It won't hurt, said her other father. Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn't hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.

I really don't know what "I love you" means. I think it means "Don't leave me here alone.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

You’re alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.

If you constantly think of illness you eventually become ill if you believe yourself to be beautiful you become so.

It takes but one person, one moment, one conviction, to start a ripple of change.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

Flyaway, problem hair is the enemy of feminism, and was probably invented by the Man to crush Susan Sontag.

Try to keep your mind. Try not to eat bad, try not to wake up with too bad of a hangover.

Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes.

I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.

When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.

That's why crazy people are so dangerous. You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage.

Talent--that is to say, the ability to see the world in a unique way--matures and grows in isolation.