Adam and Eve are like imaginary number, like the square root of minus one… If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.

For a human being, nothing comes naturally. We have to learn everything we do.

What I couldn’t help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I’d learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

My only real claim to anyone’s attention lies in my writing.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that’s a high title to claim.

The experience of being in the audience when a play or an opera is being performed is not simply passive. Children need to go to the theatre as much as they need to run about in the fresh air.

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

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...

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.

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.

When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.

And Pantalaimon didn’t ask why, because he knew; and he didn’t ask whether Lyra loved Roger more than him, because he knew the true answer to that, too. And he knew that if he spoke, she wouldn’t be able to resist; so the dæmon held himself quiet so as not to distress the human who...

Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.

The children will come to no harm.””Except for the older ones. Like that poor kid down there.””Mr. Scoresby, that is the way this world works. And if you want to put an end to cruelty and injustice, you must take me farther on. I have a job to do.””Seems to me—” Lee said, feeling for...

And Will knew what it was to see his dæmon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyra’s...

The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.

Princess, princess, youngest daughter,Open up and let me in!Or else your promise by the waterIsn’t worth a rusty pin.Keep your promise, royal daughter,Open up and let me in!

Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily–as we shall soon see with Fritz’s own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a...

Her upbringing had given her an independence of mind that made her more like a girl of today than one of her own time – which was why she had walked out, and why she was not daunted by the prospect of being alone.

A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.

There’s a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them.

I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it’s because he’s ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they’re responsible...

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn’t go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what’s more he doesn’t allow girls or women any important part in the story at all....

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...

It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants burning the Catholics. It comes from the insensate pursuit of innocent and crazy old women, and from the Puritans in America...

The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book – and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook – in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. It isn’t like a lecture: it’s like a conversation. There’s...

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

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

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.

I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

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. I’d spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn’t matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and...

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.

There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time.

Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it. I am of the Devil’s party and know it.

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

When we were alive, they told us that when we died we’d 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. That’s what they said. And that’s what led...

I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you say, I’ll always be thinking about it, and if I end up doing that, I’ll feel resentful because it’ll feel as I didn’t have a choice, and if I don’t do it, I’ll feel guilty...

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...

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children’s book.The reason for that is that in adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult writers who deal in straightforward stories...

He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.

I don’t like rats any more than the next bloke, but they ain’t wicked and cruel like people can be. They’re just ratty in their habits.

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….

When you stopped believing in God,” he went on, “did you stop believing in good and evil?””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...

We’ve heard them all talk about Dust, and they’re so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong… We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if...

If the Disney Corp. wants to market this film as a great Christian story, they’ll just have to tell lies about it.

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 he’d see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I’d ever done…I wanted him...

because he’s Will

As for what it’s 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.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you’re willing to risk failure.