“There never was a story that was happy through and through.”

“If you can't get to be uncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. [...] live well and die happy.”

“Maybe like the never-ending stories within stories of the One Thousand and One Nights, life is dream within dream all the way through?”

“One of our difficulties is, surely, that we want to be happy through something, through a person, through a symbol, through an idea, through virtue, through action, through companionship. We think happiness, or reality, or what you like to call it, can be found through something. Therefore we feel that through action, through companionship, through certain ideas, we will find happiness. So being lonely, I want to find someone or some idea through which I can be happy. But loneliness always remains; it is ever there.If I use you for my fulfillment for my happiness, you become very unimportant, because it is my happiness I am concerned with. So when the mind is concerned with the idea that it can have happiness through somebody, through a thing or through an idea, do I not make all these means transitory? Because my concern is then something else, to go further, to catch something beyond.”

“Never compromise your character's personality just to make a scene more exciting. Stories flow through your character, so never forget who they are.”

“They (fables) teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches.”