Philip Pullman: Trending quotes

“Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”

Source: The Golden Compass

“Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.”

Source: The Subtle Knife

“You think things have to be possible? Things have to be!”

Source: The Subtle Knife

Philip Pullman

“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.”

“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.”

Source: The Subtle Knife

“Everything means something.”

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 4 : Trepanning

Philip Pullman book Lyra's Oxford

Source: Lyra's Oxford

“If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not to fight.”

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

Source: The Golden Compass

Philip Pullman book The Amber Spyglass

Source: The Amber Spyglass

“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?”

“Tell him, we are not devils but we have friends who are.”

Source: The Subtle Knife

Philip Pullman

“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”

Philip Pullman

“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 wracked with pain.”

“You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.”

Source: The Golden Compass

“That is how it seems…. But we can’t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”

Source: The Golden Compass

“As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.”

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

“On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
So on they climbed.”

The Master of Jordan College to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

“She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

“The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics — what we call experimental theology — is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.”

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice

“Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare, ignoring the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reaching a state in which movement alone was good and stillness bad, so that he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And since the failure of the witches' spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some curse greater than their own powers.”

Sir Charles to Mrs. Coulter in Ch. 9 : Theft
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)