Call no man happy, said Shadow, until he is dead

I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.

He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.

With 'Stardust', I hope what I was doing is giving 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 60-year-olds a chance to get the same sense of wonder, the same feeling, the same magic, that they got in reading the classic fairy tales as children.

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

Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

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