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f7d1ab9
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Everything means something.
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lyra-belaqua
lyra-s-oxford
lyra-silvertongue
his-dark-materials
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Philip Pullman |
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0b6f487
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If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not to fight.
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Philip Pullman |
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4b21589
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There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child! Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purpose abroad! The universe is full of , you know. Everything happens for a purpose.
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Philip Pullman |
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11fb841
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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 that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive. That it should be not like a palace with marble walls and polished floors, and guards standing at the doo..
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religion
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Philip Pullman |
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8c903f3
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And then Serafina understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence. That was how these creatures looked now, these beautiful pilgrims of rarefied light, standing around the gi..
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Philip Pullman |
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522ee46
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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.
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love
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Philip Pullman |
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67b16b4
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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 put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided th..
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sailing
seafaring
sail
ship
sea
water
pirates
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Philip Pullman |
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7f225f9
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He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?
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Philip Pullman |
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1a8e856
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The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air. . .and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness.
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Philip Pullman |
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645a23b
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Religion is, as I say, something universal and something human, and something impossible to eradicate, nor would I want to eradicate it. I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.
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Philip Pullman |
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ddadd26
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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 some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew. Because the land o..
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death
life
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Philip Pullman |
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135edc9
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Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.
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Philip Pullman |
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63b432c
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I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it.
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Philip Pullman |
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f3ae853
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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!"
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true
truth
possible
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Philip Pullman |
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4cefc6f
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It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief.
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growing-up
souls
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Philip Pullman |
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95a1959
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Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.
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religion
revolution
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Philip Pullman |
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4c35db7
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If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.
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Philip Pullman |
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851f4ef
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Finally, I'd say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don't be afraid to be superstitious. If you have a lucky pen, use it. If you speak with more force and wit when wearing one red sock and one blue one, dress like that. When I'm at work I'm highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tal..
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folktales
tales
folklore
stories
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Philip Pullman |
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3925e0a
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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.
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present
future
philosophy
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Philip Pullman |
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a317008
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You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.
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Philip Pullman |
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226613a
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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 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."
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help
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Philip Pullman |
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db90c7b
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Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.
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Philip Pullman |
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482df2a
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not," said the witch, "or die of despair." --
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Philip Pullman |
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be68c17
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Half a dozen brats turned with expressions of derision, and Lyra threw her cigarette down, recognizing the cue for a fight. Everyone's daemon instantly became warlike: each child was accompanied by fangs, or claws, or bristling fur, and Pantalaimon, contemptuous of the limited imaginations of these gyptian daemons, became a dragon the size of a deer hound.
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Philip Pullman |
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88f185d
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Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth.
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marisa-coulter
metatron
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Philip Pullman |
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52b70cd
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Well," said Mary, "love is ferocious, too."
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love
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Philip Pullman |
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104b54b
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Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
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Philip Pullman |
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8b7e37b
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In fact, these possibility collapses happen at the level of elementary particles, but they happen in just the same way: one moment several things are possible, the next moment only one thing happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which they did happen.
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Philip Pullman |
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2f9ec4d
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And Will knew what it was to see his daemon. 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 fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his daemon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered t..
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memory
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Philip Pullman |
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23a46d3
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when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, Lyra's Oxford and Will's would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged-although they would never truly touch.
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Philip Pullman |
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7daecad
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You going to be a scientist when you grow up?" That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got."
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Philip Pullman |
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ec46735
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Marisa! Marisa!" The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra's mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss."
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Philip Pullman |
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8a7cf1a
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When she saw how they worked, not on their own but two by two, working their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why they'd been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own. At first she felt that this gave an advantage--she needed no one else-- and then she realized how it cut her off from others. Perhaps all human beings were like that.
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Philip Pullman |
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7e98e03
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But you cannot change what you are, only what you do.
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Philip Pullman |
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d0afe52
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On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents, in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver. She was a person of sixteen or so--alone, and uncommonly pretty. She was slender and pale, and dressed in mourning, with a black bonnet under which she tucked back a straying twist of blond hair that the wind had teased loose. She..
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Philip Pullman |
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19cf9e6
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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.
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fingers
gruesome
the-subtle-knife
his-dark-materials
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Philip Pullman |
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0ee2c58
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From now on, every ghost who enters the world of the dead will have to come with a story, the story of his or her life, and tell it to the harpies. It doesn't have to be a big adventure; it can just be a description of a day playing with the children, like Lyra's, or whatever it might happen to be. In exchange for this true story, the harpies will lead that ghost outside to dissolve into the Universe and be one with everything else.
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Philip Pullman |
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59d223c
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Everything about her in that moment was soft, and that was one of his favorite memories later on--her tense grace made tender by the dimness, her eyes and hands and especially her lips, infinitely soft. He kissed her again and again, and each kiss was nearer to the last one of all. Heavy and soft with love, they walked back to the gate. Mary and Serafina were waiting. "Lyra--" Will said. And she said, "Will."
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the-amber-spyglass
philip-pullman
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philip pullman |
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8a67512
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He was liked when noticed, but not noticed much, and that did him no harm either.
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Philip Pullman |
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111b848
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the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them to people.
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Philip Pullman |
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28c153b
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And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra."
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Philip Pullman |
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501a5b1
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If you wanted to divert a mighty river into a different course, and all you had was a single pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this.
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Philip Pullman |
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9f57418
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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 daemon held himself quiet so as not to distress the human who was abandoning him, and now they were both pretending that it wouldn't hurt, it wouldn't be long before they were together again, it was all for the best. But W..
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sacrifice
love
soul
|
Philip Pullman |
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c8522a6
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And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?
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Philip Pullman |