Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.

I will be brave, thought Coraline. No, I am brave.

I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?

Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

You know I love you, ' said the other mother flatly.'You have a very funny way of showing it, ' said Coraline.

Mirrors, ' she said, 'are never to be trusted.

We...we could be friends.'We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing African elephants, but we're not. At least, I'M not.

Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky.

No, " said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

But that's the challenge -- to change the system more than it changes you.

Strike a glass and it will not endure an instant. Simply do not strike it and it will endure a thousand years.

Auntie Wu took special pride in two of her accomplishments--the sons she bore and the flowers she grew. They were equally useless, but the flowers smelled better.

He that doth what he should not, shall feel what he would not.

Realistic optimism allows us to experience the best until we have to deal with the worst ... which often, never comes.

When you put a camera in front of me, I'm home.

Death aims with fouler spiteAt fairer marks.

I love this race from the very depths of my heart. It gives me motivation and it transcendsme like nothing else in the world.

I can conceive of nothing worse than a man-governed world -- except a woman-governed world.

Our stories about our own lives are a form of fiction, I began to see and become more insistent as we grow older, even as we try to make them come out in some other way.