Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.

You know, I'm normally so sanguine. But... being accused of rushing these two books out to cash in on the Newbery Medal, without access to time travel equipment or anything, just makes me want to bang my forehead gently against a tree for half an hour. Is it too much to ask people to think?

Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there are some individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: The parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seemed to have vanished completely.

I will be brave, thought Coraline. No, I am brave.

Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

I think if you decide that any book is about Only One Thing you're probably wrong. Even if that thing is in there.

I was a book-y child. I was much more book-y than dark.