Quotes from Philip Pullman

St. Augustine had said, "Angel is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is spirit; if you seek the name of their office, it is angel; from what they are, spirit, from what they do, angel.

She felt loose and free and light in a universe without purpose.

The narrating voice that tells 'Middlemarch' is just as much a made-up character as Dorothea or Mr. Casaubon.

So, wondering whether any lovers before them had made this blissful discovery, they lay together as the earth turned slowly and the moon and stars blazed above them.

I'm with the fool in the psalm. You thought we could get on without you; no – you didn't care whether we got on without you or not. You just got up and left. So that's what we're doing, we're getting on.

If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care ? the care! ? of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches ? if you thought I would expose my child to that... you are more stupid than you take me for.

Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds, Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while, Pondering his voyage . . .

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.

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.

Who was that?" said Will, trembling, facing the two angels. "That was Metatron," said Balthamos.

El trabajo sin alegría es ruin; el trabajo sin dolor es ruin; el dolor sin trabajo es ruin; la alegría sin trabajo es ruin. John Ruskin

That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do

Can is not the same as must." "But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse.

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all

The trouble with kind people is they're not sexy.

When you stopped believing in God did you stop believing in good and evil?" "No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

The powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.

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.

I can't bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel," she continued. "Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse—to be tortured forever—I thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn't it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever?

Streite mit allem, was du willst, aber nicht mit deiner eigenen Natur

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

wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

la historia de la vida humana ha consistido en una lucha entre la sabiduría y la estupidez.