She took my hands in her, then, and squeezed them. 'But you stayed where you were meant to be, and you didn't listen to them. Well done. That's quality, that is,' and she sounded proud. In that moment I forgot my hunger and I forgot my fear.

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them.

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.

Why does she want me?" Coraline asked the cat. "Why does she want me to stay here with her?" "She wants something to love, I think," said the cat. "Something that isn't her. She might want something to eat as well. It's hard to tell with creatures like that.

Not knowing everything is all that makes it OK, sometimes.

Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

I thought I was your destination. Looks like I was just another stop on the line.