rediscovering gaiman

i read an online forum today on gaiman and some memorable quotes from his sandman series and his other books. it's been a long time since i read anything that compelled me to reread the lines and memorize them so i can recite it at will. some of gaiman's works are so useful especially when you want to have something to mull over to spark your writing juices or when you want to impress you friends with some profound line. but anyway, here are some of my favorites:

1.)"We all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable."

2.)"You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they've served their purpose.
But you've got to learn to throw things away eventually."

3.)"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, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend."

4.)"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot."

5.)"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes when you fall, you fly."

6.)"Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

7.)"Walk any path in Destiny's garden, and you will be forced to choose, not once but many times. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice, and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching behind you; or look ahead and see only darkness."

8.)"It is what he wanted. But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the price, their heart's desire, their dream… but the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted."

9.)"Death's a funny thing. I used to think that it was a big, sudden thing, like a huge owl that would swoop down out of the night and carry you off. I don't anymore. I think it's a slow thing, like a thief who comes to your house day after day, taking a little thing here and a little thing there, and one day you walk round your house and there’s nothing there to keep you, nothing to make you want to stay. And then you lie down and shut up forever. Lots of little deaths before the big one."

10.)"Have you ever been in love?

Horrible, isn't it?

It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so 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 don't ask for it. They do 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 a simple phrase like "Maybe we should just be friends" or "How very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way to your heart.

It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that.

Especially not love.

I hate love."