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"...I think it would be the silliest thing you've ever done in a lifetime of silly things...."
~~~The Golden Compass
"That's the duty of the old," said the Librarian," to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old."
~~~The Golden Compass
This rivalry was hundreds of years old, and very deep and satisfying.
~~~The Golden Compass
"...I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice."
~~~The Golden Compass
Lyra's knowledge had great gaps in it, like a map of the world largely eaten by mice....
~~~The Golden Compass
"Take old Belisaria. She's a seagull, and that means I'm a kind of seagull, too. I'm not grand and splendid, nor beautiful, but I'm a tough old thing and I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food and company. That's worth knowing, that is."
~~~The Golden Compass
She would be able to stitch a wound or change a bandage, but never to tell a story.
~~~The Golden Compass
Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.
~~~The Golden Compass
"Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again."
~~~The Golden Compass
The air seemed full of dark intentions, like the forms of thoughts not yet born.
~~~The Golden Compass
The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.
~~~The Golden Compass
She was afraid of her father, and she admired him profoundly, and she thought he was stark mad; but who was she to judge?
~~~The Golden Compass
Everything was going according to plan, really.
Except that he'd killed somebody.
~~~The Subtle Knife
He knew at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good.
~~~The Subtle Knife
...Ruta Skadi was as lovely as Mrs. Coulter, with an extra dimension of the mysterious, the uncanny. She had trafficked with spirits, and it showed.
~~~The Subtle Knife
What were these mysteries? Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?
~~~The Subtle Knife
"It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing."
~~~The Subtle Knife
...a swirl of cloudy colors seemed to live just under the surface of the metal: bruise purples, sea blues, earth browns, cloud grays, the deep green under heavy-foliaged trees, the clustering shades at the mouth of a tomb as evening falls over a deserted graveyard.... If there was such a thing as shadow-colored, it was the blade of the subtle knife.
~~~The Subtle Knife
"Can you imagine my astonishment, in turn, at learning that part of my own nature was female, and bird-formed, and beautiful?"
~~~The Subtle Knife
"I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same."
~~~The Subtle Knife
"I cain't shoot a man in the back," Lee said.
"Shame to die with one bullet left, though."
~~~The Subtle Knife
She shook her head and whispered, "No. No! That can't be true. Impossible!"
"You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true!
~~~The Subtle Knife
The ground was bare earth, beaten flat by the pressure of millions of feet, even though those feet had less weight than feathers; so it must have been time that pressed it flat, even though time had been stilled in this place; so it must have been the way things were. This was the end of all places and the last of all worlds.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At the moment, all Will's choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"Do you think I need anything else?"
"You could do with some sense," came the reply. "Some faculty to enable you to recognize wisdom and incline you to respect and obey."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake...."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
She lay for a few minutes lapped in freshness, feeling as if she were the first human being who had ever lived.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"What you don't know is what the knife does on its own. Your intentions may be good. The knife has intentions, too."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"Well, I admit: the child must have some gift I've never seen myself. But if all it does is turn you into a doting mother, it's a pretty thin, drab, puny little gift."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"Truly," he said, "I'm dead...I'm dead, and I'm going to Hell."
"Hush," said Lyra, "we'll go together."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"It would be merciful to kill it," said Tialys.
"How do you know?" said Lyra. "It might still like being alive, in spite of everything."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
...the creatures were getting louder and flying closer, and there were more and more of them all the time, as if the gloom were gathering itself into little clots of malice and giving them wings.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"You are quite right. Everyone should have a task to do that's important, one that brings them honor, one they can perform with pride. So here is your task, and it's one that only you can do, because you are the guardians and the keepers of this place. Your task will be to guide the ghosts from the landing place by the lake all the way through the land of the dead to the new opening out into the world. In exchange, they will tell you their stories as a fair and just payment for this guidance. Does that seem right to you?"
No-Name looked at her sisters, and they nodded. She said:
"And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"Just follow. If you can't see, listen. If you can't hear, feel."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
In the dark green of the canopy, with the rich blue of the sky between the leaves; with a breeze keeping her skin cool, and the faint scent of the flowers delighting her whenever she sensed it; with the rustle of the leaves, the song of hundreds of birds, and the distant murmur of the waves on the seashore, all her senses were lulled and nurtured, and if she could have stopped thinking, she would have been entirely lapped in bliss.
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"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."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
"What is worth having is worth working for."
~~~The Amber Spyglass
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