So you used to know everything?" She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This," she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and the shawls and clusters of bright stars.

Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

And then it went, and time passed properly once more, every second following every other second just like they're meant to.

Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and fatal.

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

The magic of comics is that there are three people involved in any comic. There's whoever's writing it and whoever's drawing it. And then there's whoever's reading it because they are creating the movement. They are creating the illusion of time passing.

As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end.