- Carlos Castaneda: Reality of consensus is only a very small segment of the total range of what we could feel as real. If we could learn to code reality or stimuli the way a shaman does, perhaps we could elongate our range of what we call real to a different interpretation. But the only way we have to code it is as hallucination. Madness. We cannot conceive that one could do it.
- Daniel C. Noel: These were not ordinary books. Whether you were straight or stoned they did something to you
- Amy Wallace: He was, he was just, impossibly vital. Every day was a new strange command, an excitement; a new vista, a new adventure. I mean he, he delivered up a twelve ring circus. He was the Wizard of Oz.
- Daniel C. Noel: These books made the reader into an apprentice. And just like Carlos was presented as being an apprentice to don Juan, the reader is an apprentice to the writing of Castaneda.
- Victor Sanchez: It's certainly an extraordinary phenomenon. Carlos Castaneda is going to remain a mystery, a really appealing mystery, until the end. Forever.
- Robert Feldman: I really believe he became so close with his own teachings, that he wanted to burn from within and go join don Juan, even if that was a fictitious person that he made up.