“There," she said, waving her hands at the corridor. The expression of delight on her face was a very bad thing to see."You're wrong! You don't know where your parents are, do you?" she turned and looked at Coraline. "Now," she said, "you're going to stay here for ever and always.”

“Now Coraline," said Miss Spink, "what's your name?""Coraline," said Coraline."And we don't know each other, do we?"Coraline looked at the thin young woman with black button eyes and shook her head slowly.”

“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.”

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

“Why does she want me?" Coraline asked the cat. "Why does she want me to stay here with her?""She wants something to love, I think," said the cat. "Something that isn't her. She might want something to eat as well. It's hard to tell with creatures like that.”

“It won't hurt, said her other father. Coraline knew that when grown-ups told you something wouldn't hurt it almost always did. She shook her head.”

“Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.”