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Brant Tucker: I must have been really tired. You see, I didn't think that it was weird that it was snowing in June. I just thought, shit, snow, and slowed down to sixty. ... I don't really like driving in snow. There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to Hell. It's like tumbling into a field of stars.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Strange voice: You need help, matey. You and that there young lady. That red stuff, that's blood that is. Meant to be on the inside, it is. Bad sign if it's not on the inside, that's what I says.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Cluracan: Easy. Easy there, fellow. I'm afraid we're all in the same boat as you, or most of us -- stranded here by the storm.
Brant Tucker: The snowstorm? Yes. But...
Another of Faerie: It's not a snowstorm, friend. It's a reality storm.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: In the subway train, in the morning, he would read a newspaper, and wonder what would happen were the subqay carriage suddenly to be transported to a distant planet: how long it would take before the passengers began to speak, one to another; who would make love to whom; who would be eaten should they run out of food. He felt vaguely ashamed of these daydreams.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: He worked all day at a desk, in a room with dozens of men and women who sat at desks like his and did jobs much like his. He neither liked nor disliked his job: he had taken the job because it was a job for life, because it provided him with stability and security. But on his lunch break, while his fellow workers went off to a cafeteria on another floor, to eat subsidized lunches and exchange gossip, the man, whose name was Robert, would take a sandwich from his briefcase, and, for an hour, explore the byways of the city. He would walk, or ride a bus, and he would stare at his city, and this made him happy. A carving on a wall above a door on a condemned house; a bright flash of sunlight reflecting off the railings of a park, making them serried spears to guard the green grass and running children; a gravestone in a churchyard, eroded by wind and rain and time until the words off the railings of a park, making them serried spears to guard the green grass and running children a gravestone in a churchyard, eroded by wind and rain and time until the words on the stone had been lost but the mosses and lichens still spelled out letters from forgotten alphabets.... All these sights, and many others, he treasured and collected.Robert saw the city as a huge jewel, and the tiny moments of reality he found in his lunch-hours as facets, cut and glittering, of the whole. Is there any person in the world who does not dream? Who does not contain within them worlds unimagined? It did not occur to Robert that each of his workmates had something that made them, also, unique; nor did it occur to him that his passion for the city was in itself out of the ordinary.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: The roads mixed him up, turned him around. Here, he would pass a cathedral or museum, there, a skyscraper of a fountain -- always hauntingly familiar. But he never passed the same landmark twice, could never find the road to return him to the landmark again. Nor was he ever able to find the subway station from which he had entered this distorted echo of his city.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: "Where are we?" asked Robert. "In the city," said the old man. Robert shook his head. "I have walked the city all of my life. This is not the city, although there are moments when I seem to recognize fragments of the city, in the manner of one recognizing a line from a familiar poem in a strange book." The old man took Robert by the shoulder. "This is the city," he repeated. "Then... where in the city are we?" "I think..." The old man paused. There was a cold wind, up there on the bridge. "I have been here for many, many years. How many, I do not know. And in that time I have had much time for thinking. Perhaps a city is a living thing. Each city has its own personality, after all. Los Angeles is not Vienna. London is not Moscow. Chicago is not Paris. Each city is a collection of lives and buildings and it has its own personality." "So?" "So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams. That is where I believe we have come. We are in the dreams of the city. That's why certain places hover on the brink of recognition; why we almost know where we are." "You mean that we're asleep?" "No. We are awake, or so I believe. I mean that the city is asleep. And that we are all stumbling through the city's dream." Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Gaheris: "Do you fear that one day you will return to the dreams of the city?" I asked him. "Is that why you live out here?" He shook his head, and we walked outside. The mist hung low and white and thick and we might as well have been nowhere at all. "If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear," he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise."
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: A Tale of Two Cities
Queen Titania: I wish that my ambassador was not quite so... let me see. Feckless?
Cluracan: You reign over a reckless dominion, my lady.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cluracan's Tale
An ambassador: Your grace, the folk of the plains are a poor folk. They will not stand for another tax.
Carys XXXV: First, it's NOT another tax. It's their ticket to a pain-free afterlife. And SECOND, they will stand for whatEVER I TELL them. Am I NOT their spititual leader? Am I not ALSO their temporal lord?
Ambassador: You are the temporal lord solely of Aurelia: one city only.
Caryv XXXV: True. But I am psychopomp of all the plains. And they will do as I see fit.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cluracan's Tale
Cluracan: We of Faerie are of the wild magic. We are not creatures of spells and grimoires. We are spells, and we are written of in grimoires. There are the glamours, that we all control, to some degree of another: we can stand in a crowd and never be noticed; we can make you love us till your heart gives out. All the mirror games we play... The Fair Folk are creatures of glamour, after all.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cluracan's Tale
Dream: A good day to you, Cluracan of Faerie. Your sister, Nuala, has spent some time imporing me to come to your assistance. I have, albeit reluctantly, agreed so to do.
