I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.

We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

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

Just as she was unaware of the hidden currents of politics running below the surface of College affairs, so the Scholars, for their part, would have been unable to see the rich seething stew of...

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...

I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief… I’m not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable...

Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.

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...

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

I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that...

He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren’t very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject–what a burden his life was.

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

If you can’t think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you’ve finished the three pages, don’t write it; it’ll be that much easier to get...

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.

Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough....

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….

It’s not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue,

I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to...

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...

I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation.

of Christian morality.

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...

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...

My flat’s about half a mile away, and you know what I’d like most of all in the world? I’d like a cup of tea. Come on, let’s go and put the kettle on.

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

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

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...

You going to be a scientist when you grow up?” That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.

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...

You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you’ll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season....

The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: ‘This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death...

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails....

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.