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19b62fa
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Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed ..
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angels
beautiful-quote
ruta-skadi
witches
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Philip Pullman |
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114ee82
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Lady Harborough... was on the platform, making a short speech in which she described the valuable work her hospital fund was doing. It seemed to consist largely of rescuing unmarried mothers from poverty and subjecting them to slavery instead, with the additional disadvantage of being preached at daily by evangelical clergymen.
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Philip Pullman |
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308d413
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We can control the future, my boy, just as we wind up the mechanism in a clock. Say to yourself: I will win that race--I will come first--and you wind up the future like clockwork. The world has no choice but to obey! Can the hands of that old clock in the corner decide to stop? Can the spring in your watch decide to wind itself up and run backward? No! They have no choice. And nor has the future, once you have wound it up.
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Philip Pullman |
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10811e8
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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 things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and..
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morality
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Philip Pullman |
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f15a45d
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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.
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Philip Pullman |
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ca7bd74
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Wir spuren die Kalte, aber sie macht uns nichts aus, denn sie schadet uns nicht. Wenn wir uns gegen die Kalte warm anziehen wurden, konnten wir andere Dinge nicht mehr spuren, das Kribbeln der Sterne oder die Musik des Mondlichtes auf der Haut. Dafur lohnt es sich, die Kalte zu ertragen.
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Philip Pullman |
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512393d
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war is the sea I swim in and the air I breathe.
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Philip Pullman |
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eedfbab
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She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy; she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.
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Philip Pullman |
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0519b78
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All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.
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love-hurts
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Philip Pullman |
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b66b1e9
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You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.
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Philip Pullman |
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03a4ff7
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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 find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects ..
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stories
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Philip Pullman |
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e1bc737
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Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much, that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it?
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Philip Pullman |
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d04612b
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It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.
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Philip Pullman |
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b020159
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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 clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams . . . And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able ..
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Philip Pullman |
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b052c05
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Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it, Lyra. That's original sin.
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Philip Pullman |
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9c74d6d
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Friends ... They come to your house and they know your parents and.... Sometimes a boy might ask me around to his house, and I might go or I might not, but I could never ask him back. So I never had friends, really. I would have liked ... I had my cat,
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Philip Pullman |
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90dd249
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Will considered what to do. 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.
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Philip Pullman |
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1fff5a2
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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 it isn't? What if it's--' She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good...
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evil
good
good-and-evil
original-sin
sin
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Philip Pullman |
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4d05218
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The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.
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his-dark-materials
northern-lights
northern-sky
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Philip Pullman |
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b3b673f
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If you speak to people, you just attract their attention," he said, with a shaking voice. "You should just keep quiet and still and they overlook you. I've been doing it all my life. I know how to do it. Your way, you just--you make yourself visible."
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Philip Pullman |
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3250c75
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Wir sind alle dem Schicksal unterworfen [...] aber wir mussen so tun, als seien wir es nicht, sonst wurden wir vor Verzweiflung sterben.
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Philip Pullman |
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ce50f1d
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There's some that came here never believing they were dead. They insisted all the way that they were alive, it was a mistake, someone would have to pay; made no difference. There's others who longed to be dead when they were alive, poor souls; lives full of pain or misery; killed themselves for a chance of a blessed rest, and found that nothing had changed except for the worse, and this time there was no escape; you can't make yourself aliv..
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Philip Pullman |
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0467ffa
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Has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?
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Philip Pullman |
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1d09218
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in writing like this, he was letting truth from beyond time into history, and thus making history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor...
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Philip Pullman |
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96e398a
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And barely ten minutes later the soft sound of wingbeats came to their ears, and Balthamos stood up eagerly. The next moment, the two angels were embracing, and Will, gazing into the flames, saw their mutual affection. More than affection: they loved each other with a passion.
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Philip Pullman |
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73e9857
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And that was how sin came into the world," he said, "sin and shame and death. It came the moment their daemons became fixed." "But..." Lyra struggled to find the words she wanted: "but it en't true, is it? Not true like chemistry or engineering, not that kind of true? There wasn't really an Adam and Eve? The Cassington Scholar told me it was just a kind of fairy tale." "The Cassington Scholarship is traditionally given to a freethinker; i..
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Philip Pullman |
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3c10cc8
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Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are.
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Philip Pullman |
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8b42519
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Waste of time," said the leper. "There's a dozen or more beggars who come here every day, pretending to be cripples, hiring themselves out to the holy men. A couple of drachmas and they'll swear they've been crippled or blind for years then stage a bloody miraculous recovery. Holy men? Healers? Don't make me laugh." "But this man is different," said Christ. "I remember him," said the blind man. "Jesus. He come here on the sabbath, like a fo..
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miracle
religion
social-commentary
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Philip Pullman |
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18f6143
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Make a noise in there and I won't help you. You're on your own.
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Philip Pullman |
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b1250a0
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That is a question with too complicated an answer.
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Philip Pullman |
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2e6aa13
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Speaking for myself, I've always found great intelligence in a woman a highly attractive feature.
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Philip Pullman |
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0c27aeb
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Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We
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Philip Pullman |
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d9b5107
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Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happened, they were clinging together, blindly pressing their faces towards each other.
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Philip Pullman |
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5a7522a
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All things from the north are devilish.
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Philip Pullman |
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9a4fcd1
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Then it started to rain, so she went inside and made some coffee and did what she had never done in her life: tried the newspaper crossword. "What a stupid exercise," said her daemon after five minutes. "Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens."
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Philip Pullman |
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80fcf42
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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. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief.
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Philip Pullman |
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2e4f158
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Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even in that muffled, mist-hung world it raised an echo, but of course it wasn't an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. "My heart, Will ..." she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a grea..
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Philip Pullman |
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2067269
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There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.
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Philip Pullman |
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97e2260
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You're a bloodthirsty character, aren't you?" "I don't know," she said honestly. "I've never had the chance to find out. I'm pretty sure I would fight if I had to, though. I wouldn't give in, or flinch and cry and faint. People don't think girls are brave, but I'd love the chance to try... just once, perhaps; just once, so I could know what it was like to risk my life and fight to the death. It's not that I want to kill people, it's that I ..
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Philip Pullman |
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fcf3cdf
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Lyra at eighteen sitting intent and absorbed in Duke Humfrey's Library with the alethiometer and a pile of leather-bound books. Tucking the hair back behind her ears, pencil in mouth, finger moving down a list of symbols, Pantalaimon holding the stiff old pages open for her ... "Look, Pan, there's a pattern there--see? That's why they're in that sequence!" And it felt as if the sun had come out. It was the second thing she said to Will next..
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Philip Pullman |
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42891e3
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This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.
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democracy
dictatorship
secret-service
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Philip Pullman |
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c8b86ca
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War asks many people to do unreasonable things.
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Philip Pullman |
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d281eee
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How can knowing something be sinful?
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Philip Pullman |
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3f2ae90
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Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, 'Come along o' me, it's time.
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Philip Pullman |