The Kindly Ones

Any of you have heard the name Neil Gaiman? No? Neither have I. Until this one friend of mine e-mailed me this excerpts from one of his work, "The Sandman". It's dark, bitter, yet has a pang of truth in it. It struck me in a way that I thought I must share this work with all the people I know. I googled him, and found his website, www.neilgaiman.com Turn out that he's not only a writer of novels, but also of comic books. Okay, you can find out about him yourself, and here's his writings I told you about:

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.

Ruth: 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.

-- Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones--