I know that the way to be a really successful writer is to write the same kind of book over and over again. Find the kind of thing that people like and just write one of those over and over again. I don't do that. I just keep doing different things.

There may be a parallel between woodcuts and radio; radio plays are a living art form everywhere except the USA.

Are we human because we gaze at the stars or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?

Style is made up of whatever an author can't avoid doing.

Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.

What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'Cats don't have names,' it said. 'No?' said Coraline. '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.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.