Quotes from Philip Pullman

Was I wrong?" "Yes, of course. But you had no choice." "I must have." "No, you had to do it. If you hadn't done it, you'd have felt feeble." "It shouldn't be about how we feel—guilty, feeble—" "No, and it isn't. It's about wrong and less wrong. Bad and less bad. This is about as good a cover as anyone could find. Leave it at that.

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.

There's been terrible things we seen, en't there? And more a-coming, more'n likely. So I think I'd rather not know what's in the future. I'll stick to the present.' 'Yeah,' said Lyra wearily. 'There's times I feel like that too.

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.

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.

Stories...entertain and teach; they help us both enjoy life and endure it. After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the things we need most in the world.

There he dwelt, a prisoner acting like a kind.

Will considered what to do. When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At the moment all Will's choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.

Oh! You're Lord Asriel!" "That's right. But how are you going to test the truth of that claim?" "What's the baby's name?" "Lyra." "And what's her dæmon called?" "Pantalaimon.

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.

In Geneva, Olivier Bonneville was becoming frustrated.

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At the moment all...choices existed at once. But to keep them in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

Into this wild abyss

it was a point of good manners not to sit with a clique of the same friends all the time, and it meant that conversation at dinner had to be open and general rather than close and gossipy

I was sure that I was going to write stories myself when I grew up. 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, and your job is to get it out on time and in good order.

He showed me things I had never seen, cruelties and horrors all committed in the name of the Authority, all designed to destroy the joys and the truthfulness of life.

You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you're cautious, you're anxious…you're pessimistic." She knew he was right, but it wasn't right that he should speak to her so accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for. "I used to be young," was all she could find to say.

What's the secret commonwealth?" "The world of fairies, and ghosts, and the jacky lanterns.

maybe from other experiences as well, that there are more ways than one, more than two, of seeing things and perceiving their meanings.

All these things that are changing…like ice breaking under your feet.

Not randomly, though. Farder Coram was a chess player, and he knew how chess players looked at a game in play. An expert player seemed to see lines of force and influence on the board, and looked along the important lines and ignored the weak ones; and Lyra's eyes moved the same way, according to some similar magnetic field that she could see and he couldn't.