“Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.”

“A wonder tale can be truer than true," I said. I had learned (...) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.”

“Tales within tales. Dreams within dreams. Pattern on pattern and path beyond path. For such short-lived folks, the human kind seem determined to make things as complicated as possible for themselves.”

“For the others, it was still just a tale, like all the tales we told, night by night, tales comical and strange, tales heroic and awe-inspiring, the tales that formed the fabric of our spirits.”

“I have listened to many tales in my life, and told a few of my own. If this has taught me anything, it is that there aresome occurrences that change the course of things, that make an alteration far beyond their own apparent magnitude. Itis like the throwing of a tiny pebble into a pool, how it makes an ever-expanding circle of ripples, spreading rightacross the water's surface.”

“Only - only that, if you believe the tales, it's in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole.”

“This had been real: real in its flaws and uncertainties, real in its small triumphs, real in its compromises and understanding.”