- [first lines]
- Dream: [narrates] We begin in the waking world... which humanity insists on calling the real world, as if your dreams have no effect upon the choices you make. You mortals go about your work, your loves, your wars, as if your waking lives are all that matter. But there is another life which awaits you when you close your eyes, and enter my realm. For I am the King of Dream, and Nightmares. When the waking world leaves you wanting and weary, sleep brings you here to find freedom and adventure, to face your fears and fantasies in Dreams and Nightmares that I create - and which I must control, lest they consume and destroy you. That is my purpose and my function. Or it was, until I left my kingdom to pursue a rogue Nightmare.
- The Corinthian: There are benefits to keeping one of The Endless close.
- Roderick Burgess: The Endless?
- The Corinthian: Did you think Death was the only one in charge? The Reaper has family, you know: Desire, Destiny, Despair.
- Roderick Burgess: Which one have I got, then?
- The Corinthian: Dream.
- Roderick Burgess: What's the good of a god who governs dreams?
- The Corinthian: Not a god. More than a god. And are men not governed by their dreams?
- Dream: [narrates] Day after day, he pleaded for gifts that are not mankind's to receive nor mine to give. So I remained silent.
- Dream: [narrates] I was powerless, trapped by a spell cast by an amateur with no concern for the damage he had done to my realm and to his own.
- Dream: I will not have Dreams and Nightmares preying on the waking world. I will bring them all back. I made this realm once, Lucienne. I will make it again.
- Lucienne: You're home, my Lord.
- Dream: I am.
- Lucienne: Forgive me, sir, but... the realm, the palace, they are not as you left them.
- Dream: What happened here? Who did this?
- Lucienne: My Lord, you are The Dreaming, The Dreaming is you. With you gone as long as you were, the realm began to decay and crumble.