Philip Pullman: Trending quotes

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Philip Pullman: 322 quotes9 likes

““Doesn’t it scare you, having your death close by all the time?” said Lyra.
“Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.””

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 19 : Lyra and her Death

“The Master of Jordan College is a foolish old man. Why he gave it to her I can't imagine; you need several years of intensive study to make any sense of it at all.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Mrs. Coulter, on Lyra having the alethiometer, in Ch. 9 : Theft
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

“"But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?"
"Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold 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 trilogy

Lyra and the seaman Jerry, in Ch. 10 : The Consul and the Bear
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

“Who is this man who's got the knife?”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Will, in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

“If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 23 : No Way Out

“It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive… Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer
His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995)

“Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that.
“Well, there is now,” she said aloud, and again, louder: “There is now!””

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Mary in Ch. 34 : There is Now
His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)

“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 23 : No Way Out

“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

Lee Scoresby to Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

“It was all very well, the alethiometer telling her to be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct lies.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

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

“He showed me that to rebel was right and just, when you considered what the agents of the Authority did in His name…. And I thought of the Bolvangar children, and the other terrible mutilitations I have seen in our own southlands; and he told me of many more hideous cruelties dealt out in the Authority’s name—of how they capture witches, in some worlds, and burn them alive, sisters. Yes, witches like ourselves…
He opened my eyes. He showed me things I had never seen, cruelties and horrors all committed in the name of the Authority, all designed to destroy the joys and the truthfulness of life.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Ruta Skadi in Ch. 13 : Æsahættr
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

“Magisterium' and 'oblation' are church terms, they are terms of church organisation. These are administrative things. These are bureaucratic things. How can an attack on those be construed as an attack on God? These are human things which human beings have constructed in order to wield power. That's not a contentious thing to say. That is simply true. These are forms of political organisation and no more than that.”

Surefish interview (2002)

“Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Stanislaus Grumman to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch
His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997)

“In Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 13 : Fencing

“Now here are these children who have gone through great adventures and learned wonderful things and would therefore be in a position to do great things to help other people. But they're taken away. He doesn't let them. For the sake of taking them off to a perpetual school holiday or something, he kills them all in a train crash. I think that's ghastly. It's a horrible message.”

On The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
Surefish interview (2002)

“She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 36 : The Broken Arrow

“He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was.
So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

“So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren’t human, but they were people, she told herself; it’s not them, they’re us.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 10 : Wheels

“When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

"No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan
His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)

“Doesn’t it scare you, having your death close by all the time?”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

said Lyra.
“Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.”
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 19 : Lyra and her Death