The Sandman Quotes

“There is a madness, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild wood of madness...”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Delirium: You use that word so much. Responsibilities. Do you ever think about what that means? I mean, what does it mean to you? In your head?

Dream: Well, I use it to refer that area of existence over which I exert a certain amount of control or influence. In my case, the realm and action of dreaming.

Delirium: Hump. It's more than that. The things we do make echoes. S'pose, f'rinstance, you stop on a street corner and admire a brilliant fork of lightning--ZAP! Well for ages after people and things will stop on that very same corner, stare up at the sky. They wouldn't even know what they were looking for. Some of them might see a ghost bolt of lightning in the street. Some of them might even be killed by it. Our existence deforms the universe. THAT'S responsibility.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“One cannot begin a new dream without abandoning the last [one].”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“The bonds of family bind us up, support us, help us. And they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to extricate oneself.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

“I watched him even then as he fell, his face undefeated, his eyes still proud”
― Neil Gaiman, Preludes & Nocturnes

“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 more than that. 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.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House

“I hate dreams. I don't want any more dreams. I don't want any more anything.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

“I thought calming thoughts and visualized serene places. Eventually, i found myself drifting along the frenetic edges of my mind. The Sandman was nowhere to be found, as i slipped further away from sleep.”
― Jaeda DeWalt

“Is this real? Or is it just my imagination?"
"If you tell me what the difference is I might be able to tell you.”
― Neil Gaiman

“And all the weird shit tumbles into perspective. It doesn't matter and it isn't real. No miracles. No magic. No dreams. Just pain and death, and Visa slips.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Don't be a moronic lump of blubbering, quaking, pathetic lard.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #2: Imperfect Hosts

“Sister? Where should we start?"
"Here?"
"Very good. We are here. Where should we travel to now?"
"...somewhere that's not here?"
"That was the idea. Yes.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“But you will remember it, in the soft, lost, slumbering moments between waking and true sleep: remember the whispering voices of the Gods of Earth and Heaven, the piping laughter of innocent chaos, the frightened rusting of cold order...the voices of the living. The voices of the dead. They will haunt your sleep until you die.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

“love is not for everyone .There's a certain kind of courage in allowing yourself to fall.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #16: Lost Hearts

“Then she told me everyone can know everything destiny knows. And more than that. She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that the poet can conceive, as it were in the dull reflection of a dimly polished mirror.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sand Man

“What power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?”
― Neil Gaiman, Preludes & Nocturnes

“Then she told me everyone can know everything destine knows. And more than that. She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

“So go my little love. Touch the world. Eat their hearts and poison their dreams. Rip their nightmares into the daylight and scum their sleep with creeping fear.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #5: Passengers

“While a name is always something you can choose, it only functions socially as long as I call you by it. (And try calling people names that they don't choose to be called by, if you want to see some real social unrest.)”
― Samuel R. Delany

“Between the Pedestals of Night and Morning
Between red death and radiant desire
With not one sound of triumph or of warning
Stands the great sentry on the Bridge of Fire.

O transient soul, thy thought with dreams adorning,
Cast down the laurel, and unstring the lyre:
the wheels of Time are turning, turning, turning,
The slow stream channels deep and doth not tire.

Gods on their bridge above
Whispering lies and love
Shall mock your passage down the sunless river
Which, rolling all it streams,
shall take you, king of dreams,
Unthroned and unapproachable for ever
To where the kings who dreamed of old
Whiten in habitations monumental cold.”
― James Elroy Flecker

“And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings.”
― Neil Gaiman

“The sight is always real, but the insight is always right. by me, inspired by the Sandman by Hoffman.”
― Hoffmann Books

“Thank God for talking animals, I say-especially smart assed ones.”
― Mikal Gilmore

“Your life is your own, Rainie. So is your death. And oblivion...? That's not an option, I'm afraid.
-Death”
― Neil Gaiman

“The first wind of winter blew from the north, and it had ice and rime on its breath.

It was dirty and sharp and it cut like a razor, and if it touched you, you could wash and wash until your skin was tattered and bloodied, but you'd never be clean again.

It scattered them in the night, the quiet ones with death in their eyes.

But they left more tentatively than they had come, as if they had seen something unholy inside themselves; something they would never be able to forget.

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.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman #14: Collectors

“If there is a dark and hostile power which traitorously fixes a thread in our hearts in order that, laying hold of it and drawing us by means of it along a dangerous road to ruin, which otherwise we should not have trod—if, I say, there is such a power, it must assume within us a form like ourselves, nay, it must be ourselves; for only in that way can we believe in it, and only so understood do we yield to it so far that it is able to accomplish its secret purpose. So long as we have sufficient firmness, fortified by cheerfulness, always to acknowledge foreign hostile influences for what they really are, while we quietly pursue the path pointed out to us by both inclination and calling, then this mysterious power perishes in its futile struggles to attain the form which is to be the reflected image of ourselves.”
― E. T. A. Hoffmann