Quotes from Philip Pullman

He was liked when noticed, but not noticed much, and that did him no harm either.

when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, Lyra's Oxford and Will's would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged–although they would never truly touch.

Tell him, we are not devils but we have friends who are.

You going to be a scientist when you grow up?" That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.

Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.

The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky.

But you cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.

the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them to people.

You won't understand anything about the imagination until you realise that it's not about making things up, it's about perception.

Marisa! Marisa!" The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra's mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss.

Well, said Mary, love is ferocious, too.

If you wanted to divert a mighty river into a different course, and all you had was a single pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this.

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.

That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.

In fact, these possibility collapses happen at the level of elementary particles, but they happen in just the same way: one moment several things are possible, the next moment only one thing happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which they did happen.

And then what? said her daemon sleepily. Build what? The Republic of Heaven, said Lyra.

When she saw how they worked, not on their own but two by two, working their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why they'd been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own. At first she felt that this gave an advantage--she needed no one else-- and then she realized how it cut her off from others. Perhaps all human beings were like that.

You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same." "And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?" "The greatest wisdom I know.

Truly," he said, "I am dead Ã¢â'¬Â¦ I'm dead, and I'm going to Hell Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â "Hush," said Lyra, "we'll go together.

Shame to die with one bullet left, though.