“Apart from the faint odor of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real.”

“A missing arm might ruin your symmetry. Personal asymmetry where I come from is a big taboo and brings great shame on the family and sometimes even the whole village.""Do you then have to kill yourself over it or something?""Goodness me, no! The family and village just have to learn to be ashamed--and nuts to them for being so oversensitive.”

“You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.”

“the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.”

“This is Fiction, and the truth is whatever you make it. You can interpret the situation in any way you want, and all of the scenarios could be real -- and what's more, depending on how you act now, any one of them could become real.”

“If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.' 'I understand there's a one hundred percent fatality rate?' 'True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn't let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.”

“...The verses of Byron, Keats or Poe are real whether they are in bootleg form or not. You can still read them for the same effect.”