Novels and stories are not arguments; they set out not to convince, but to beguile.
And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they’re going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.
Poetry is not a fancy way of giving you information; it’s an incantation. It is actually a magic spell. It changes things; it changes you.” An interview with Philip Pullman.
Maybe sometimes we don’t do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don’t want to look scared, so we go and do the.
Mrs. Coulter selected her lovers for their power and influence, but it did no harm if they were good-looking. Did she ever become fond of a lover? Not once. She could not keep her servants, either.
You know, it isn’t really surprising that there are things about ourselves that still remain a mystery to us,” he said. “Maybe we should be comforted that the knowledge is there, even if it’s withheld for a while.
When you’re young, you do think that things last for ever. Unfortunately, they don’t.
Of all the dangers that threaten us at the beginning of the third millennium – the degradation of the environment, the increasing undemocratic power of the great corporations, the continuing threats to peace in regions full of decaying nuclear weapons, and so on – one of the biggest dangers of all comes from fundamentalist religion... From the Christian conservatives in the USA to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Because Lyra now realized, if she hadn’t done so before, that all the fear in her nature was drawn to Mrs. Coulter as a compass needle drawn to the Pole.
The effect was as if each teacher was being examined by a fierce inspector, and each lesson became an ordeal in which not the pupils but the teachers were being tested.
Every atom of me and every atom of you... we’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and in pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t be able to take just one, they’ll have to take two, one for you and one for me.
The meaning of one thing is its connection with another;.
He was twenty-four, ready for adventure, and happy to go wherever the winds took him. He’d better be, as Hester reminded him; he wasn’t going to go anywhere else.
I’m a tin princess. Like chess: I come all the way across the board and turned into a queen, Still only tin, though.
She’d hardly been aware of feeling anxious, but that was because anxiety was everywhere, built into the very molecules of the world, or so it had seemed.
And when Rusakov discovered Dust, at last there was physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience.
We shouldn’t be afraid of the obvious, because stories are about life, and life is full of obvious things like food and sleep and love and courage which you don’t stop needing just because you’re a good reader.
Streite mit allem, was du willst, aber nicht mit deiner eigenen Natur.
One strange thing about stories is that you sometimes know how long they’re going to be, even before you’ve begun thinking about them.
The two old men couldn’t help smiling, but whereas Farder Coram’s smile was a hesitant, rich, complicated expression that trembled across his face like sunlight chasing shadows on a windy March day, John Faa’s smile was slow, warm, plain, and kindly.
Everybody has the right to form their own opinion and read what they like and come to their own conclusion about it... I trust the reader.