“Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they're scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too. ”

“The only water in the forest is the River.”

“You don't get heaven or hell. Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman.”

“Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish.”

“She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.”

“I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.”

“It is sometimes a mistake to climb; it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt. If you do not climb, you will not fall. This is true. But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?”

“I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.”

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

“Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.”

“And there was a voice, a high clear, female voice, which said "Ow", and then, very quietly, it said "Fuck", and then it said "Ow", once more.”

“I really don't know what "I love you" means. I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.”

“Peas baffled me. I could not understand why grown-ups would take things that tasted so good raw, and then put them in tins, and make them revolting.”

“I'll find you. Don't worry. Just be on your own and I'll find you.”

“And if there's a moral there, I don't know what it is, save maybe that we should take our goodbyes whenever we can.”

“The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.”

“Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I.”

“Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.”

“Belinda stared into the fire for some time, thinking about what she had in her life, and what she had given up; and whether it would be worse to love someone who was no longer there, or not to love someone who was.”

“The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.”

“What a refreshing mind you have, young man. There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?”

“It begins, as most things begin, with a song.”

“Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. 'Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.”

“Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island”

“Because there are mysteries. Because there are things that people are forbidden to speak about. Because there are things they do not remember.”

“Of course it was Loki. It's always Loki.”

“The problems with success, frankly, are infinitely preferable to the problems of failure.”

“She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”

“While clothes do not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do not make fine birds, sometimes they can add a certain spice to a recipe.”

“Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.”

“The really important thing to be was yourself, just as hard as you could.”

“I like airplanes. I like anywhere that isn't a proper place. I like in betweens.”

“Can I help you?" said the footman. Richard had been told to fuck off and die with more warmth and good humor.”

“It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.”

“Not knowing everything is all that makes it OK, sometimes... ”

“Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.”

“And he waited. It was only for a few seconds, but it felt like a small forever.”

“Nice' in a bodyguard is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters.”

“He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.”

“People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales.”

“Songs remain. They last...A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs.”

“The boy had the towering arrogance only seen in the greatest of artists and all nine-year-old boys.”

“It is neither fair nor unfair, Nobody Owens. It simply is”

“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art.”

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”

“What are these fundamental principles, if they are not atoms?"

“There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.”

“Mind the gap!”