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Sandman, Vol. 9

The Kindly Ones

By N Gaiman

(71)

| Others | 9781417686186

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I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school.
They don't teach you how to love someone.
They don't teach you how to be famous.
They don't teach you how to be rich, or to be poor.
They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer.
They don't teach ... (continue)

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school.
They don't teach you how to love someone.
They don't teach you how to be famous.
They don't teach you how to be rich, or 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.
Our existence deforms the Universe. That's Responsibility.
ROSE: Have you ever been in love?
DESIRE: You might say that.
ROSE: Horrible, isn't it?
DESIRE: In what way?
ROSE: 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.
DESIRE: How picturesque.
ROSE: 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.
Women are about waking, Rose. As mothers we wake them from nothingness to existence. As maidens we wake them to the joys and miseries of adulthood, wake them to the worlds of lust and responsibility. And when their time is up, it's always us to wash them for the last time, and we lay them out for the wake.
Flowers gathered in the mornings,
afternoon they blossom on,
still are withered by the evening:
You can be Me, when I'm gone.

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BansheeSmile said on Apr 7, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

'The Kindly Ones' plays a pivotal role in the whole story arc of the Sandman, and it's interesting to see old characters like Burgess and Lyta Hall come together for its' grander scheme of things' ending.

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shazzpezzazz said on Sep 8, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback