He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren't very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject--what a burden his life was.
Each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely myster...
The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that...
Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else. A little earlier I said that stories were about life; perhaps they're made of life.
Lyra had to adjust to her new sense of her own story, and that couldn't be done in a day.
Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of...
But what matters is not the similarities your imagination finds, but the similarities that are implicit in the image, and they are not necessarily the same. I have noticed that the more imaginative re...
As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallenge...
And Pantalaimon didn't ask why, because he knew; and he didn't ask whether Lyra loved Roger more than him, because he knew the true answer to that, too. And he knew that if he spoke, she wouldn't be a...
We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us, there is no elsewhere.
Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
Maybe so, he said, but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.
Lyra at eighteen sitting intent and absorbed in Duke Humfrey’s Library with the alethiometer and a pile of leather-bound books. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, pencil in mouth, finger moving do...
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...
All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.
There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.The reason for that is that in adult literary fiction, stories are there...
People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindn...
People are too complicated to have simple labels.
For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.