Bloomsbury Children's Books

“Please. What’s your name?” Coraline asked the cat. “Look, I’m Coraline. Okay?”

The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of astounding pinkness. “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.”

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

“Easy,” said the cat. “Think of somebody walking around the world. You start out walking away from something and end up coming back to it.”

“Small world,” said Coraline.

The other mother shook her head, very slowly. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” she said, “is a daughter’s ingratitude. Still, the proudest spirit can be broken, with love.”

“Names, names, names,” said another voice, all faraway and lost. “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. I still keep pictures in my mind of my governess on some May morning, carrying my hoop and stick, and the morning sun behind her, and all the tulips bobbing in the breeze. But I have forgotten the name of my governess, and of the tulips too.”

“I don’t think tulips have names,” said Coraline. “They’re just tulips.”

“Perhaps,”

“She will take your life and all you are and all you care’st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She’ll take your joy. And one day you’ll awake and your heart and your soul will have gone. A husk you’ll be, a wisp you’ll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.”

“You need to think about that,” said Mr. Pendanski. “It’s important to have goals. Otherwise you’re going to end up right back in jail. What do you like to do?”
“I don’t

He figured that in a year and a half he’d be either in great physical condition, or else dead.

Why don’t you let the removal men pack those? They’re being paid to do it.’

the kitchen. The cooker had gone. There was just a gas tap sticking out of the wall where it had been. The electric k

It’s love – there’s no logic to it.