“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”

“If I told you that everything about you had been just made up by someone, that all of your thoughts, all of your memories, even the things you chose to say had been invented and that they weren’t real, that you weren’t real, would you believe me? I don’t think so.”

“You ask me what you will be there. But what are you here? What are you creatures of Fantastica? Dreams, poetic inventions, characters in a neverending story. Do you think you're real? Well yes, here in your world you are. But when you been through the Nothing, you won't be real anymore. You'll be unrecognizable. And you will be in another world. In that world, you Fantasticans won't be anything like yourselves. You will bring delusion and madness into the human world.”

“Are you telling me my entire life has been a dream?""Not your life, Greg, your past.""Is there a distincition?""Of course there is. In a very real sense, everyone's past is a dream; the past isn't a real thing you can reach back and touch; it's just something in your head. Your life, which is what's going on here and now at this table, is as real as anyone's...”

“I don't understand, Your Majesty." "Of course you don't; you academics!" Skarmak snarled. "All you do is sit in your towers, trying to think your way into a reality that exists only in your own minds, and then you judge the world as wrong because it does not conform to your impossible standards. I live in a real world, academic. And it's my real world that keeps pumping blood into your dead, idealistic one.”

“It’s my job really, to help you, my reader, in accepting things as real that aren’t. Most books try to get you to accept things that, at the very least, could be real – and that’s difficult enough, goodness knows – but here, in this book, nothing seems to be even trying to be real. Except, I would say, me. I’m here, I’m real. And to be honest, I’ve never been here before. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know what I’m doing. In some ways, I’m afraid this is the most real story I’ve ever written.”