“[Veda:] Twenty years of thinking that vampires and witches and all things supernatural were nothing but a bedtime story: a myth, thought up by ignorant people and told to children to keep them from straying after dark. Now, when it was right in front of her, it still felt like a fairy tale.”

“After a childhood reading fairy tales and myths, is it any wonder that when I began to write my own stories I included fairy tales? Fairy tales are storytelling at its most basic. They’ve been with mankind for as long as people have told stories to each other. Fairy tales speak to something intrinsic in humans—they touch our most primitive selves. How else to explain that the Cinderella story is told in nearly every society on earth? To think of fairy tales as merely stories for children is to ignore thousands of years when fairy tales were used to teach morality, to warn, and to entertain both children and adults.”

“When we think about fairy tales, we think about happily ever afters, forgetting the darkness that stories beginning with "once upon a time" so often contain.I tried to protect Shay from that darkness. But there was no way to shield her from the truth: Life is not a fairy tale.”

“Do you remember the fairy tale about the mermaid? A witch gave her legs, she could walk, but she felt like there were red hot knives stabbing into her feet all the time. That story's about us, Maxim! We always walk over sharp knives, and that's something you can never get used to. But Hans Christian Anderson didn't tell the whole story. The witch could have done things differently: the mermaid walks, and the knives stab other people. That's the way of the Dark.”

“In your life, right here and now, things like mermaids, fairies, witches and monsters are nothing but fairytales told to your grandchildren and stories you heard from your own grandparents as children. They exist only in your imagination. Did you ever think that there is a chance all this was once real, that it all existed? Perhaps yes, but you would then consider such thoughts irrational, that even if you were to believe it and try telling someone they would think you for mad. In my world those creatures are real – I’m real, and I am here to tell you of a story that happened in eons past in the majestic island of Aster." - Queen of Merfolk Asteria - Ninemia”

“Nothing is sadder than a child burdened by reality, after all. Those stories were our family fairy tales.”