"All right, this is the plan. We get in there and get wrecked, then we eat a pork pie, then we drop a couple of Surmontil-50s each. That means we'll miss out on Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning."

"(He spits out a globule of phlegm) Jesus, look at that. Apart from a raw potato, that's the only solid to have passed my lips in the last 60 hours. I must be ill."

"I'm in a park and I'm practically dead; what good's the countryside?"

"The only programme I'm likely to get on is the fucking news!"

"There must and shall be aspirin, or I shall die, here, on this fucking mountainside!"

"Nonsense, this is a far superior drink to meths! The wankers on site don't drink it because they can't afford it!"

"Black puddings are no good to us. I want something's flesh!"

"I assure you I'm not [drunk], officer, honestly. I've only had a few ales."

"Monty, you terrible cunt!"

"(Ranting on a mountain) Bastards! You'll all suffer! I'll show the lot of you! I'm gonna be a sta-a-a-a-ar!"

"I'm not having this shag sack insulting me! Let him get his drugs out."

"Listen, we're bona fide, we're not from London."

"We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!"

"How can it be so cold in here? It's like Greenland in here. We've got to get some booze. It's the only solution to this intense cold. Something's got to be done. We can't go on like this. I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum. I mean, look at us! Nothing that reasonable members of society demand as their rights! No fridges, no televisions, no phones! Much more of this and I'm going to apply for meals on wheels."

"I demand to have some booze!"

"I have some extremely distressing news. We've just run out of wine; what are we going to do about it?"

"I think we've been in here too long. I feel unusual."

"We've gone on holiday by mistake."

"Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

"There we were—demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance—and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors—we're the opposite of people!"

"We're more of the love, blood and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see."

"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."

"There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it."

"No, no, no... you've got it all wrong... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen — it's not gasps and blood and falling about — that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all — now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back — an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death."

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."

"A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself."

"To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner? (It is worth noting that the Danish monarchy only became hereditary in the 17th century. Before this time, the crown was elective so Hamlet may not have been the elected heir.)"

"It's doubtful whether even the greatest, most experienced of heroes could carry out this mission ... and you! ... She's sending you into the unfathomable to look for the unknown. ... No one can help you, no one can advise you, no one can foresee what will befall you. And yet you must decide at once, immediately, whether or not you accept the mission. There's not a moment to be lost."

"Everyone in Fantastica knew what the medallion meant. It was the badge of one acting on orders from the Childlike Empress, acting in her name as though she herself were present. It was said to give the bearer mysterious powers, though no one knew exactly what these powers were. Everyone knew its name: AURYN. But many, who feared to pronounce the name, called it the "Gem" or the "Glory"."

"The Childlike Empress – as her title indicates – was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; she was something entirely different. She didn't rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal. She was simply there in a special way. She was the center of all life in Fantastica. And every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, merry or solemn, foolish or wise – all owed their existence to her existence. Without her, nothing could have lived, any more than a human body can live if it has lost its heart. All knew this to be so, though no one fully understood her secret. Thus she was respected by all the creatures of the Empire, and her health was of equal concern to them all. For her death would have meant the end of them all, the end of the boundless Fantastican realm."

"Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice every thing for a dream that can never come true. Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people."

"Patricia Hayes – Urgl"

"Sydney Bromley – Engywook"

"Moses Gunn – Cairon"

"Thomas Hill – Koreander"

"Gerald McRaney – Bastian's Father"

"Alan Oppenheimer – Falkor (voice)"

"Tami Stronach – The Childlike Empress"

"Noah Hathaway – Atreyu"

"Barret Oliver – Bastian"

"Never give up, and good luck will find you."

"MOONCHILD!"

"No, not again. No, not again!"

"There are many doors to Fantastica. There are other such magical books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who lays hands on the book."

"There are people that can't go to Fantastica. There are those who can but never return. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. And they make both worlds well again."

"I am the Water of Life, Out of myself I grow. The more you drink of me, The fuller I will flow."

"The motionless bodies of the snakes glistened like some unknown metal, the one black as night, the other silvery white. The havoc they could wreak was checked only because they held each other prisoner. If they let each other go, the world would end. That was certain. But while holding each other fast, they guarded the Water of Life."

"Slowly the boy without a name reached for the gold chain around his neck and divested himself of AURYN. He bent down and carefully laid the Gem in the snow before Atreyu. As he did so, he took another look at the two snakes, the one light, the other dark, which were biting each other's tail and formed an oval. Then he let the amulet go. In that moment AURYN, the golden Gem, became so bright, so radiant that he had to close his eyes as though dazzled by the sun. When he opened them again, he saw that he was in a vaulted building, as large as the vault of the sky. It was built from blocks of golden light. And in the middle of this immeasurable space lay, as big as the ramparts of a town, the two snakes."

"He kept telling himself that he had made Yikka's dearest wish come true. But that didn't make him feel any better. A person's reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself."