His Dark Materials

I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight...

She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.

Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all

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....

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would... and then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff, and suddenly I realized that I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it.

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.

If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.

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

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

But it didn’t seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.

Shame to die with one bullet left, though.

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 … I’m dead, and I’m going to Hell …” “Hush,” said Lyra, “we’ll go together.

Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much, that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it?

I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.

war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe.

That is a question with too complicated an answer.

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.

I’ll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you . . . We’ll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams . . . And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight . . .

Do you think I need anything else?” “You could do with some sense,” came the reply. “Some faculty to enable you to recognize wisdom and incline you to respect and obey it.

Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even in that muffled, mist-hung world it raised an echo, but of course it wasn’t an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. “My heart, Will …” she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a great betrayal and it would hurt her terribly, was fulfilled.

Lyra at eighteen sitting intent and absorbed in Duke Humfrey’s Library with the alethiometer and a pile of leather-bound books. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, pencil in mouth, finger moving down a list of symbols, Pantalaimon holding the stiff old pages open for her … “Look, Pan, there’s a pattern there—see? That’s why they’re in that sequence!” And it felt as if the sun had come out. It was the second thing she said to Will next day in the Botanic Garden.

Finally, and almost simultaneously, the children discovered what it was like to be drunk. “Do they like doing this?” gasped Roger, after vomiting copiously. “Yes,” said Lyra, in the same condition. “And so do I,” she added stubbornly. Lyra

and then my uncle killed him anyway just to teach him a lesson.

Maybe so,” he said, “but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.

Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.

Maybe sometimes we don’t do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don’t want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it’s dangerous. We