“But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.”

“He heard long ago, in a dream, that one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: that this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after.”

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”

“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?”

“Mistress Ownens rubbed her eyes with a knuckle, then dabbed at them with her apron, and she shook her head. "Do you know what you're going to do now?" she asked."See the world," said Bod. "Get into trouble. Get out of trouble again. visit jungle and volcanoes and deserts and islands. And people. I want to meet an awful lot of people.”

“I am Desire, am I not? That is what I am; that is what I do. I make things want things. Where I touch, things want and need and love - drawn to their objects of desire like butterflies to a candle-flame.”

“Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.”