Quotes from book
Lyra's Oxford
Lyra's Oxford is a short book by Philip Pullman depicting an episode involving the heroine of His Dark Materials, Pullman's best-selling trilogy. Lyra's Oxford is set when Lyra Belacqua is 15, two years after the end of the trilogy.The book consists mainly of an illustrated short story, "Lyra and the Birds". A fold-out map of "Oxford by Train, River and Zeppelin" is bound in the book, a fictional map of the Oxford that exists in Lyra's world. It also includes some advertisements for books and travellers' catalogues. Two pages from a Baedeker published in Lyra's world , a postcard from the character Mary Malone, and a brochure for the cruise ship Zenobia are also included. The postcard contains four images of sites in the His Dark Materials trilogy: the physics lab in which Mary Malone works, the house occupied by Lord Boreal, the row of hornbeam trees where Will first discovered a window between the worlds, and the bench where Lyra and Will have pledged to visit each other in spirit once a year.
“All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning.”
Lyra's Oxford (2003)
Context: All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue.
Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read.
The story in this book is partly about that very process.
“This book contains a story and several other things.”
Lyra's Oxford (2003)
Context: This book contains a story and several other things. The other things might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven't appeared yet. It's not easy to tell.
Lyra's Oxford (2003)
Context: All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue.
Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read.
The story in this book is partly about that very process.
