Love

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? 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 a whole suit of armor, so that 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 didn't ask for it. They did 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 simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”

Neil Gaiman.

Morpheus dice

Beyond, outside my Dreamworld there is infinite dust, infinite dark. And the Dreamworld is infinite although it is bounded on every side. The way to the center is a slow spiral. One passes the houses of mystery and secrets... old way stations on the frontiers of nightmare. From there one charts a course nightward until one reaches the Gates of Horn and Ivory. I carved them myself, when the world was younger, and order was needed. I hasten to the Gates.

sandman