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There is only one thing to see in the twilight realm of Desire. It is called The Threshold. The fortress of Desire. Desire has always lived on the edge. The Threshold is larger than you can easily imagine. It is a statue of Desire, him-, her- or it-self. (Desire had never been satisfied with just one sex. Or just one of anything--excepting only perhaps the Treshold itself.) The Threshold is a portrait of Desire, complete in all details, built from the fancy of Desire out of blood, and flesh, and bone, and skin. And, like every true citadel since time began, the Treshold is inhabited. There is only one occupant, at this time. Desire of the Endless. The Treshold is far too large for just one person. It contains two eardrums larger than a dozen marble ballrooms. And empty, echoing veins, like tunnels. You will walk them until you grow old and die without once retracing your steps. Given Desire's temperament, however, there was only one place in the cathedral of its body to make its home. Desire lives in the heart.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Lucien: It was not your fault, my lord.
Dream: No? Then WHOSE?
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Dream: I am coming through the barriers you have erected in this mind. I am coming, though the way be arduous and strange. Nothing will stop me. As I travel, I admire the craftsmanship in the construction of this maze, admire the traps and pitfalls they have wrought. You have learned well, my servants. To force the child to construct these barriers inside its mind, in its effort to escape the physical world; to build an island of dream alone and untouched by the true Dreaming... This takes skill. My admiration does not lessen my anger. I am Dream. I am coming.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Hob Gadling: Nobody HAS to die. 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 anything to do with it.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Hob Gadling: 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. You were right about the slave trade. I can never make restitution for that, but... Listen, I've seen people, and they don't change. Not in the important things. I doubt I'll ever seek Death.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Dream: You disappoint me, Corinthian. You, and these humans you inspired and created, disappoint me. YOU were my masterpiece, or so I thought. A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart. A black mirror made to reflect everything about itself that humanity will not confront. But look at you. Forty years walking the earth, honing yourself, infecting others with your joy of death and what have you given them? What have you wrought, Corinthian? NOTHING. Just something else for people to be scared of, that's all. You've told them that there are bad people out there. And they've known that all along.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Dream: The next time I make you, you shall not be so flawed and petty, little dream. And YOU, you that call yourselves collectors. Until now, you have all sustained fantasies in which you are the maltreated heroes of your own stories. Comforting daydreams in which, ultimately, you are shown to be in the right. No more. For all of you, the dream is over. I have taken it away. For this is my judgment on you: that you shall know, at all times, and forever, exactly what you are. And you shall know just how LITTLE that means.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Rose Walker: I've never had a flying dream before. Whee! Say, whoever you are. Do you know what Freud said about Dreams of flying? It means you're really dreaming about having sex.
Dream: Indeed? Tell me, then, what does it mean when you dream about having sex?
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Fiddler's Green: 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. And now, when you need me most, it seems I have failed you.
Rose Walker: Just shut up and say good-bye, Gilbert, or I'm going to start crying... And I'm not going to give him that satisfaction.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Unity Kinkaid: What... What happened?
Dream: You died. Let me help you help.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Rose Walker (in her diary): She... I don't go out much. Be honest, Rosalita. Be honest. No one else is ever going to read this. Okay. I haven't been out of my room (except to eat, preferably late at night when Mom and Jed are asleep) since we moved here, months ago. I've been reading, playing records, sometimes just sitting, staring into space. Writing this diary, or whatever it is. Thinking. A year ago my best friend died. Her name was Judy. She was killed -- or perhaps she killed herself -- in some kind of massacre, in a small-town diner. She phoned me on the day she died -- she'd just split up with her girlfriend, Donna, and she was in rough shape. I think about Judy a lot. I wish I could talk to her about this stuff. Except for Gilbert, she was the smartest person I ever met. But I can't talk to either of them... Not any more. Six months ago I had a really weird dream. That was the night that Unity died, and Jed got better. If it was true, my dream (and lots of it is sort of hazy, lots of it doesn't seem to make sense any more, although I'm sure it did at the time), then... then... Then nothing makes any sense. 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 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. In my dream, I could have destroyed everybody in the world. In my dream, Gilbert wasn't even a person; he was a place. In my dream, Grandman Unity gave up her life for me. Dreams are weird and stupid and they scare me. I haven't slept properly for six months now. It's a nice house. Too big, but that suits me. Means I don't have to see other people any more than I have to. That's my story. Okay. It's even got a happy ending: Jed and Rose and their mother were finally reunited, and they all lived together in a big old house. I've been brooding on that night for too long now. Six months. And I've decided. My dream. My weird dream. It was just a dream. That's all. Just a dream. "And then she woke up." You know, I always hated stories that ended like that. I always felt cheated. Six months is long enough to feel sorry for yourself. Isn't it? You can't feel sorry forever.

Miranda Walker: Hello, stranger.
Jed Walker: Hi, Rose.
Rose Walker: Um. Hi.
Miranda Walker: So, uh... What's the occasion?
Rose Walker: I don't know. Rejoining the human race, I suppose. I can't sit up there forever. I thought maybe I'd get some kind of job, or maybe do some traveling. Hunt down some old friends.
Miranda Walker: That's a good idea. I--We've been worried about you.
Rose Walker: Mm. Sorry.
Jed Walker: I... I found a fox's den in the woods with cubs. I can show it to you--if you want.
Rose Walker: Yeah. I'd like that.


Rose Walker (in her diary): "And then she woke up." I suppose there are worse endings.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


Dream: 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. When the last living thing has left this universe, then our task will be done. And we do not manipulate them. If anything, they manipulate us. We are their toys. Their dolls, if you will. And you--and Despair, and even poor Delirium--should remember that.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House


And Desire walks the chambers of its heart. It walks the Threshold, its citadel and its protection; and Desire wonders: "What did he mean? That WE are THEIR toys? 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. Poor Dream... I really got under his skin this time." And Desire smiles, and forgets, for Desire is a creature of the moment. 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.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman: The Doll's House