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...

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.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don’t only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents’ and grandparents’ lives come to you.

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...

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.

The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.

Fighting isn’t the right response to bullying-for adults. Adults have to find out what makes the bully the way he is and look for reasons and answers and understanding. That’s an adult’s responsibility.

All good things pass away.

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,...

What work do I have to do then?” said Will, but went on at once, “No, on second thought, don’t tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting,...

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...

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....

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

Everything about this is embarrassing” she said. “D’you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was...

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

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...

because he’s Will

He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the...

I’m with the fool in the psalm. You thought we could get on without you; no – you didn’t care whether we got on without you or not. You just got up and left. So...

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

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will’s foot, which could only flop in a...

Stories don’t teach us to be good; it isn’t as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right...

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!

It’s not like watching TV; it’s not even like watching a film in a cinema. Everyone in that big space is alive and everyone is focussed on one central activity.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great...

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

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...

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.

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...

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...

A graduate of Oxford University with a degree in

Books which satisfy us and feed us and nourish us have to have this substratum of genuine truth in them, … And I don’t see much of that in most fantasy.

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...

There’s been terrible things we seen, en’t there? And more a coming, more’n likely. So I think I’d rather not know what’s in the future. I’ll stick to the present.

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.

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, 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.

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.

Lord, if I thought you were listening, I’d pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except...

But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don’t like?Well, then, you’re discontented, en’t you? There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a...

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...

Walk Into the Sky.

I think there’s a difference between (a) offending people for its own sake, which I don’t necessarily want to do, because some people are good and decent and it would be unkind to upset them...

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.

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...

I warmly welcome Anand Tucker as director of the first His Dark Materials film, … He respects the integrity of the narrative and will maintain that integrity in the film-making process. His ideas are exciting...

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...

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

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...

And before I’d got to the end of the first paragraph, I’d come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it’s this: where am...