There is a madness, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild wood of madness...

Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.

THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on.

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?" "Easy," said the cat. "Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it." "Small world," said Coraline. "It's big enough for her," said the cat. "spiders' webs only have to be large enough to catch flies." Coraline shivered.