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.

There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.

There are a number of paths that lead to this place. I have been avoiding them for some small time, now.

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

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)