“Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.”

“I serve the king of dreams and I do his bidding. But you are correct once I was a poet and like all poets I spent too long in the kingdom of dreams.”

“If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.”

“Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?”

“I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. I wake up. The terrible dreams are the good dreams. In my terrible dreams, everything is fine. I am still with the company. I still look like me. None of the last five years ever happened. Sometimes I'm married. Once I even had kids. I even knew their names. Everything's wonderful and normal and fine. And then I wake up, and I'm still me. And I'm still here. And that is truly terrible.”

“I walk across the dreaming sands under the pale moon: through the dreams of countries and cities, past dreams of places long gone and times beyond recall.”

“Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one's ever eaten before? Like chicken and telepone ice cream? Green mouse ice cream was the worst. I didn't like that at all.”