Each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
Where did this love come from? I don’t know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it.
And then Serafina understood something for which witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence.
There are two great powers,” the man said, “and they’ve been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.
All the atoms that were them, they’ve gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They’ll never vanish. They’re just part of everything.
He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror.
There is time, and there is what is beyond time. There is darkness, and there is light. There is the world and the flesh, and there is God.
I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all.
Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.
If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn’t show it. She went on: “Look, Will, I don’t know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don’t know what you know already, and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you; but equally, I’m tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth.
So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren’t human, but they were people, she told herself; it’s not them, they’re us. They.
Maybe so,” he said, “but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.
Knowledge is like water: it always finds gaps to leak through. There are too many people, too many journals, too many places of learning, who already know something about it.
The Authority considers that conscious beings of every kind have become dangerously independent, so Metatron is going to intervene much more actively in human affairs.
She had been hurt too when they pulled apart; one day, perhaps, they’d be able to talk about it...
At one point he seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it and holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon; at any rate he looked like a lord in his own domain, with nothing to fear and all the silvery night to enjoy.
We need to imagine as well as measure.
If I told you half of what he’s done to keep us alive and safe, well, you wouldn’t imagine it could be true.
The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon.
The Dust pouring down from the stars had found a living home again, and these children-no-longer-children, saturated with love, were the cause of it all.