Quotes by Philip Pullman

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.

I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you say, Ill always be thinking about it, and if I end up doing that, Ill feel resentful because itll feel as I didnt have a choice, and if I dont do it, Ill feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.

I dont like rats any more than the next bloke, but they aint wicked and cruel like people can be. Theyre just ratty in their habits.

Tell them stories.

You are dead- what am I speaking to?

When we were alive, they told us that when we died wed go to heaven. And they said that heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. Thats what they said. And thats what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew. Because the land of the dead isnt a place of reward or a place of punishment, it is a place of nothing. The good come here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace. But now this child has come offering us a way out and Im going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, Ill welcome it, because it wont be nothing. Well be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; well be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; well be glistening in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.

We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.

“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure hed see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything Id ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didnt. There is none.”

“Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.”

“The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.”

“I think theres a difference between (a) offending people for its own sake, which I dont necessarily want to do, because some people are good and decent and it would be unkind to upset them simply to indulge my own self-importance, and (b) challenging their prejudices, their preconceptions, or their comfortable assumptions. Im very happy to do that. But we need to be on our guard when people say theyre offended. No one actually has the right to go through life without being offended. Some people think they can say such-and-such offends me and that will stop the offensive words or behaviour and force the offender to apologise. Im very much against that tactic. No one should be able to shut down discussion by making their feelings more important than the search for truth. If such people are offended, they should put up with it.”

“Why, yes, the mo­ment you’re born, your death comes in­to the world with you, and it’s your death that takes you out.”

“Ill be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, well cling together so tight that nothing and no onell ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... Well 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, theyll have to take two, one of you and one of me, well be joined so tight...”

“You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and youll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isnt. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches lives are as brief as mens are to us.”

“Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, that she could command these immortal presences. And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat dæmon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.”

“One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest dont exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.”

“All good things pass away.”

“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.”

“As for what its against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.”