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that being brave didn’t mean you weren’t scared. Being brave meant you were scared, really scared, badly scared, and you did the right thing anyway.
Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense.
Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn’t hurt it almost always did.
“Because,” she said, “when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.”
“Calling cats,” it confided, “tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.”
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.
“Spiders’ webs only have to be large enough to catch flies.”
if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.
It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold. In the other mother’s button eyes, Coraline knew that she was a possession, nothing more. A tolerated pet, whose behavior was no longer amusing.
Coraline sighed. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said. “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 think most things are pretty magical, and that it’s less a matter of belief than it is one of just stopping to notice.
