His Dark Materials Quotes

“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...”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

“Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

“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, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“This is what’ll happen,” she said, “and it’s true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your daemons did. If you’ve seen people dying, you know what that looks like. But your daemons en’t just nothing now; they’re part of everything. All the atoms that were them, they’ve gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They’ll never vanish. They’re just part of everything. And that’s exactly what’ll happen to you, I swear to you, I promise on my honor. You’ll drift apart, it’s true, but you’ll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

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

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“Truly,” he said, “I am dead … I’m dead, and I’m going to Hell …” “Hush,” said Lyra, “we’ll go together.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“Shame to die with one bullet left, though.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“That’s what you are. Argue with anything else, but don’t argue with your own nature.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“But it didn’t seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, 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 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 . . .”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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?”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“That is a question with too complicated an answer.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“Shame on you! Think what this child has done! You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, ‘Come along o’ me, it’s time.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“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.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials