Quotes About Identity

Lyra had to adjust to her new sense of her own story, and that couldn't be done in a day.

Who are you? the woman said at last. Lyra Silver— No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this? Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.

A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out; something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of nightghasts, not the waking world of sense.

There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.

Nothing is just anything.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

You en't gyptian, Lyra. You might pass for gyptian with practice, but there's more to us than gyptian language. There's deeps in us and strong currents. We're water people all through, and you en't, you're a fire person. What you're most like is marsh fire, that's the place you have in the gyptian scheme. You got witch oil in your soul. Deceptive, that's what you are child.

Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.

Just be yourself. You don't have to put on an act. To be myself, I have to put on an act, Ginny said bitterly. What's that mean? It means I don't know who I am.

They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that they'd got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didn't understand at all; she couldn't possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs.

Who was that?" said Will, trembling, facing the two angels. "That was Metatron," said Balthamos.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do

Streite mit allem, was du willst, aber nicht mit deiner eigenen Natur

All the time I was away, Lyra said, I never thought about that. All I thought about was just the time I was in, just the present. There were plenty of times when I thought I didn't get a future at all. And now... Well, suddenly finding I've got a whole life to live, but no...but no idea what to do with it, well, it's like having the alethiometer but no idea how to read it.

Well, all right then. Finding out that you're an Arctic hare – that's surprising. Damn, I was surprised. Surprised? Why the hell were you surprised? I ain't surprised, said Hester. Iorek's right. I always knew I had more class than a rabbit.

I'm a tin princess. Like chess: I come all the way across the board and turned into a queen, Still only tin, though.

I don't know where I belong, so I'm free. No one's got a hold on me.

Als Christin hatte sie sich zugehörig gefühlt. Nach ihrem Austritt aus der Kirche war sie unendlich frei gewesen, aber auch ohne Halt in einem Universum ohne Zweck.

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.

Will said to his father's ghost, "You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn't argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can't choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I'm free.

She was not beautiful—she would never be that, nor pretty, nor conventionally attractive…

No tenía más familia que aquella, e incluso hubiera podido pasar por su verdadera familia, si Lyra hubiera sabido qué significaba eso

Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.

Ik wist niet eens dat u Alice heette. - Lyra