Cluracan: Reluctantly, Lord Shaper? I would hate to put you out in any way.
Dream: Cluracan, it is one to me whether you live or die. It is not one to your sister, and she serves me well and faithfully. I would not see her needlessly distressed.
Cluracan: But you do not care that I might be needlessly distressed? Or that my queen might be inconvenienced?
Dream: Titania has other ambassadors. And what happens to you is of little consequence to me. Well? Shall I free you?
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cluracan's Tale
Cluracan: Didn't anyone ever tell you it's bad luck to cross the Fair Folk?
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cluracan's Tale
Jim: So where are we? And what kind of storm is this? And who are all of you?
Cluracan: We're travellers, like you. And we're stranded by the storm.
Brant Tucker: Yeah. I hit this weird snowstorm, in June, wouldja believe?
Jim: Hune? But it's September.
Brant Tucker: Uh-uh. June, 1993.
Jim: It's September, 1914.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Jim: What's the point of being a sailor, if you're living high above the ocean, instead of cool and comfortable below decks, cooled by the water, listening to the sea going by?
Canby: You're a romantic.
Jim: Why be a sailor, if you're not?
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Gunga Din: So you see the point I make concerning women and the fickleness of what your Mister Kipling has so justly castigated as a species more deadly than the males?
Jim: I think it's a stupid story.
Hob Gadling: He's got a point there, old friend. Women aren't unfaithful. It's people are unfaithful. And men tend to get a lot more opportunity than women to mess around.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Hob Gadling: A lump of chalcedony won't stop you drowning. But I'll tell you how not to drown, if you like.
Jim: Really? Honest?
Hob Gadling: Sure. Don't drown.
Jim: Huh?
Hob Gadling: You just don't drown. I've done it half a dozen times. It's easy, once you get the hang of it. Don't drown.
Jim: VVery funny, Mister Gadling.
Hob Gadling: It's not a joke, Jim. Althourgh if you take it too seriously, you're in deep trouble.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Hob Gadling: So. You've been ashore then?
Jim: Yes.
Hob Gadling: Who'd you tell?
Jim: Tell? Hob Gadling: About the sea serpent.
Jim: Nobody.
Hob Gadling: I didn't think you'd say anything. Like I said. We've all got secrets. And you don't want to draw attention to yourself. Isn't that right, girl?
Jim: ...How did you know?
Hob Gadling: You're not the first lass I've known in my time was passing, nor even the fiftieth. There are things you get to recognize, given enough time. Some of it's the voice, and some of it's the hands, and a lot of it's learning to see what you see and not what you think you see, if that makes any sense.
Jim: It's not fair. Men can be sailors. Why can't girls?
Hob Gadling: Because life's not fair, I suppose. There, and that's profundity for you.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Jim: How old are you, sir?
Hob Gadling: Old enough to have learned to keep my mouth shut about seeing a bloody great snake in the middle of the ocean.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Hob's Leviathan
Brant Tucker: I mean, how many Americas are there?
Oriental man: Many. Many-many-many. But perhaps less than there used to be.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Oriental man: The prince of that world was Boss Smiley. Boss Smiley's face was everywhere in that world. Most people thought him a dream, or a ghost, but they carried his likeness on them for luck or for happiness.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Richard Nixon: Now, I'm going to tell you a few things now, make it easy for you in the future. Okay: nothing you do in the White House matters. You know why not? Because as far as the mass of voting morons is concerned, while you're in office, you'll be the WORST single president they've ever had. Until you stop. Then it's some OTHER poor bastard's turn. And even THAT doesn't matters, because ten, twenty years later, they'll look back on you, and wonder WHY they didn't appreciate you when they HAD you.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Death: Hi, Prez.
Prez Rickard: Uh... Hello. Have we met before?
Death: Once. Prez Rickard: Ah. I'm sorry. It's just I've met so many people...
Death: Me too. But I remember you.
Prez Rickard: Hang on. Look. This may be really stupid question, but am i...? Death: Uh-huh. As a dodo.
Prez Rickard: Wow. So what happens now?
Death: Oh, different things to different people. It depends who you are. And you never get to learn what happens to anyone else.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Boss Smiley: You aren't going ANYWHERE. You're DEEAD. You're MINE.
Dream: He may go wherever he wants.
Boss Smiley: This is my world. I rule here. You have no power here. Leave this place -- NOW!
Prez Rickard: Sir? Who are you?
Dream: Just one with an... interest... in tales.
Boss Smiley: I am prince of this world.
Dream: And I am Prince of Stories. The boy is under my jurisdiction, not yours. Come with me, Prez Rickard.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Prez Rickard: He said he's destroy you. I hope I haven't got you into any kind of trouble.
Dream: He would not be the first to threaten me. But I have no fear of Boss Smiley. And you are under my protection. So you need not worry.
Prez Rickard: Do I... Do I owe you anything, sir?
Dream: You owe my sister thanks. She drew my attention to your situation. But, no. You owe me nothing.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: The Golden Boy
Klaproth: Why should I stop you telling a story?
