
"October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale."
-from "The Man Who Was October" by G.K. Chesterton,
the Books that were Never Written in The Library of Dreams
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"You know, of all the things I don't believe about this evening, I don't believe you said that the most. "A Pretty Pickle"? What's that supposed to mean? You're like cutting off faces and killing people and...and..."
-Wanda
"The realm of dreams is not our realm. Why should we meddle in the affairs of the Dream-King, sister?"
"Because you can. Because I order you to."
-The Three Faced Woman (The Hecatae?) and The Thessalian
"She needed to be taught a lesson."
"But you just killed her."
"Yes. That was the lesson. You don't get a second chance."
-The Thessalian and Donna Cavanagh
"I am here, by the terms of the compact.
Who summoned me? Who calls this skerry to its final judgement?
Who seeks my boon?"
-Dream
"I don't remember asking your advice, Dream-King."
"It was freely given and well-meant. Farewell."
-The Thessalian and Dream
Editor's Note: This was my least favourite Sandman book. As such,I didn't include many quotes. To do otherwise would involve reading the thing again, in detail.
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"I feel I'm out of my depth. I'm scared. I'm scared I'm going to do something stupid."
"And if you do something stupid, what then?"
-Todd and Dream
"It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt."
-Dream
"If you do not climb you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fall, that hard to fall? Sometimes you wake, and sometimes, yes, you die. But there is a third alternative."
-Dream
"And sometimes, when you fall, you fly. Okay, everybody! Let's take it from the top."
-Todd
"You have potential, Joshua. Potential for despair. Perhaps for more than that..."
-Despair
"I do not play your games, Despair. I will take no part in this."
-Dream
"I am walking with him, in dreams. I am trying to understand him."
-Dream
"Dreams. What are Dreams? Dreams are nothing, my brother."
"Dreams are "nothing", sister? Without dreams, there could be no despair."
-Despair and Dream
"He's a grown-up. And I thought you were too. I may have been wrong."
-Death, of Destruction and Dream
"Why should I mind, Sam? Let them laugh. I am still their Emporer."
-Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America
"I don't like it when people laugh at me."
-Delirium
"He's not mine...is he? His madness.... His madness keeps him sane."
"And do you think he is the only one, my sister?"
-Delirium and Dream, of Norton I (and how many others)
"He will not harm us. Not us. Not here."
-Abraham Warner
"Healthy? I'm dead, Norton. You ever swallowed aconite? You don't get up and walk away again."
-The King of Pain
"Mister Norton has shed no blood, robbed no one, and despoiled no country, which is more than can be said for most fellows in the king line."
-A Judge, of Emperor Norton
"He had no protection. He should have been mine!"
"He has his dignity, sister-brother. He is, after all, an Emperor"
-Desire and Dream, of Emperor Norton
"Should I thank you?"
"For the Lesson, prehaps, if for nothing else."
"...What Lesson?"
-Despair and Dream
"Did you ever hear the story of the 36 tzaddikum? They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints -- 36 unselfish men and women. Because of them, the world continues to exist. They are the secret kings and queens of this world."
-Death
"I've met a lot of kings, and emperors, and heads of state in my time. I've met them all. And you know something? I think I liked you best."
-Death
"It's a great hat. Can I try it on?"
-Death
"This is the head of Orpheus, who bested Death, and who now cannot die."
-Lady Joanna Constantine
"It's just something people say over here. Everybody says it."
-The Granddaughter
"And I suppose if everybody cut off their heads and stuffed asafoedida into their mouths and buried their hearts at cross-roads, then you'd do it too?"
-Grandfather Storyteller
"This is the emerald heart of Koschei the Deathless. He kept his life in this heart, but a woman stole it, and he died."
-The Peddler Woman
"Value's in what people think. Not in what's real. Value's in dreams, boy."
-The Peddler Woman
"A small bone he had carved into the shape of a small bone..."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"The legs of the bed were bolted to the floor, so it could not be moved. He went to sleep on the hard floor, in the opposite corner of the room."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"Value's in the mind of the buyer, not the peddler"
-Lucien
"Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundered and fifty, maybe."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"Listen, blood of my blood. Although I'm a hard man to anger, and I love you deeply, if you interrupt me again so help me I'll rip out your throat with my teeth."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"In the black shadow of Baba Yaga babies screamed and mothers miscarried milk soured and men went mad. Below them Jews were burned in their houses and Gypsies were beaten to death, nightbirds screamed and owls hooted and wolves howled."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"You shouldn't trust the storyteller; only trust the story."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"We of the people are hard to kill, and harder to kill the older we get; but he was young, and without food or water or moolight he would die the true death. A slow death, and far from noble."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"Do you know how long it's been since I mislaid a book? Well, let's just say the continents weren't in their current shapes, not that that means anything to you."
