Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Start telling the stories that only you can tell.

The moonlight was enough. It would do.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.

It seemed to Coraline that it was crouching, and staring down at her, as if it were not really a house but only the idea of a house—and the person who had had the idea, she was certain, was not a good person.

There was a hysteria in there, certainly, but there was also the exhaustion of someone who had managed, somehow, to believe several dozen impossible things in the last twenty-four hours, without ever getting a proper breakfast.

I decided that I would do my best in the future not to write books just for money. If you didn't get the money then you didn't have anything. If I did the work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work.