Petrefax: Because it is a true story, Master. And because you aren't in it.
Brant Tucker: Hey, Klaproth. I thought you said there weren't any honorifics where you came from.
Klaproth: It is no honorific. Petrefex and Kyrielle and Eucrasia here are journeymen under me: I AM their master. Tell your tale, Petrefax.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cerements
Mig: Right. The first thing we do, is we eat. I'm famished.
Petrefax: Should we wash our hands? I mean, they're still covered with bits of the client.
Hermas: That would be disrespectful to the client. Anyway his remnants are said to add savor to the food. That is the custom of the place from which the client hails.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cerements
Destruction: It's important to have places like this. Once the spirit's flown and the spark of life has gone, then the rituals of farewell are needed. All the rituals we go through to help us say goodbye. You have to say goodbye. They have other functions, too, those rites. It is a fearful thing to be haunted by those who loved us once. It is a fearful thing to haunt those one loves. This is Litharge, isn't it? It hasn't changed much since last I was this way.
Scroyle: The Necropolis Litharge does not change.
Destruction: Everything is mutable.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Cerements
Charlene Mooney: What's a reality storm? I mean, it does sound like something from Star Trek or something.
Shiva: Well, sometimes big things happen, and they echo. Those echoes crash across the worlds. They are ripples in the fabric of things. Often they manifest as storms. Reality is a very fragile thing, after all.
Brant Tucker: Reality ISN'T fragile. It's -- It's HUGE and BIG and SOLID. I mean, you think reality is FRAGILE, you should try banging your HEAD against a brick wall. Huh? THAT'S reality.
Shiva: Really? Well, how did you get here, Brant Tucker?
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Worlds' End
Brant Tucker: So you came here on purpose?
Chiron: Indeed no. A tavern is not a destination, Brant Tucker. Merely a place to rest upon the way.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Worlds' End
Brant Tucker: At first I thought it was a cloud formation. Or. I don't know. My imagination maybe.
But it wasn't.
It was a man [Destiny].
He was walking across the sky, slowly, his face almost hidden in the shadows of his hood.
He was carrying a book.
I do not know how long he took to talk across the sky.
After the man with a book came the man with the flag, and after him came the people carrying the coffin.
I was watching a funeral procession. That was what it was.
I imagined that I could hear music, a low deep dirge, like the music of the spheres, music to which they marched.
Step by step by step they walked across the sky, like giants, with their burden on their shoulders; pacing in unison, slow as time.
I found myself thinking about my father. He died about five years ago, after a long illness. Some kind of cancer in his gut. It wasn't a very good time for me. So I put on a suit and went to his funeral, and came away...disappointed. The whole routine seemed as foolish and empty as the plastic flowers in the "Chapel of Rest"; a meaningless act, a shadow of something real.
The words said over my father's body were hollow and dumb, and I couldn't find it in me to cry, not then.
I knew I was watching the real thing here. There was true fried in each step they took across the sky, and they shouldered the casket as if they were shouldering the weight of the world.
And they walked. I could feel something hot and burning on my cheeks, and my eyes began to sting.
I don't know who I was crying for, and I hated myself for it; but I couldn't look away.
I'd spent -- how long? Twelve hours? A day? A week? A month? -- in the inn, surrounded by impossible people, and it hadn't affected me. It wasn't real.
Then I watched these murky giants walk slowly across the sky, and I felt like my world was falling apart.
Like there was nothing left to hold on to. Nothing left to believe.
I was watching it -- I couldn't look away. But part of me was watching myself watching the procession, and realizing that while I watched I was...being...changed, I suppose.
I was seeing something I couldn't describe; that I couldn't explain.
I don't know what they were [procession includes Merv Pumpkynhead, Luc, Wilkinson, Titania, Lady Bast, Despair, Odin, Thor, Emperor Norton, Fiddler's Green, Martin Tenbones, the angel Duma]. I don't know who had died, who they were mourning, whose casket they followed. But it didn't matter.
They were there.
In the sky.
And I believed in miracles.
I didn't have any choice.
At the end of the procession, a bit behind everyone else, there were these two girls.
One of them [Delirium] kept hesitating. She'd walk a few steps and stop. Like she'd forgotten what she was doing, where she was. Then she's walk a little more.
The other one... [Death]
The one at the end...
I think I fell in love with her, a little bit.
Isn't that dumb?
But it was like I knew her.
Like she was my oldest, dearest friend.
The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you.
I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me.
And then she stopped walking.
Under the moon, she stopped. And she looked at us.
She looked at me.
Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know.
She probably didn't even know I was there.
But I'll always love her. All my life.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Worlds' End
Bartender: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you imagined the whole thing? The bar? The stories? Your woman?
Brant Tucker: Often. But...
Bartender: Yeah, but?
Brant Tucker: But then I remember looking up at those people in the sky. I remember crying for my father. I remember Charlene. Nobody else does. But I do.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman - Worlds' End: Worlds' End