Sandman III: The Dream Country

These quotes are taken from Neil Gaiman's the Sandman, a most excellent comic book.
He owns the words.


Sandman: the Dream Country (III)

Erasmus Fry:
Let me tell you about bezoars. Word comes from the Persian. Pad-zahr. It means counter-poison. Antidote. Mainly found in the stomachs of goats and gazelles. Once believed to possess mystic powers: they can remedy poison, make the sick well. Edward IV survived the effects of a poisoned wound, due solely to a bezoar in his possession.
Queen Elizabeth the First had a bezoar set in gold, with unicorn’s horn, given to her by John Dee, her spy and magician.
For the common people, apothecaries would lend out bezoars at extortionate rates, for a week, or a fortnight . . .

Richard Madoc:
You know, I could write a whole story set at a party. Possibly something could have happened to the world outside - a holocaust of some kind . . . these people are partying against the darkness.
The fraternity of critics. In reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a critical mass . . .
A city in which the streets are paved with time.
A train full of silent women, plowing forever through the twilight.
Heads made of light. A small piece of blue cardboard. A plum, sweet and tart and cold. A were-goldfish who transforms into a wolf at full moon.
Two old women taking a weasel on holiday.
Gryphons shouldn’t marry. Vampires don’t dance.
A man who inherits a library card to the Library in Alexandria.
A rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog-collar.
A man who falls in love with a paper doll.
The sun setting over the Parthenon. Shark’s teeth soup. . . . an old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar in the dusty cupboard under his stairs . . .
A sestina about silence, using the key words dark, ragged, never, screaming, fire, kiss.
A biography of Keats, from the Lamia’s point of view . . .

A cat: The bird flew lower, but it did not come within my reach. ‘Justice?’ it repeated. ‘Justice is a delusion you will not find on this or any other sphere.’
‘And wisdom? Wisdom is no part of dreams, lithe walker, though dreams are a part of the sum of each life’s experiences, which is the only wisdom that matters.
‘But revelation? That is the province of dream.’”

(Also cat):Dream the world. Not this pallid shadow of reality. Dream the world the way it truly is.
A world in which all cats are queens and kings of creation. That is my message.
And I shall keep moving, keep repeating it until I die. Or until a thousand cats hear my words, and believe them, and dream . . .
And we come again to paradise.


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