Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won. She put her arms around the skinny little form to hold him safe.
Then excuse me, Miss Silver, but they have separated their intelligences from their other faculties. And that is not an intelligent thing to do.
Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London.
To be sure, there’s a warm passion behind what you say. But if you give in to that passion, friends, you’re a doing what I always warned you agin: you’re a placing the satisfaction of your own feelings above the work you have to do.
Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.
I guess you are,” said Lee. “You have a strange way about you, Dr Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?” “Yes,” said Grumman. “And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.
By the light of a candle, he composed a letter, saying everything as briefly as possible:.
I’ve just read it so much, it memorized itself.
Lyra swore with every word she knew.
Beacause if they think the Dust is bad, it must be good.
It might not be fair, but no one’s to blame.
You are an enemy of the Church, Lee Scoresby. By their fruits shall ye know them.
Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.
It’s important to put it like that: not “I am a writer,” but rather “I write stories.” If you put the emphasis on yourself rather than your work, you’re in danger of thinking that you’re the most important thing. But you’re not. The story is what matters, and you’re only the servant. Your job is to get it out on time and in good order.
They could not have done it alone, but together they did it.
I think we need to tell each other everything we’ve found out. And it’ll take us a good long time, and we might as well keep our hands busy while we’re doing it, so.
Whatever happened behind now was simply that: behind. Lyra had left it. She felt she was leaving the world altogether, so remote and intent she was, so high they were climbing, so strange and uncanny was the light that bathed them.
When you write a story you’re not trying to prove anything or demonstrate the merits of this case or the flaws in that. At its simplest, what you’re doing is making up some interesting events, putting them in the best order to show the connections between them and recounting them as clearly as you can.
You en’t gyptian, Lyra. You might pass for gyptian with practice, but there’s more to us than gyptian language. There’s deeps in us and strong currents. We’re water people all through, and you en’t, you’re a fire person. What you’re most like is marsh fire, that’s the place you have in the gyptian scheme. You got witch oil in your soul. Deceptive, that’s what you are child.
The trouble with kind people is they’re not sexy.