“It's only a story.' As if such words made it less real. But I did not believe him even then, for stories were written down, and the words on the page were proof enough. Fixed and permanent in time, the words, if anything, made the people and places more real than the everchanging world.”

“But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.”

“When I am telling it, it doesn't seem as if it was only made up. It seems more real than you are -- more real than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the story -- one after the other. It is queer.”

“As long as people believe in the written word and a good story.. They will believe in me.”

“I had known another world. It is impossible to give it a name. There are words like enchantment, words like bliss, but they didn't say it, they were stupid words. No words really said it. There was nothing to say about it except that I had known it, it had been mine. It was the one real thing, more real than the world.”

“I made it clear to the world that what Jade and I had found in each other was more real than any other world, more real than time, more real than death, more real, even, than she and I.”