I'm not much of a challenge here in the dark.

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.

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.

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.

Love manifests itself in our bodies as instinctive craving, in our souls as devotion, and in our minds as pride.

Faith, like a guillotine. As heavy, as light.

I was set to go to Oregon to play college baseball and football.

[Health-care system] is largely privatized and unregulated. So of course it's highly inefficient and costly.

Caring for others creates the spirit of a nation.

Do you realize that you can't play the game of life with sweaty palms?

Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. Whoever came up with that phrase I wanted his greasy head on a silver platt

I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes...

If you read my books, especially the Star Trek books and the Quest for Tomorrow books, you'll see in them the core theme of the basic humanistic questions that Star Trek asked.

My dogs are crazy. They're always getting into some kind of trouble but then again, they're my most loyal friends.