“She smiled. “Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao.”

“You are the sole author of the story of your life, my dear. Make it a good one.”

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

“My daughter, people are only used to seeing the glorified in a story, because a story is only a tiny, tiny piece of a person’s life. Legends, sacred writings, they’re all like that. But I assure you, dear child, every one of those people up there on that wall felt like, thought like, and suffered like you!”

“Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.”

“My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met.”