Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline” Quotes (18 Quotes)

There are those who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one..

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?

When you are scared, but you do it anyway, that's brave.

But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.

Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.

Her other mother smiled brightly and the hair on her head drifted like plants under the sea.

Here you go, she said. I don't need it anymore. I'm very grateful. I think it may have saved my life, saved some other people's death.

I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?

I don'w want whatever I want. Nobody does. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?

I was kidnapped by aliens, they came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped.

It seemed to Coraline that it was crouching, and staring down at her, as if it were not really a house but only the idea of a house-and the person who had had the idea, she was certain, was not a good person.

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.

Nothing's changed. You'll go home. You'll be bored. You'll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You're too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don't even get your name right.

On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.

She had the feeling that the door was looking at her, which she knew was silly, and knew on a deeper level was somehow true.

The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.

The sky had never seemed so sky; the world had never seemed so world.

The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.