The Sandman Quotes

“I have heard the languages of apocalypse, and now I shall embrace the silence.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy. She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper. Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else. Eventually it begins to get dark.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“You hurt. It's okay. I hurt too. Hold my hand.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“To be Despair. It is a portrait. Only close your eyes and feel.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“He is holding a book.
Inside the book is the Universe.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“The people in the city seem paper thin in the mist. They believe they are dancing to the music of their lives... But I think, like the puppets, each of us is pulled upon invisible strings, until the night comes and we are put away. I shiver, and hurry from the square, as the darkness of the city closes over me like canal water or the grave.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“If you can't be happy where you are, you can't be happy anywhere”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“She sat by the side of the road, in the snow, all bodiless and afraid, waiting for the happiness to start.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Her eyes are grey. Her hair is straggly and wet. Her fingers are stubby. The nails are chewed and broken. Her teeth are crooked, jagged things. There is a vacancy in her gaze, a feeling of absence when you are near her that is impossible to put into words. Her sigil is the hooked ring. One day her hook will catch your heart. Describing her, we articulate what she is and why she is: when hope is past, she is there. She is in a thousand thousand waiting rooms and empty streets, in grey concrete buildings and anonymous hotels. She is on the other side of every mirror. When the eyes that look back at you know you too well, and no longer care for what they see, they are her eyes. She stands and waits, and in her posture the pain no longer tells you to live, and in her presence joy is unimaginable.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“And in our room, we made love like flames–opening, blending, burning. We made love like animals, like gods, like dreams. Was it worth waiting for? Gods, yes. It was worth worlds, that night, worth souls, worth eternity.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“It is a writer, with nothing left that he knows how to say.
It is an artist, and fingers that will never catch the vision.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“If you have nothing left to want, then you just wait until there's nothing left to wait for, don't you?”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“I you can't be happy where you are, you can't be happy anywhere.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Let me tell you the plot of every one of his damned stories. Somebody wanted something. That's the story. Mostly they get it, too.
Most people want things like a candle flame, flickering, shifting. You, on the other hand, want like a forest fire. I should warn you, getting what you want and being happy are two quite different things.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Despair remembers.
It is a peculiar, flat memory,
in which things become black and bounded by the dark.
There is joy in there,
of course,
and love,
and touching.
The presence that makes the
present absence unbearable.
Without triumph,
without love,
without joy,
her work would be for nothing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Her kiss is the deep ocean.

Her kiss is not the deep ocean.
Her kiss is the grey sky.

Her kiss is a blind alley.

Her kiss is her touch is her breath
is her fingers is what remains
after the laughing is over.

Her kiss is the black dog that
follows you in the darkness.

There is a black dog beneath the grey sky,
by the blind alley, beside the deep ocean.
It is not her kiss. Come closer...”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“The Gods did not count time spent fishing in the hours of a man's life.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“A) If you can't be happy where you are, you can't be happy anywhere. Discuss, with examples from your own life.

B) Hell is Other People. Do you agree? Demonstrate how this might or might not apply in the case of:
i) The Armenian Massacres of 1915
ii) Either the life of Algernon Charles Swinburne or the death of Walt Disney
iii) the darkness before creation
(Answer two of three.)

C) Construct an analogy using the saline nature of either tears or the sea and the salt that makes a dish palatable and adds piquance and savour.
(Examinees are encouraged to refer to either the third daughter of Llyr or Lot's wife, but not both.)

D) If I was God I would abolish...
Complete in 250 words or less. Physical practicalities and human nature are to be respected. The Law of Conservation of Happiness may not be violated.
(Counts for 50% of your final score.)”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“She had wanted the pain to stop. The heart-hurt. She slept her way into death, only waking when the highway patrol found her body.
She was cold, rigid, frozen, when they found her.
Someone like that, said the patrolwoman. You'd think she had everything to live for.
She tried to speak, to tell them that that was what made the pain unbearable but, like someone caught in a bad dream, she could not make herself heard. She screamed, and no sound came out. She watched as they took her body away.
She sat by the side of the road, in the snow, all bodiless and afraid, waiting for the happiness to start.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“He is chained to the book, or it is chained to him. It is a book of many pages. It cannot be stolen; he cannot give it away.
It contains your life. Every detail of your life. Everything that has happened to you. Everything that will happen one day. The things you've forgotten. The things you don't believe.
It contains everything that has happened, or will happen, to anyone you've ever met. Anyone you've ever heard of. Anyone you've never heard of. The histories and the dreams and triumphs of the dead are there.
The meaning of the patterns of the spots of each leopard is written there, along with the truth of the shapes of clouds, and the strange, funny song-lives of the bacteria-folk and the secrets the wind whispers when there is no one there to listen.
Everything is in there, from the beginning of time to the end.
He did not create the path you walk. But the movements of atoms and galaxies are in his book, and he sees little difference between them.
It is all in his book. One day he will lay it down, when the book is done, and what comes after that is still unwritten.
A page turns.
Destiny continues to walk...
He is holding a book. Inside the book is the Universe.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Você é o tempo. O tempo hediondo, que rouba o ouro dos cabelos de uma donzela e toma a safira dos olhos de uma criança.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights

“Oči má šedé. Vlasy má rozcuchané a mokré. Prsty má jako buřtíky. Nehty má pokousané a polámané. Zuby má křivé, rozeklané. Má prázdný pohled, a když jste jí poblíž, vzbuzuje ve vás pocit nepřítomnosti, který se nedá slovy vyjádřit. Jejím znakem je prsten s háčkem. Jednoho dne se vám ten háček zadře do srdce. Popsat ji znamená vyjádřit, co je a proč je: přijde, když naděje pomine. Je v tisících čekáren a prázdných ulicích, v budovách ze šedého betonu a v bezejmenných hotelech. Je na druhé straně každého zrcadla. když tě oči, které se na tebe dívají, znají až moc dobře. Stojí a čeká a v jejím postoji ti už bolest neříká, abys žil, a v její přítomnosti je radost nepředstavitelná.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights