“Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee."
He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we."
She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra."
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“From what we are, spirit; from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“The fact was that where Will is concerned, she was developing a new kind of sense, as if he were simply more in focus than anyone she'd known before. Everything about him was clear and close and immediate.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy?
The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer.
When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once. He could find food, and show her how to reach Oxford, and those were powers that were useful, but he might still have been untrustworthy or cowardly. A murderer was a worthy companion. She felt as safe with him as she'd done with Iorek Byrnison the armoured bear.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“She shook her head and whispered, "No. No! That can't be true. Impossible!"
"You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true!”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“The children will come to no harm."
"Except for the older ones. Like that poor kid down there."
"Mr. Scoresby, that is the way this world works. And if you want to put an end to cruelty and injustice, you must take me farther on. I have a job to do."
"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.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“You going to be a scientist when you grow up?” That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Everything about this is embarrassing" she said. "D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“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.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy?
The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer.
When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Friends … They come to your house and they know your parents and.… Sometimes a boy might ask me around to his house, and I might go or I might not, but I could never ask him back. So I never had friends, really. I would have liked … I had my cat,”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.
But they expected nothing else: she was very young.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“If you speak to people, you just attract their attention,” he said, with a shaking voice. “You should just keep quiet and still and they overlook you. I’ve been doing it all my life. I know how to do it. Your way, you just—you make yourself visible.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“You forget I am a woman, Your Eminence, and thus not so subtle as a prince of the Church.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
“It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from The Subtle Knife
Philip Pullman
Born place: in Norwich, Norfolk, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 19, 1946
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“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, quote from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“As soon as the period of mourning for Dona Ester was over and the big house on the corner was finished, Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle were married in a modest ceremony. Esteban gave his wife a set of diamond jewelry, which she thought beautiful. She packed it away in a shoe box and quickly forgot where she had put it. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and two days after they were on the boat. Esteban was as madly in love as an adolescent, despite the fact that the movement of the ship made Clara uncontrollably ill and the tight quarters gave her asthma. Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compress to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy and desired her with unjust intensity considering the wretched state to which she was reduced. On the fourth day at sea, she woke up feeling better and they went out on deck to look at the sea. Seeing her with her wind-reddened nose, and laughing at the slightest provocation, Esteban swore that sooner or later she would come to love him as he needed to be loved, even if it meant he had to resort to extreme measures. He realized that Clara did not belong to him and that if she continued living in her world of apparitions, three-legged chairs that moved of their own volition, and cards that spelled out the future, she probably never would. Clara's impudent and nonchalant sensuality was also not enough for him. He wanted far more than her body; he wanted control over that undefined and luminous material that lay within her and that escaped him even in those moments when she appeared to be dying of pleasure. His hands felt very heavy, his feet very big, his voice very hard, his beard very scratchy, and his habits of rape and whoring very deeply ingrained, but even if he had to turn himself inside out like a glove, he was prepared to do everything in his power to seduce her.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from The House of the Spirits
“Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
“It's the way he says my name: like music.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Delirium
“I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from I Know This Much Is True
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