-Lucien
"I am of the people, man. What I seek, I find. What I hunt, I take. I can hide in a shadow. My teeth are sharp enough to cut bone. I run on four legs as easily as two. I am kin to dwarrow and nightgaunt. I owe allegiance to none born and I fear nothing."
-Vassily
"Grrrrrrr"
"Stop that."
-Vassily and Dream
"But the Lord of Dreams knew that wishes are sometimes best left ungranted; and he did not need to ask."
-Grandfather Storyteller
"I speak of him who was born Caius Octavius: who later took the name Caius Julius Caesar Ovctavianus; he who, later still, the whole of the world, Roman and barbarian, was to know as the Emporer Augustus."
-Lycius the Dwarf
"Many dreams come through the Gates of Ivory, Lycius, and they lie. A few dreams come through the Gates of Horn, and they speak truely."
-Augustus Caesar
"Who could be greater than Jupiter the Greatest and Most Powerful?"
"Hm. Firstly, Terminus, the God of Boundaries. Jupiter must bow to him; boundaries are the most important of things, Lycius..."
-Lycius and Augustus Caesar
"They are whispered of in the Inner Mysteries: the Seven, who are not prayed to, who are not Gods, who were never men."
-Augustus Caesar
"When I am a God I will no longer be scared."
-Augustus Caesar
"That will not last...We write our names in the sand; and then the waves roll in and wash them away."
-Augustus Caesar
"He can see where he has been. But there is nothing to indicate his future path, and he hesitates."
-The Narrator
"There's a terribly nice Franciscan in Seventeenth Century Assisi who can fly. I.Q. of sixty, and perhaps a little too heavily into self-mutilation, but he can honestly fly."
-Fiddler's Green
"This part of the desert is known as Taklamakan. That's turkik for "If you go in, you won't come out again." Good, eh?"
-Fiddler's Green
"It is not important. It has happened already, or it is still to come. And forewarned is seldom forearmed."
-Dream
"Am a hedge wizard, that I should interpret your dreams for you?
Dreams are composed of many things, my son. Of images and hopes, of fears and memories. Memories of the past, and memories of the future..."
-Dream
"I do not dance. Not even with you, my wife."
-Dream
"You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life.
And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on."
-Dream
"She has lots of things, although she seldom has much use for them. You should see her floppy hat collection."
-Destruction, of Death
Thow hast made the Furies cry, Orpheus. They will never forgive you for that."
-Persephone, Queen of the Dead
"He is not one to forget a slight. Nor to forgive."
-Orpheus
"This place is more full of rules then you could shake a stick at."
-Matthew
"Hell, I suppose it could be worse. I could have been a crow. I mean, they're dumb as shit, and they lie a lot."
-Matthew
"And Lilith gave birth to the Lilim, the Children of Lilith, who have haunted the nights of the sons of Adam ever since. Mother to so many, then and now..."
-Eve
"Go on. Tell him of the doors of mist, and how to open them. Or the true title of the knights of the black and white eagle. Tell him about the girl who could only drink tears, and how she fell in love with a woman who had never learned to cry."
-Cain
"And there was also in that room the Other Egg of the Phoenix. (For the Phoenix, when its time comes to die lays two eggs, one black, one white; From the white egg hatches the Phoenix-bird itself, when its time is come, But what hatches from the black egg no-one knows."
-The Narrator
"I demand that you present yourself before me, here, in a form neither threatening nor unpleasant to mine eyes."
-Haroun Al Raschid
"In my hands I hold the globe of Sulaiman Ben Daoud, king of the Hebrews. It was in this globe, near the end of his life, that he imprisoned nine thousand and nine ifrits, djinn, and demons."
-Haroun Al Raschid
"Are you then, the Lord of Sleep, the Prince of Stories, he whom Allah has given dominion over that which is not, and was not, and shall never be?"
-Haroun Al Raschid
"I do not threaten. I merely advise caution."
-Dream