The Sandman Quotes

“Because it is the nature of Dreams, and ONLY of Dreams, to define Reality. Destiny is bound to existence. Death is limited by what she will or will not accept.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“I am NOT alone. I am accompanied by a large cat and a small girl.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“One day, perhaps, we will have become legends.
We'll pass this way outside of space or time,
When what they'll know of us will be just questions
They'll carve our deeds in stone. Build us in rhyme.

The things they'll tell about us will be lies
But lies of such a kind as tell a truth
Perpetual. Our lives will be revised.
Preserved, we'll mouth the epics of our youth.

Actors will play us, braver than we are,
More funny, deeper, prettier by far.

Their lines will be more resonant and wise
Than anything we said. Majestic lies.

So wait. Such tales might be the truth one day.
For now, alive, we huddle, ache and pray.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“Destiny sees things as they are, not as we would wish them to be. He knows there are no stories, only the illusion of stories: threads and patterns that seem to appear in the pages of existence given meaning and significance by the observer. Destiny observes worlds and molecules like motes of dust hanging in a sunbeam: every movement, every moment inevitable. Destiny walks the paths of his garden, a place of forks and paths which combine and part, seeing only what is. He is surprised by nothing. There is nothing that can surprise him, nothing that was not already written in his book.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“I am the Dream of Cats, and I walk by myself.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“I woke a few moments ago from a fever and a host of interlocking fever dreams, one after the next. There was one where I was in London, walking through old abandoned formerly beautiful buildings, all of them about to be demolished. Sometimes I'd find myself walking past the enormous line of people waiting to attend the television memorial for a dead author friend of mine, but his memorial was a television spectacular with comedians and big band music. There was the one where I had accidentally connected my bank card to a portable printer and the little printer kept printing cash but on the wrong paper and at the wrong size, so my money had huge, incredibly detailed faces on it, works of art that could not be spent. Then I woke from one dream into another: I was asleep in the passenger seat of the car, and saw that we were driving through a densely populated town, and that the driver was also asleep. I tried hard to wake her up and failed, and knew that no one was in control, no one was at the wheel, and soon someone was going to be killed, and I was shouting and calling without effect; but I whimpered and snuffled enough in the real world that my wife stroked my face and said, "Honey? You're having a nightmare," and, finally, I woke for real.

But I woke into a world in which, somewhere, I am still being driven through my life by a sleeping driver, in which money is only good as art, in which we can write the finest books but at the end the crowds will come out and say good-bye for the entertainment, in which the buildings and cities we inhabit will relentlessly be destroyed by progress and time: a world colored by dreams and illuminated by them, too.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“What is this place?"
"This is the afterlife of your people, only permitted to those who died before adulthood."
"Then how did you get here?"
"Have you ever tried to keep a cat out of anywhere it wanted to be?”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture

“-The path you're taking leads you directly or indirectly to your death.
--I believe the same can be said of all paths, lady. of every track and way that any of us have walked since the universe was young.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Overture