Quotes from Philip Pullman

Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away.

There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. • I KINGS •

In the gloom, though, Lyra sensed the presence of the Dust, for the air seemed to be full of dark intentions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.

then?" Tialys asked Will. "What then? Well

Tony's not very bright, but he has a sort of clumsy tenderness that sometimes prompts him to give his mother a rough hug and plant a sticky kiss on her cheeks. The poor woman is usually too fuddled to start such a procedure herself; but she responds warmly enough, once she realizes what's happening.

I have told you all the rules I know. If there are rules I have forgotten to mention then they do not matter.

As darkness was falling at the edge of the Fens, rain started to fall too.

It was just as Dr. Relf had described it to him, but finer than he could ever have imagined. The thirty-six pictures around the dial were minute and clear, the three hands and the one needle were exquisitely shaped out of some silver-gray metal, and a golden sunburst surrounded the center of the dial.

Find the girl and the boy. Waste no more time. You must play the serpent.

The News of the World no longer exists. How nice to realise that even the most offensive things will eventually require a footnote to explain what they were.

I never heard about that!' said Lyra, indignant. She considered it a deplorable lapse on the part of her subjects not to tell her everything and at once.

I am their father.

Yes," he said, "yes, I believe you're right. There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child. Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purposes abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose. Your purpose is to remind me of that. Good, good—in my despair I had forgotten. Good! Excellent, my child!

You are a cesspit of moral filth.

This was work, and it was hard, but they were equal to it, all of them.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, except that she knew that if she fooled around for long enough, without fretting, or nagging herself, she'd find out.

The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude.

His hands, still clasping her head, tensed suddenly and drew her towards him in a passionate kiss. Lyra thought it looked it seemed more like cruelty than love, and looked at their daemons, to see a strange sight: the snow leopard tense, crouching with her claws in the golden monkey's flesh, and the monkey relaxed, blissful, swooning on the snow.

Gradually, as Lyra watched, she found her mood lifting. 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. But now it was disappearing, like heavy gray clouds thinning and dispersing and finding their great banks of vapor drifting into wisps that wafted away into invisibility, leaving the sky clear and open.

As long as I live. As long as I live...

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.

Malcolm drew back towards the wall. The customer who'd spoken was called George Boatwright, a high-coloured and truculent boatman whom Mr Polstead had had to throw out of the Trout half a dozen times; but he was a fair man, and he'd never spoken roughly to Malcolm. The silence in the bar now was profound, and even customers in other parts of the inn had become aware that something was happening, and had come to the doorway to watch

They looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the Mississippi. But they were trying, all the same. They'd go on trying till the end of everything.