She called for her fiance and told him not to take on so, and that they would still be married, even if he was but a prince and she a queen, and she chucked him beneath his pretty chin and kissed him until he smiled.
Some skills can be attained by education, and some by practice, and some by time. Those skills will come if you study.
Everything created has a beginning, Destiny of the Endless... as everything created has an end.
The man Jack was tall. This man was taller. The man Jack wore dark clothes. This man’s clothes were darker. People who noticed the man Jack when he was about his business – and he did not like to be noticed – were troubled, or made uncomfortable, or found themselves unaccountably scared. The man Jack looked up at the stranger, and it was the man Jack who was troubled.
Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that.
He hoped he would live through this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive. And, for a moment he thought that the whole thing was funny, just the funniest thing in the world;.
Skies, thought Old Bailey, in a satisfied sort of a way. Never a two of them alike. Not by day nor not by night, neither.
They knew her, the graveyard folk, for each of us encounters the Lady on the Grey at the end of our days, and there is no forgetting her.
You only get to be my age by assuming the worst.” Shadow smiled. “And how old would that be?” “Old as my tongue,” said Wednesday. “And a few months older than my teeth.
There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The knife had a handle of polished black bone, and a blade finer and sharper than any razor. If it sliced you, you might not even know you had been cut, not immediately.
You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things.
The dead dun’t disappoint you. They’ve had their life, done what they’ve done. We dun’t change. The living, they always disappoint you, dun’t they? You meet a boy who’s all brave and noble, and he grows up to run away.
You want to know the future, love? Then wait:.
Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.
Yesterday, all this was snow. Always winter, and never Christmas.
It occurred to me then that the man might not be mad; I found this far more disquieting than the alternative.
The world was bright and strange and he was in the middle of it.
But I do not actually remember being a monster. I just remember wanting my own way.
Listen: to be eccentric, you must first know your circle.
This book is the book you have just read. It’s done. Now we’re in the acknowledgments. This is not really part of the book. You do not have to read it. It’s mostly just names.