Max: Did you make this?
Carol: Yeah, yeah.
Max: It's very good.
Carol: We were gonna make a whole world like this. But everyone used to come here, but you know... You know what it feels like when all your teeth are falling out really slowly and you don't realise and then you notice that, well, they're really far apart? And then one day... You don't have any teeth anymore.
Max: Yeah.
Carol: Well it was like that.
Carol: It's going to be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen.
Max: We could totally build a place like that!
Carol: This is all yours. You're the owner of this world.
Ira: Hi, I'm Ira. I put the holes in the trees.
Judith: Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy.
Carol: Now you are king, and you will be a truly great king.
Carol: I didn't want to wake you up, but I really wanted to show you something.
Chosen answer: In the book it was just his imagination; he was gone for years in his mind but only a an hour or so in real life. It is presumably the same basic idea in the movie.
Phixius