Coraline is a 2002 British dark fantasy horror children’s novella by British author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman started writing Coraline in 1990, and it was published in 2002 by Bloomsbury and HarperCollins.

Coraline Book Quotes

1. “Coraline hesitated. She turned back. Her other mother and her other father were walking towards her, holding hands. They were looking at her with their black button eyes.”

2. “Then she hugged her mother so tightly that her arms began to ache. Her mother hugged Coraline back.”

3. “She said, ‘You know that I love you.’
And, despite herself, Coraline nodded. It was true: the other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold.”

4. “A woman stood in the kitchen with her back to Coraline. She looked a little like Coraline’s mother. Only…”

5. “From the corner of her eye she saw something bone white scamper from one tree trunk to another, closer and closer. She forced herself not to look at it.”

6. “Coraline shook her head. ‘Why don’t you play with me?’ she asked.
‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Working,’ he added. He still hadn’t turned around to look at her.”

7. ″‘You don’t frighten me,’ said Coraline, although they did frighten her, very much. ‘I want my parents back.‘”

8. ″‘Because,’ she said, ‘when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, <em>that’s</em> brave.‘”

9. ″‘We’ll see you soon, though,’ said her other father. ‘When you come back.’
‘Um,’ said Coraline.
‘And then we’ll all be together as one big, happy family,’ said her other mother. ‘For ever and always.‘”

10. “Coraline was too close to stop, and she felt the other mother’s cold arms enfold her. She stood there, rigid and trembling as the other mother held her tightly.”

11. ″‘In danger?’ thought Coraline to herself. It sounded exciting. It didn’t sound like a bad thing. Not really.”

12. ″‘Yes, dear. Now, I think you could do with some more hair clips, don’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, let’s say half a dozen, to be on the safe side, ‘said her mother.
Coraline didn’t say anything.”

13. “She crept back into the silent house, past the closed bedroom door inside which the other mother and the other father […] what? she wondered. Slept? Waited?”

14. “He had his back to her, but she knew, just on seeing him, that his eyes, when he turned around, would be her father’s kind gray eyes, and she crept over and kissed him on the back of his balding head.”

15. “Dinner was pizza, and even though it was homemade by her father […] Coraline ate the entire slice she had been given.
Well, she ate everything except for the pineapple chunks.”

16. ″‘I’m an explorer,’ said Coraline out loud, but her words sounded muffled and dead on the misty air. She had made it out of the cellar, hadn’t she?”

17. “Her long white fingers fluttered gently, like a tired butterfly, and Coraline shivered.”

18. “There was nothing else there in the mirror. Just her, in the corridor.
A hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up. The other mother stared down at Coraline with big black button eyes.”

19. ″‘No,’ said Coraline quietly, ‘I asked you not to call me Caroline. It’s Coraline.‘”

20. “All alone, in the middle of the night, Coraline began to cry. There was no other sound in the empty flat.”