“I just want you to know,' said the girl, coldly, 'that whoever you are and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.' And then she added, with feeling, 'Idiot.”

“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?”

“How old are you?" said the girl. "What are you doing here? Do you live here? What's your name?" "I don't know," said Bod. "You don't know your name?" said the girl. "Course you do. Everybody knows their own name. Fibber." "I know my name," said Bod. "And I know what I'm doing here. But I don't know the other things you said.”

“I would have given my life for you," she whispered, sadly."Live," said the monk."You shall be revenged," said the fox. "The onmyoji who did this to you will learn what it means to take something from a fox.”

“When I am a writer, I shall do parenthetical asides. And footnotes. There will be footnotes. I wonder how you do them? And italics. How do you make italics happen?”

“The World"You know the saddest thing," she said. "The saddest thing is that we're you." I said nothing."In your fantasies," she said, "my people are just like you. Only better. We don't die or age or suffer from pain or cold or thirst. We're snappier dressers. We possess the wisdom of the ages. And if we crave blood, well, it is no more than the way you people crave food or affection or sunlight - and besides, it gets us out of the house. Crypt. Coffin. Whatever.""And the truth is?" I ask her."We're you," she said. "We're you with all your fuckups and all the things that make you human - all your fears and lonelinesses and confusions... none of that gets better."But we're colder than you are. Deader. I miss daylight and food and knowing how it feels to touch someone and care. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything..." And then she stopped. "Are you crying?" I asked. "We don't cry," she told me. Like I said, the woman was a liar."Fifteen Painted Cards From A Vampire Tarot”

“Elegantly accomplished," said Nehemiah Trot. "I shall compose an Ode. Would you like to stay and listen?”