Quotes from Philip Pullman

She nearly put the spyglass to her eye, but held back, and returned it to her pocket. There was no need for the glass; she knew what she would see; they would seem to be made of living gold. They would seem the true image of what human beings always could be, once they had come into their inheritance. The Dust pouring down from the stars had found a living home again, and these children-no-longer-children, saturated with love, were the cause of it all.

Tell them stories

The classroom is a torture chamber , interrogating poetry until it confesses.

al final llegó a concebir la extraordinaria idea de que la conciencia es una propiedad totalmente normal de la materia, como la masa o la carga ambárica; hay un campo de conciencia que impregna el universo entero y que, según creemos, se presenta en su forma más plena en los seres humanos.

Whatever Mal says, I believe. So take that fucking smile off your face, you.

If they turned their back on something frightening behind them and tried to get really interested in the stones and how they fitted together, or the leaves on the bush, like if only they could make themselves find that really important, they'd be safe.

Muchas veces me he enamorado de la placentera muerte… John Keats

You'll take some Tokay?" said Hallgrimsson, sitting down after looking through the window along the rain-swept street, and then pulling the curtains across against the draft. "That would be a rare pleasure," said Coram.

Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, come along o' me, it's time. It might happen when you're sick with a fever, or when you choke on a piece of dry bread, or when you fall off a high building; in the middle of your pain and travail, your death comes to you kindly and says easy now, easy, child, you come along o' me, and you go with them in a boat out across the lake into the mist. What happens there, no one knows. No one's ever come back.

Lyra's mind was full of dark questions that flew around like witches, swift and untouchable, and somewhere, just beyond where she could reach, there was a glory and a thrill which she didn't understand at all. But it gave her a surge of strength

With every second that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of complexity and control that the alethiometer gave her. She had to be careful not to say anything obviously impossible; she had to be vague in some places and invent plausible details in others; she had to be an artist, in short.

What Mrs. Coulter was saying seemed to be accompanied by a scent of grownupness, something disturbing but enticing at the same time; it was the smell of glamour.

Everyone wishes they could speak again to those who've gone to the land of the dead.

Have the caterers brought enough ice? Be a dear and go and ask. Warm drinks are horrid .…

Suppose it never stops? she whispered. The gyptian man didn't say it'd do that. Just that there was going to be a flood. It feels as if it's going on forever. There isn't enough water in all the world to do that. Eventually it'll stop and the sun'll come out. Every flood stops in the end and goes down.

Lyra encouraged, bullied, hit, half-carried, swore at, pushed, dragged, lifted tenderly, wherever it was needed, and Pantalaimon (by the state of each child's dæmon) told her what was needed in each case. I'll get them there, she kept saying to herself. I come here to get 'em and I'll bloody get 'em.

jeunesse dorée

Well, where is God," said Mrs. Coulter, "if he's alive? And why doesn't he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged—he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now?

The question was, she thought, was the universe alive or dead?

It was drizzling, but even if there'd been no clouds the city sky was too tainted with light to show the stars. Pantalaimon thought they were going north, but who could tell? Endless streets of little identical brick houses, with gardens only big enough for a dustbin...

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know.

In the world of the spirits your name is famous.

Oh, this was confusing. Mrs. Coulter was so kind and wise, whereas Lyra had actually seen the Master trying to poison Uncle Asriel. Which of them did she owe most obedience to?

In fact, it was that which killed him, to his great surprise.