You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter.

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful.

The only water in the forest is the River.

It won't hurt, said her other father. Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn't hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.

It was a perfectly normal gerbil. It appeared to be living in an exciting construction of cylinders, spheres and treadmills, such as the Spanish Inquisition would have devised if they'd had access to a plastics molding press.

She smiled at Coraline, as if it had been a very long time since she had smiled and she had almost, but not quite, forgotten how.