Neil Gaiman's masterpiece, The Sandman, is full of wonderful, thought-provoking quotes, carefully woven into a rich, darkly fantastic, world. Sandman is frequently brought up in discussions of the greatest comics of all times, and with its 2022 adaptation as a Netflix series, it's more relevant than ever.

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Everyone can learn something from this series filled with wisdom, horror, and wonder. Few books have such rich characters, so much insight into the nature of stories, or such quotable characters. The Sandman's a book with a long reach and once its fans start quoting it, it's hard for them to stop.

Updated by Matthew Z. Wood on 9/7/2022: The release of The Sandman on Netflix series has drawn a lot of attention to this classic comic series This new context means that it's time to re-examine Gaiman's most quotable lines and explore their role in both mediums.

10 “Things need not have happened to be true.”

This quote from Gaiman's story "A Midsummer Night's Dream," collected in the trade paperback Dream Country, focuses on the first performance of William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Here, Shakespeare and his company perform a play about mortals and fairies in front of an audience from Faerie, including many of the play's principles. This single-issue story was the first comic to win the World Fantasy Award for short fiction, back in 1991.

In a story that blends history and fantasy, this quote reminds readers that the boundary between real and unreal isn't as hard as we like to imagine. The real world shapes stories, but dreams and stories have an equally strong effect on human lives. Stories often outlive their physical counterparts and can capture the essence of larger truths that mere lives never approach.

9 "One thing I've learned. You can know anything. It's all there. You just have to find it."

John Constantine's quote on finding things as he meets Morpheus in The Sandman.

Early in The Sandman, Dream meets DC's seminal wizard and conman, John Constantine. Constantine's something of a supernatural detective and Morpheus engages him in his search for the pouch of sand that gives him his nickname.

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Of course, Constantine isn't just talking about magical artifacts here. He's talking about secrets, science, and truth and it feels positive in this light. Since Constantine is the speaker, however, this is also a quote about what people are willing to sacrifice for knowledge as well. Constantine's notorious for selling his own soul and knowledge is one of the things Faust himself exchanged his essence for.

8 "What power would Hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of Heaven?"

Dream asks demons about the power of dreams in Hell in The Sandman.

Dream's first quest to reclaim his lost treasures is the basis for the first half of Netflix's series, as he journeys into Hell after his missing helmet, a visual reference to the Golden Age Sandman's gas mask. When he confronts the demon Choronzon, and by proxy, Lucifer, the fallen angel mockingly tells Dream that dreams have no power there.

Dream's reply, about damned souls and fallen angels dreaming of Heaven, is more than just his epic takedown of the King of Hell. It gets to the very nature of Hell, how hope is Lucifer's worst torment. This line made it into the Sandman streaming series, inviting Lucifer's revenge in future stories.

7 "Love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire and Desire is always cruel."

Dream and Desire of the Endless in Netflix's Sandman

Dream and his siblings, The Endless, are the incarnations of the universe's fundamental forces. They're a dysfunctional family who don't get along and don't always know when to ask for help. However, the bitterest blood flows between Dream and his genderfluid sibling, Desire.

This quote says as much about the speaker as it says about love. Even so, love is traditionally framed as one of the best things in life, in spite of the pain it causes. By reminding readers that love is about what their hearts want, Gaiman's reminding his audience that hearts aren't always trustworthy.

6 "Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now?"

Richard Madoc faces Calliope, the Muse of Poetry, in Netflix's Sandman

Whenever a work of fiction features a character who writes stories, there are bound to be some metafictional elements. However, when Richard Madoc cruelly tells the ancient spirit Calliope that he's a liar, he's clearly also talking about every story's unreliable nature. If it weren't for this, it would come across as a quip, but Gaiman's giving his audience an idea worth engaging with here.

This story also made it into the Netflix series, though it's changed a lot from its original appearance in the comics. Now, Calliope tells Madoc flatly that writers are liars, and he denies his innate dishonesty to her face. Truth and lies are always a part of The Sandman's subtext but here it rises to the story's surface for all to see.

5 “I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think."

Brief Lives is one of Gaiman's Sandman stories that directly engages with the idea of immortality, how human lives are short but how everything, from stars to gods, ends. Here, Dream is accompanied by his sister Delirium in a search for their missing brother, Destruction, and this is how he greets them. The Endless are as close to eternal as anything can get, of course, and this takes a toll on them.

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Stars feel eternal to humanity because they last for billions of years, a timeframe people can't really imagine. Destruction's watched them come and go, though, but he's never lost his sense of wonder when he gazes at the night sky, and Jill Thompson's artwork here conveys that subtle detail brilliantly.

4 “Any view of things that is not strange is false.”

Gaiman's Fables and Reflections is rounded out by some of The Sandman's more isolated episodes, including the stand-alone story, "Soft Places." Focused on Marco Polo's meeting with Morpheus, this quote feels like a snippet from a song. However, it gives young Marco and readers a lot to think about.

Polo's journals are famous for the way they're lined with rumors and lies. Like many European explorers of his day, he looked for outlandish details he could sell to a prospective audience, from cat-furred chickens to his reported encounters with spirits in the desert. His stories were strange and false but they contained lessons and truths, too, mixed together like the ingredients of a dream.

3 "The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted."

Dream of the Endless talks with Titania, queen of Faerie, in The Sandman.

In The Sandman, Dream is a flawed character, but he's inhumanly wise. As an immortal outsider, he can see humanity's foibles better than his own. Morpheus had a hand in Shakespeare's writing prowess but he knows the power to write stories that will live forever is not what the Bard wanted, at least not once he got it.

When people acquire the things they want, they acquire the responsibilities and burdens that come with them. Money, power, and art all seem desirable from a distance but they rarely bring much joy, at least on their own. When people get the things they want, they often lose the desire that brought them to that moment and find themselves looking for something new to grasp.

2 "You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime."

Bernie, and ancient man, finally meets Death in the Sandman.

Death is by far the most compassionate and friendly member of the Endless. However, when she meets Bernie in Brief Lives she seems amused by his competitive question. Like most people, Bernie did everything in his power to get out of death, and in his 15,000 years, he saw changes few people could start to fathom.

People tend to want more time. As a group, humans imagine what they could do if their lives were infinite, and when the end comes, many of us would do anything for another heartbeat. However, Death has the right of it here. Everything is finite, and life is more about what people do with their time than how much time they get.

1 "You shouldn't trust the story-teller; only trust the story."

A Polish grandfather tells his granddaughter a story in The Sandman #38

Another stand-alone story, The Grandfather's tale "The Hunt" is crafted specifically with his granddaughter in mind. It's a story about traditions and keeping to the old ways. She's a canny listener, though, and spots the inconsistencies within his story about a werewolf's hunt.

RELATED: The Sandman's Season 1 Episodes, Ranked According To IMDbHowever, his rebuttal cuts to the heart of the matter. Storytellers often have agendas, messages they want their readers and listeners to learn from. However, a good story goes beyond authorial intent and makes its own points. Unreliable narrators are one thing but readers have to be able to trust their stories.

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