So many things to see, people to do.

I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.

Even the proudest spirit can be broken with love.

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.

It is your differences that make you glorious.

They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.

"Only write what you know" is very good advice. I do my best to stick to it. I wrote about gods and dreams and America because I knew about them. And I wrote about what it's like to wander into Faerie because I knew about that. I wrote about living underneath London because I knew about that too. And I put people into the stories because I knew them: the ones with pumpkins for heads, and the serial killers with eyes for teeth, and the little chocolate people filled with raspberry cream and the rest of them.