The tongue is the most remarkable. For we use it both to taste out sweet wine and bitter poison, thus also do we utter words both sweet and sout with the same tongue.

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

Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?

The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.

My people, we stay indoors. We have keyboards. We have darkness. It's quiet.

Now Coraline," said Miss Spink, "what's your name?" "Coraline," said Coraline. "And we don't know each other, do we?" Coraline looked at the thin young woman with black button eyes and shook her head slowly.

The only ones who ever come here from your lands are the minstrels, and the lovers, and the mad. And you don't look like much of a minstrel, and you're— pardon me for saying so lad, but it's true— ordinary as cheese crumbs. So it's love if you ask me.