Rose Walker: Have you ever been in love?
Desire: You might say that.
Rose Walker: Horrible isn't it?
Desire: In what way?
Rose Walker: It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.
You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.
Desire: How picturesque.
Rose Walker: It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.
Nothing should be able to do that.
Especially not love.
I hate love.

The Kindly Ones, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.

The Kindly Ones, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

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.

Destruction about Death to Dream, Brief Lives, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out.
But from here, I can pretend...
I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments.
Gods come, gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade.
Words don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that vanish into cold and dust.
But I can pretend.

Destruction, Brief Lives, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

Hazel: Can I ask a stupid question?
Death: Sure. Ask away.
Hazel: It's sort of more that one question. But. Look. Um, why do we hurt? Why do we die? Why isn't life good all the time? Why isn't it fair?
Death: Those aren't stupid questions, Hazel. For some people they're the only questions that matter.
Hazel: Does that mean you won't answer them?
Death: Sure, I'll answer. But it's kind of a big subject, and it's got lots of answers. And the answers don't really mean anything.. They aren't stupid questions but they could just as well be "When is purple?" or "Why does Thursday?", if you see what I mean...
Hazel: Not really.
Death: Well.
I think some of it is probably contrasts. Light and Shadow.
If you never had bad times, how would you know you had the good times?
But some of it is just: If you are going to be human, then there are loads of things that come with it. Eyes, a heart, days and life.
It's the moments that illuminate it, though. The times you don't see when you're having them...
They make the rest of it matter.

Death: The Time of Your Life ~ Neil Gaiman

Hotel rooms are lonely.

All the craziness that you avoid in the day-to-day buisness of life comes to you in hotel rooms and eat your mind. The people they find dead in hotel rooms wouldn't have killed themselves at home.

Hotel rooms don't care if you live or die.

Someone will come and clean the room in the morning whatever you do, and they'll restock the minibar and make the bed and take the scrunched-up tissues and the dead bodies away...

Death: The Time of Your Life ~ Neil Gaiman

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.

Lady Bast, The Wake, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

This is the second brother I have lost, whispered Despair in her shadowy voice, and each of the listeners found herself, or himself, or itself, giving and involuntary shiver.
And it hurts.
I cared for him very, much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him.
He was a creature of hope. For Dreams are of hope, and echoes of hopes. And I am a creature of Despair.
And her words moved over her listeners like a black wind blowing across their hearts; and in that moment each of them knew Despair.
I think of the first Despair sometimes. It must be over a hundred years since anyone thought of her but me...
An eyeblink, and she is forgotten.
And you will forget: Death or Life will take him from your minds. I know, whispered Despair in her distant, empty voice.
But I shall remember him.

The Wake, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

Good evening, London.
I thought it time we had a little talk.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I'll begin...
I suppose you're wondering why I called you here this evening.
Well, you see, I'm not entirely satisfied with your performance lately... I'm afraid your work's slipping, and...
and, well, I'm afraid we've been thinking about letting you go.
Oh, I know, I know. You've been with the company for a long time now. Almost... let me see. Almost ten thousand years! My word, doesn't time fly?
It seems like only yesterday...
I remember the day you commenced your employment, swinging down from the trees, fresh-faced and nervous, a bone clasped in your bristling fist...
"Where do I start, sir?" You asked, plaintively.
I recall my exact words: "There's a pile of dinosaur eggs over there, youngster," I said, smiling paternally the while.
"Get sucking."
Well, we've certainly come a long way since then haven't we? And yes, yes, you're right, in all that time you haven't missed a day.
Well done, though good and faithful servant.
Also, please don't think about forgetting your outstanding service record, or about all of the invaluable contributions that you've made to the company...
Fire, the Wheel, Agriculture... It's an impressive list, old-timer. A jolly impressive list. Don't get me wrong.
But... well to be frank, we've had our problems, too. There's no getting away from it.
Do you know what I think a lot of it stems from? I'll tell you...
It's your basic unwillingness to get on within the company. You don't seem to want to face up to any real responsibility, or to be your own boss.
Lord knows, you've been given plenty of opportunities...
We've offered you promotion time and time again, and each time you've turned us down.
"I couldn't handle the work, Guv'nor," you wheedled. "I know my place."
To be frank, you're not trying are you?
You see, you've been standing still for far too long, and it's starting to show in your work...
and, I might add, in your general standard of behavior.
The constant bickering on the factory floor has not escaped my attention...
...nor the recent bouts of rowdiness in the staff canteen.
Then of course, there's...
Hmm. Well, I really didn't want to have to bring this up, but...
Well, you see, I've been hearing some disturbing rumors about your personal life.
No, never you mind who told me. No names, no pack drill...
I understand that you are unable to get on with your spouse. I hear that you argue. I am told that you shout. Violence has been mentioned.
I am reliably informed that you always hurt the one you love...
...the one you shouldn't hurt at all.
and what about the children? It's always the children who suffer, as you're well aware.
Poor little mites. What are they to make of it?
What are they to make of your bullying, your despair, your cowardice and all your fondly nurtured bigotries?
Really, it's not good enough, is it?
And it's no good blaming the drop in work standards among bad management, either...
... though to be sure, the management is very bad.
In fact, let us not mince words... the management is terrible.
We've had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions.
This is plain fact.
But who elected them?
It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you!
While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.
You have encouraged these malicious incompetents who have made your working life a shambles.
You have accepted without question their senseless orders.
You have allowed them to fill our workspace with dangerous and nuproven machines.
You could have stopped them.
All you had to say was "No".
You have no spine. You have no pride.
You are no longer an asset to the company.
I will, however, be generous.
You wil be granted two years to show me some improvement in your work. If at the end of that time you are still unwilling to make a go of it...
You're fired.
That will be all. You may return to your labours.

V for Vendetta ~ Alan Moore

Woman, this is the most important moment of your life. Don't run from it.

V, V for Vendetta ~ Alan Moore

The bonds of family bind both ways.
*takes a cigarette and lights it*
They bind us up, support us, help us.
And they are also a bond from which it is difficult, perhaps impossible to extricate oneself.
My late brother being a case in point.
Had we not been family, why then we could have had nothing to do with each other,
and both our lives would have been enriched.
Instead we were siblings.
And this was to say the least, unfortunate.
Still, he is gone.
He never had sense enough to come in out of the rain.
But he is gone.
*exhales tendrils of smoke*
That's all I have to say.
*smile*

Desire (at Death's Wake), The Wake, The Sandman ~ Neil Gaiman

Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason... should ever be forgot.

V for Vendetta

Sexton: What time is it?
Didi: Breakfast time on a really most excellent summer's day. You know what we need?
Sexton: I have no idea what you think I need. You need subtitles. Or some kind of instruction manual.

Death: The high cost of living ~ Neil Gaiman

There's this thing they have in French: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English.
It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out.
All the cool stuff you wish you'd said at the time. So I'm walking down the stairs, thinking:
"Firstly there's no such person as Death."
"Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians."
"Third, he doesn't exist either."
"Fourth I'd say what you're doing is," Hell... All that stuff mom used to burble in her Freudian period which lasted for maybe a couple of weeks-- "You're blocking, or transubstantiating or something."
"Which is to say, you're nuts. Your walls do not go all the way to the ceiling. You are not playing with a full orchestra."
"You, madam," I would say, "Are a chocolate cream and a hazelnut suprise short of a full box of chocolates."

Sexton Furnival, Death: The high cost of living ~ Neil Gaiman