How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"M-i-s-t. It's a kind of veil separating the mortal world from the magic world. Mortal minds — they can't process strange stuff like gods and monsters, so the Mist bends reality. It makes mortals see things in a way they can understand — like their eyes might just skip over this valley completely, or they might look at that dragon and see a pile of cables." (4.73)
We never really find out if there is a Mist, or if it's just a metaphor. Do human minds reject magic automatically? Or is there some substance that erases it from their minds? It's not clear if the Mist that changes reality is real or an illusion.
Quote #2
"It was my fault," Piper said without thinking. She just couldn't stand it anymore. The secret about her father was heating up inside her like too much ambrosia. If she kept lying to her friends, she felt like she'd burn to ashes.
"Piper," Jason said gently, "you were asleep when Festus conked out. It couldn't be your fault."
"Yeah, you're just shaken up," Leo agreed. He didn't even try to make a joke at her expense. "You're in pain. Just rest." (22.64-66)
Piper believes that what she did in her dream affected reality and caused the dragon to crash. Leo and Jason, though, think that if she was asleep she couldn't have done anything—which seems odd since anytime any one of them goes to sleep, they have visions and get new powers or information. They should know how this reality works by now, including that dreams are pretty darn real. But maybe they're just shaken up by the dragon falling out of the sky.
Quote #3
Jason gave her a smile, though he looked kind of nervous. It was the exact expression he'd had on his face after he'd kissed her the first time, up on the Wilderness School dorm roof—that cute little scar on his lip curving into a crescent. The memory gave her a warm feeling. Then she remembered that the kiss had never really happened. (22.72)
The kiss never happened, it's true. But nothing in the book really happened since, you know, it's a fictitious book. Jason kissing Piper is as real as anything else that the novel describes. In fact, it's more real in some sense, since it admits it's not real. For that matter, Piper's relationship with Jason is something that could have happened—girls and boys do kiss. Flying on a dragon is much less real, even if we're supposed to pretend that it's more real.