skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality.
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "Books of Magic"
"Is it far?"
"It is as close as the harvest moon in the evening sky, as distant as a dream on wakening;
Near as a rainbow, and so remote you could walk forever and never reach it..."
"Is it far?"
-Tim Hunter and Queen Titannia of Faerie in Neil Gaiman's "Books of Magic"
"None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you — even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"
“This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof...”
-Neil Gaiman
"You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in the little silver bags, I mean. It's looking out of the windows at the clouds, and thinking, maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay. Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds. But it's just cold and wet and empty, but when you look out of a plane it's a special world..."
-Delirium (who was once Delight...), in "Brief Lives"
“A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed...It feels an impulsion...this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons...”
-Richard Bach
"He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough..."
"Not only are there no happy endings," she told him, "there aren't even any endings..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"
"The world is always ending for someone..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "Signal to Noise"
"Sometimes, we get too possessive of something or someone we don't even own... it's a side-effect of loving too much... and receiving too little..."
"I'd give anything for a love I believe I can never have, for a joy of contentment that I doubt I can ever feel..."
"The ways of knowing move, often in unexpected ways..."
"And we tremble blind for the stars and love..."
-anon
"They will eventually walk their own paths, live their own lives. It is not parting but embarking on a journey. Not the end, but the beginning. It will be lonely, but that's how it is..."
"When I first met you, you didn't care about my past. I was happy about that. Thank you for everything...
I am a wanderer. I must be wandering again. Sayonara..."
-from "Rurouni Kenshin" (るろうに剣心) by Watsuki Nobuhiro (和月 伸宏)
Spike Spiegel: Look at my eyes... One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture. I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from... Before I knew it, the dream was over...
Faye Valentine: You told me once to forget the past, cause it doesn't matter, but you're the one still tied to the past...
Faye Valentine: Why do you have to go? Where are you going? What are going to do, just throw your life away like it was nothing?
Spike Spiegel: I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive...
Spike Spiegel: Whatever happens, happens...
-Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine from "Cowboy Bebop"
(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)
"She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars..."
"Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while..."
"Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "Stardust"
“I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it...”
-Delirium (who was once Delight...) from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"
Hachi: You're idealizing me that's why you fell in love with me. If you knew the real me, it would shatter your illusion...
Nobu: Then come on. Shatter my illusion. Because I don't know what else I can do to stop loving you...
-from "Nana" (ナナ) by Yazawa Ai (矢沢あい)
"If happiness had a form what would it look like? It might be something like glass, because one doesn't notice it normally. However, it is actually there. As proof, if you change the angle you look at it, the glass will reflect light. It will state it's presence and existence more eloquently than any other thing in this world...
-Lelouch Lamperouge from "Code Geass"
"Don't come into my world. I can't see any exit from this love..."
-Makino Tsukushi from "Boys Over Flowers"
"Nobody's creepy from the inside, Hazel. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they're the only real thing in the whole world. But they're not creepy..."
"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"
A girl asked a boy if she was pretty.
He said no.
She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever.
He said no.
She then asked him if he would cry if she walked away.
He again said no.
She had heard too much. She needed to leave. As she walked away, he grabbed her arm and told her to stay...
He said, "You're not pretty, you're beautiful.
I don't want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever.
I wouldn't cry if you walked away, I would die..."
You mean more to me than you think...
-anon
"The magic of first love is our ignorance that it could ever end..."
"I don't think anyone is born knowing the reason why they're here. It's just something you have to find as you go along..."
"Can you understand? Not having a dream ... not being needed by anyone ... the pain of merely being alive...?"
"All that I can do now is watch over them, so that they don't make the same mistakes. So that they don't lose the will to smile..."
-from "Fruits Basket" (フルーツバスケット, Furūtsu Basuketto) by Takaya Natsuki (高屋 奈月)
Yamada: I thought that Hagu-chan was in love with Morita...?
Mayama: She is in love with him.
Yamada: Then why?
Mayama: I think its a matter of what her purpose in life is.
Yamada: Purpose in life...?
Mayama: Yeah. Love is the reason for some but not for others. Hagu-chan is motivated by her desire to accomplish something... I believe.
Yamada: Is that more important than love?
Mayama: It’s not a matter of which is more important or which is right. It is not an act of selfishness either. She chooses instinctively before she has time to think it through...
-from "Honey and Clover (ハチミツとクローバー)" by Umino Chika (羽海野 チカ)
"...what is my purpose in life?
What should I do to find it?
Once I've found it, will I become stronger?
....Oh no, my mind is blank.
A strange sound keeps ringing in my head.
What sound is that...?
Ah, I know.
It's...
The sound of emptiness..."
"If to get happiness, I have to make someone miserable, and these two situations will happen at once... how should I choose then...?"
"To wish for your own happiness is sometimes coupled with another’s unhappiness. Since I couldn’t pray for my own happiness, I prayed to the moon in the night sky for the happiness of the one whose warm hand I held..."
-from "Honey and Clover (ハチミツとクローバー)" by Umino Chika (羽海野 チカ)
"I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams into the land. We are worshipped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And then one day there's no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams, and what comes after, not even we know. I'm going to dance now, I'm afraid..."
-Ishtar, in "Brief Lives"
"I didn't know you could stop being a God..."
"You can stop being anything..."
-Delirium and Dream, in "Brief Lives"
"The art of lying begins wih the worship of the truth. The best liars are the ones who can lift a fiction to a reality. Who can bend and twist the way things are until they have sculpted it into the way they want things to be. They do it with loving care for what's true - they study it carefully like an artist does his model. They adore it at every step. Fact is, the liar loves truth far more than the honest man..."
-from "Shuddertown"
"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..."
