Original artwork, not a still
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.
— The Sandman · 1989
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Rose makes intimacy sound alarming because another person can matter enough to undo carefully built defences. Her bitterness carries the evidence of having cared. The speech's blunt opening and increasingly physical images turn an abstract complaint into a feeling a reader can recognise.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for The SandmanShow the scene
Rose Walker says this in The Sandman #65, part nine of The Kindly Ones (1995). It is the opening of a longer speech about love getting through the defences people build around themselves. The speaker is Rose, rather than Dream or the book's narrator. The passage gives an ordinary emotional wound space within the larger supernatural story.
Sources (2)
- The Sandman #65 — written source 1The Kindly Ones: 9; quotation and sceneReference checked
- The Sandman #65 — written source 2The Kindly Ones: 9; quotation and sceneReference checked
Context reviewed
