Quotes from Coraline

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“Because,' she said, 'when you're scared but you still do it anyway, that's brave.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“We...we could be friends.'

We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing African elephants, but we're not. At least, I'M not.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."
"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.
"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning, and it is astonishing how fragile that can be.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“The sky had never seemed so sky; the world had never seemed so world.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“I have no plans to love you," said Coraline. "No matter what. You can't make me love you.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“We are small but we are many
We are many we are small
We were here before you rose
We will be here when you fall”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“CORALINE'S STORY
THERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE. SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURND INTO SOSSAJES. THE END.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“Oh- my twitchy witchy girl
I think you are so nice,
I give you bowls of porridge
And I give you bowls of ice
Cream.
I give you lots of kisses,
And I give lots of hugs,
But I never give you sandwiches
With bugs
In.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.
'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“There's a but, isn't there?" said Coraline. "I can feel it. Like a rain cloud.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“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.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“For a moment she felt utterly dislocated. She did not know where she was; she was not entirely sure who she was. It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the bed we wake up in in the morning and it is astonishing how fragile that can be.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“For tea she went down to see Misses Spink and Forcible. She had three digestive biscuits, a glass of limeade, and a cup of weak tea. The limeade was very interesting. It didn't taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical. Coraline liked it enormously. She wished they had it at home.

"How are your dear mother and father?" asked Miss Spink.

"Missing," said Coraline. "I haven't seen either of them since yesterday. I'm on my own. I think I've probably become a single child family.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“The cat looked as if it were about to say something sarcastic. Then it flicked its whiskers and said, "Challenge her. There's no guarantee she'll play fair, but her kind of thing loves games and challenges.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

“She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin's-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world ... Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Coraline

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Popular quotes

“It's ridiculous. Here I sit in my little room, I, Brigge, who have got to be twenty-eight years old and about whom no one knows. I sit here and am nothing. And yet this nothing begins to think and thinks, up five flights of stairs, these thoughts on a gray Paris afternoon:

Is it possible, this nothing thinks, that one has not yet seen, recognized, and said anything real and important? Is it possible that one has had thousands of years of time to look, reflect, and write down, and that one has let the millennia pass away like a school recess in which one eats one's sandwich and an apple?
Yes, it is possible.

...Is it possible that in spite of inventions and progress, in spite of culture, religion, and worldly wisdom, that one has remained on the surface of life? Is it possible that one has even covered this surface, which would at least have been something, with an incredibly dull slipcover, so that it looks like living-room furniture during the summer vacation?
Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood? Is it possible that the past is false because one has always spoken of its masses, as if one was telling about a coming together of many people, instead of telling about the one person they were standing around, because he was alien and died?
Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that one believed one has to make up for everything that happened before one was born? Is it possible one would have to remind every single person that he arose from all earlier people so that he would know it, and not let himself be talked out of it by the others, who see it differently?
Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that all these people know very precisely a past that never was? Is it possible that everything real is nothing to them; that their life takes its course, connected to nothing, like a clock in an empty room?
Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that one knows nothing about girls, who are nevertheless alive? Is it possible that one says "the women", "the children", "the boys", and doesn't suspect (in spite of all one's education doesn't suspect) that for the longest time these words have no longer had a plural, but only innumerable singulars?
Yes, it is possible.

Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and think it is something they have in common? Just look at two schoolboys: one buys himself a knife, and the same day his neighbor buys one just like it. And after a week they show each other their knives and it turns out that they bear only the remotest resemblance to each other-so differently have they developed in different hands (Well, the mother of one of them says, if you boys always have to wear everything out right away). Ah, so: is it possible to believe that one could have a God without using him?
Yes, it is possible.

But, if all this is possible, has even an appearance of possibility-then for heaven's sake something has to happen. The first person who comes along, the one who has had this disquieting thought, must begin to accomplish some of what has been missed; even if he is just anyone, not the most suitable person: there is simply no one else there. This young, irrelevant foreigner, Brigge, will have to sit himself down five flights up and write, day and night, he will just have to write, and that will be that.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, quote from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

“They didn't realize that her clumsiness was not the ordinary kind, not poor coordination. It was just because she wasn't sure where the edges of her body ended and the rest of the world began.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Robber Bride

“When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.”
― Téa Obreht, quote from The Tiger's Wife

“The bastard was effectively stuck until he and Morfyd helped him. Fearghus smiled a little at his father’s suffering and the female who caused it.
I do love that woman.”
― quote from Dragon Actually

“Ella se agarró a él, canción tras canción, mirándole fijamente a los ojos, como solía hacer antes conmigo. Así que quizá bebiera una copa de más mientras observaba la escena. Y tal vez aquel jarrón del vestíbulo se rompiera por mi culpa. Y puede que acabara mordiendo la almohada para silenciar mi llanto, para que Avery no me oyera.”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The Guard

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