There's this thing, they have in french: L'espirit d'escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don't think we have a word for it in English. It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you're on the way out.

You don't have to test everything to destruction just to see if you made it right.

My theory on genre is that while there are people out there who believe that genre tells people what to read, actually I believe that genre exists as a marketing tool to tell you what to avoid.

How big are souls anyway?" asked Coraline. The other mother sat down at the kitchen table and leaned against the back wall, saying nothing. She picked at her teeth with a long crimson-varnished fingernail, then she tapped the finger, gently, tap-tap-tap against the polished black surface of her black button eyes.

Too soon, the sun will rise.

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.