Preludes and Nocturnes

• • Do you know what dreams are made of, Rosemary Kelly?
  • Made of? They're just Dreams...
  • No. They aren't. People think dreams aren't real because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes...
• All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.

The Doll's House

• We of the endless are the servants of the the living—we are NOT their masters. WE exist because they know, deep in their hearts, that we exist. When the last living thing has left this universe, then our task will be done. And we do not manipulate them. If anything, they manipulate us.

Dream Country

• But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream...But the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted.
• Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
• • You see. Sometimes I have to look normal, and then I grow faces. But they dry up, and fall off, but I couldn't throw them away. They're part of me. So I hang on to them. I...I'm probably not making much sense.
  • No. You're making sense. 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.

Season of Mists

• "Welcome to Hell," I tell myself. And I am afraid. Welcome to Hell.
• • Humanity. They follow leaders—queens or kings, chiefs or emperors. We tell them what to do, and they do it. We know no more than they, but still, they follow us, blindly, as people lost in the catacombs would follow a child carrying a flaming torch.
  • And what do you follow then, you leaders—to make us follow you, and obey you?
  • We follow our dreams.

A Game of You

• I don't think home's a place anymore. I think it's a state of mind.

Brief Lives

• Some things are changeless. People love, and die, they dream, destroy, despair, go mad. They fulfill their destinies, live out the course of their lives. We fulfill our function, as they fulfill theirs. That will not change.
• 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.
• She said we all not only could know everything. We do. We just tell ourselves we don't to make it all bearable.
• The Endless? The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more. We have no right to play with their lives, to order their dreams and their desires. And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe.
• Life, like time, is a journey through darkness.

The Kindly Ones

• 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.
• • Have you ever been in love?
  • You might say that.
  • Horrible isn't it?
  • In what way?
  • 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 this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your 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 into your heart.
  • How picturesque.
  • 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.
• 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.
• We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.

The Wake

• How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?
• But you can't kill dreams. Not really. I mean, Despair may be the thing that comes after hope, but there's still hope. Right? When there's no hope you might as well be dead.