Coraline

by Neil Gaiman

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

“And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung,” said Coraline to the cat. “It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave.”

“Because,” she said, “when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.”

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.

“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.”

if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.

“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?”

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

It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares. It’s the strangest book I’ve written, it took the longest time to write, and it’s the book I’m proudest of.

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.