Quotes from Philip Pullman

Have you ever heard the term 'the secret commonwealth' ?" "No. What does it refer to?" "To the world of half-seen things and half heard whispers. To things that are regarded by clever people as superstition. To fairies, spirits, hauntings, things of the night.

I don't know who will join with us, but I know whom we must fight. It is the Magisterium, the Church. For all its history—and that's not long by our lives, but it's many, many of theirs—it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can't control them, it cuts them out.

Seems to me –' Lee said, feeling for the words – 'seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed. Or is that wrong, Dr Grumman? I'm only an ignorant aëronaut.

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

In Malcolm's view the story was almost insufferable

Life is hard, Mr Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.

Una verdad referida con mala fe es peor que todas las mentiras.

From now on he was an aëronaut no more, unless by some miracle he escaped with his life and found enough money to buy another balloon. Now he had to move like an insect, along the surface of the earth.

Lyra was so tired, she felt on the verge of delirium. She wanted to sleep quite desperately, but she knew that if she gave in and put her head down, she wouldn't wake up till the morning was filling the sky.

The moon was climbing the sky, and the vast sweep of the milky way stretched above, every one of those minute specks a sun in its own system, lighting and warming planets, maybe, and life, maybe, and some kind of wondering being, maybe, looking out at the little star that was her sun, and at this world, and at Lyra.

as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects.

there is an angel called Metatron.

Poor Hester, she was lying now, not crouching tense and watchful as she'd done all his adult life. And her beautiful gold-brown eyes were growing dull.

Había pensado acaso que la vida carecía de significado y de propósito por haber desaparecido Dios? Sí, lo había pensado. - ¡Pero el presente existe! Mary Malone

Oh, but my dream , Will – I can't tell you how strange it was! It was like when I read the alethiometer, all that clearness and understanding going so deep you can't see the bottom, but clear all the way down.

One future would close for ever as the other began to unfold.

Maybe it means nothing. It just is. Everything means something, Lyra said severely. We just have to find out how to read it.

Nosotros seguimos siendo un solo ser, los dos formamos una sola criatura

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 all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.

Pero entonces no habríamos podido construir. Nadie es capaz de hacerlo si antepone sus deseos. En nuestros diversos mundos, todos tenemos que esforzarnos en conseguir esas cosas tan difíciles como ser alegres, bondadosos, curiosos, valientes y pacientes, y tenemos que estudiar, pensar y trabajar duro, y entonces lograremos construir…

But some time during the next few months, Will realized slowly and unwillingly that those enemies of his mother's were not in the world out there, but in her mind. That made them no less real, no less frightening and dangerous; it just meant he had to protect her even more carefully.

Le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Nevertheless, he understood: this was work, and it was hard, but they were equal to it, all of them.

Detrás de ellos había dolor, muerte, miedo; delante estaba el peligro, insondables misterios. Pero no estaban solos.