-the man who got lost in the dreams of a city, in "World's End"
"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..."
-Death, in "Dream Country"
"I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear."
"Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out..."
-Norton I and Death, in Sandman #31: "Three Septembers and a January"
"I thought you could foretell the future?"
"I don't need to know the future. When the future's over, then it's me..."
-Orpheus and Death, in Sandman: "The Song of Orpheus"
"If you had stayed with us, we could have given you life until death..."
"Don't I get that anyway?"
-Stheno and Lyta Hall, in Sandman #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"
"Your life is your own. Your death, likewise. Always and forever your own. Farewell. We shall not meet again..."
-Dream, in "Fables and Reflections"
"Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"
"Then what died? Who are you mourning?"
"A puh-point of view..."
-Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in "The Wake"
"Wear good shoes, and those shoes will take you to good places..."
"I guess we just passed by each other in life..."
"It's sad, but that's the truth. It had to be then, or never..."
"The night has ended...
The dawn will follow everyone's worries... and arrive..."
-from "Boys Over Flowers (花より男子, Hana Yori Dango)" by Kamio Yōko (神尾 葉子),
"...I still can't be entirely certain whether people's fates simply coast along like the clouds in the sky... or if each person can choose his own path to follow... I suppose the destination might be the same either way, but when you decide to follow your own path, you can strive to achieve your own dreams...
I finally learned that people with dreams are the ones who are truly strong...
-Neji from "Naruto"
"Everywhere you go, the sky is the sky and people are people..."
-Jubei Kibagami from "Ninja Scroll"
"If you only face forward, there is something you will miss seeing..."
-Vash the Stampede from "Trigun"
"My sister has a function to perform, even as I do. The Endless have their responsibilities. I have responsibilities.
I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from my soul.
I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings..."
-Dream, in "Preludes & Nocturnes"
"Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility..."
-Delirium, in "The Kindly Ones"
"Rules and responsibilities: these are the ties that bind us. We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves. I will do what I have to do. And I will do what I must..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman: Book of Dreams"
"So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding..."
"The old woman took the umbrella, gratefully, and smiled her thanks. "You've a good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, it's not...""
-from Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere"
Joel: Hi.
Clementine: Hi. Didn't figure you'd show your face around me again. I guess I thought you were... humiliated. You did run away, after all.
Joel: I just needed to see you.
Clementine: Yeah?
Joel: I'd like to, um... take you out, or something.
Clementine: You're married.
Joel: Not yet, not married. No, I'm not married.
Clementine: Look man, I'm telling you right off the bat, I'm high-maintainance, so... I'm not gonna tip-toe around your marriage, or whatever it is you've got goin' there. If you wanna be with me, you're with me.
Joel: Okay.
Clementine: Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours...
Joel: I remember that speech really well.
Clementine: I had you pegged, didn't I?
Joel: You had the whole human race pegged.
Clementine: Probably.
Joel: I still thought you were gonna save my life... even after that.
Clementine: I know.
Joel: It would be different, if we could just give it another go-round.
Clementine: Remember me. Try your best; maybe we can...
-Joel and Clementine from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Clementine: I'm always anxious thinking I'm not living my life to the fullest, y'know? Taking advantage of every possibility? Just making sure that I'm not wasting one second of the little time I have...
Joel: Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention...?
Clementine: ...you stop listening to what is true, and what is true is constantly changing...
Joel: I can't see anything I don't like about you.
Clementine: But you will, you will think of things and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.
Joel: Ok.
Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it...
-Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"
"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.
-from Friedrich Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil"
"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd..."
-from Alexander Pope's poem "Eloisa to Abelard"
"I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled..."
-Will Shakespeare from Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake"
Dream:
I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who ... leaves his kingdom .... About a man who turns his back on magic .... I am Prince of Stories, Will, but I have no story of my own. Nor shall I ever .... I thank you...
Shakespeare:
It is over...
-Will Shakespeare and Dream from Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman Vol. 10: The Wake"
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the players, (i.e. everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time...”
-from Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch"
"I miss you", he admitted.
"I'm here", she said.
"That's when I miss you most. When you're here. When you aren't here, when you're just a ghost of the past or a dream from another life, it's easier then..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"
"When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better.
"It's all right" we whisper, "I'm here, I love you." and we lie: "I'll never leave you." For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad..."
-from Neil Gaiman's "Midnight Days"
"You know the saddest thing," she said. "The saddest thing is that we're you."
I said nothing.
"In your fantasies," she said, "my people are just like you. Only better. We don't die or age or suffer from pain or cold or thirst. We're snappier dressers. We possess the wisdom of the ages. And if we crave blood, well, it is no more than the way you people crave food or affection or sunlight - and besides, it gets us out of the house. Crypt. Coffin. Whatever."
"And the truth is?" I ask her.
"We're you," she said. "We're you with all your fuck-ups and all the things that make you human - all your fears and lonelinesses and confusions... none of that gets better.
"But we're colder than you are. Deader. I miss daylight and food and knowing how it feels to touch someone and care. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything..." And then she stopped.
"Are you crying?" I asked.
"We don't cry," she told me. Like I said, the woman was a liar."
Fifteen Painted Cards From A Vampire Tarot
-from Neil Gaiman's "Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders"
I had been meaning to test the theory if sakura petals truly fall to earth at five centimetres per second... to discover the truth behind the chain of short memories about their distance...
But then I realised that perhaps some things are better left unknown. Some truths happier left unspoken. Proving the theory right or wrong will not change the fact that cherry blossoms are beautiful, and that they are unfortunately, all too fleeting. A little bit like the human condition. But perhaps that is the point. And as they say, "a lifetime spent searching for the perfect cherry blossom bloom is not a wasted life..." I think that it is true... and so I continue searching...
later days.
