The imagination and the place that dreams come from is so huge and so important. I'm trying to write about the real world, in that I'm trying to write about whatever it is the experience that makes us human, the things that we have in common.

The young woman was crying, in the way that grownups cry, keeping it inside as much as they can, and hating it when it still pushes out at the edges, making them ugly and funny-looking on the way.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.

You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they've served their purpose. But you've got to learn to throw things away eventually.

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

It is your differences that make you glorious.