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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| f0c549c | Without language you can't feel that you have a legitimate, respected presence. You are without a voice, without power. | language-barrier | Jhumpa Lahiri | |
| 09dc61b | I have suffered enough." "Oh, there is more suffering to come. We have a thousand years of experience in this Church of ours. We can draw out your suffering endlessly. Tell us about the child," Mrs. Coulter said, and reached down to break one of the witch's fingers. It snapped easily." | Philip Pullman | ||
| a9650c8 | and then my uncle killed him anyway just to teach him a lesson. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 53e3bf0 | A genuine scientist would love the subject for itself; I think I love science for the stories that are told about it. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 6c21cdc | Perhaps some particles move backwards 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. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read. | knowledge particles past | Philip Pullman | |
| a3f8a24 | Once we use the word spiritual, we don't have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 50db2c1 | he came awake like someone struggling to swim to the surface of a lake of laudanum, where the strongest delights were the deepest and there was nothing above but cold and fear and duty. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 356d30f | 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. | life thinking thoughts troubles | Philip Pullman | |
| 8f6e149 | The park was a scruffy patch of grass, muddy in winter and dusty in summer, set about with a few dozen trees, a bandstand, and a pond on which swam a family of depraved and malevolent ducks. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 59f6956 | And remember this: take the hard road, not the easy one. The road that leads to life is a hard one, and it passes through a narrow gate, but the road to destruction is easy, and the gate is broad. Plenty take the easy road; few take the hard one. Your job is to find the hard one, and go by that. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 2599650 | He had to stay close to the ship, of course, for he could never go far from her; but she sensed his desire to speed as far and as fast as he could, for pure exhilaration. She shared his pleasure, but for her it wasn't simple pleasure, for there was pain and fear in it too. Suppose he loved being a dolphin more than he loved being with her on land? What would she do then? Her | Philip Pullman | ||
| 436c519 | Imagine the same scene in HAMLET if Pullman had written it. Hamlet, using a mystic pearl, places the poison in the cup to kill Claudius. We are all told Claudius will die by drinking the cup. Then Claudius dies choking on a chicken bone at lunch. Then the Queen dies when Horatio shows her the magical Mirror of Death. This mirror appears in no previous scene, nor is it explained why it exists. Then Ophelia summons up the Ghost from Act One a.. | his-dark-materials literature philip-pullman plotting shakespeare | John C. Wright | |
| 14f7d6c | if I have to die to do what's proper, then I will, and be happy while I do. | Philip Pullman | ||
| d0196a9 | The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all. | Philip Pullman | ||
| ceb3ba9 | consciousness is a perfectly normal property of matter, like mass or anbaric charge; that there is a field of consciousness which pervades the entire universe, and which makes itself apparent most fully - we believe - in human beings. | Philip Pullman | ||
| dcfc015 | I don't like rats any more than the next bloke, but they ain't wicked and cruel like people can be. They're just ratty in their habits. | people rats rodents | Philip Pullman | |
| 06bd501 | 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 soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world. | clockwork difficulties optimism pessimism working writing | Philip Pullman | |
| 81a0218 | Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 6782064 | And here it is: You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else. And to do that you have to train hard and strive your utmost, and sometimes even that isn't enough, because another runner just might be more talented than you are. Here's the truth: 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.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| c116db5 | There was an open gate a little way along, and Lyra could have followed him, bit she hung back unwillingly. Pantalaimon looked at her, and then became a badger. She knew what he was doing. Daemons could move no more than a few yards from their humans, and if she stood by the fence and he remained a bird, he wouldn't get near the bear; so he was going to pull. She felt angry and miserable. His badger claws dug into the earth and he walked fo.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| fcd65f4 | Eventually sinking into despair, [Heinrich von Kleist] shot himself in 1811 as part of a suicide pact made with a woman suffering from incurable cancer. | Nicholas Tucker | ||
| 8cd0322 | she allowed herself to dwell on the cause of this strange, apprehensive exultation that she sensed flickering at the edge of her mind: it was the rarest thing of all - a man whom she knew at once, and without any qualification, to be her equal. | feminist romance | Philip Pullman | |
| 066cb20 | I felt exhausted, and worried, and friendless and hopeless and everything-else-less. | Philip Pullman | ||
| ca74335 | This book contains a story and several other things. The other things might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven't appeared yet. It's not easy to tell. It's easy to imagine how they might have turned up, though. The world is full of things like that: old postcards, theater programs, leaflets about bomb-proofing your cellar, greeting cards, photograph albums, holiday brochures, instruc.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| daa64f3 | All the atoms that were them, they've gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They'll never vanish. They're just part of everything. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 199a9e6 | swathed in an old tweed coat on which the damp had settled like a thousand tiny pearls. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 262a913 | What is that other universe?" she said. "One of uncountable billions of parallel worlds. The witches have known about them for centuries, but the first theologians to prove their existence mathematically were excommunicated fifty or more years ago. However, it's true; there's no possible way of denying it. "But no one thought it would ever be possible to cross from one universe to another. That would violate fundamental laws, we thought. .. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 14560ba | Well, where is God," said Mrs Coulter, "if he's alive? And why doesn't he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and Moses only heard his voice. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged - he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a .. | his-dark-materials mrs-coulter philip-pullman the-amber-spyglass | Philip Pullman | |
| d0e60cc | In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half, hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as th.. | beautiful-imagery beautiful-scenery imagery setting valley-of-rhododendrons | Philip Pullman | |
| ef53fd9 | She did not move. Nor did she scream or faint; her only actions were to draw back the hem of her dress from where it brushed the shiny dome of his skull and to breathe deeply, several times, with her eyes shut. Her father had taught her this as a remedy for panic. He had taught her well; it worked. | sally-lockhart | Philip Pullman | |
| 6470449 | Being cheerful starts now, Will thought as hard as he could, but it was like trying to hold a fighting wolf still in his arms when it wanted to claw at his face and tear out his throat; nevertheless, he did it, and he thought no one could see the effort it cost him. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 32119fa | The visitor was about the same age as Hallgrimsson, but he looked older; certainly his face bore the marks of more experience and trial than did the professor's smooth cheeks and unlined brow. He was a gyptian of the people of Eastern Anglia, a man called Coram van Texel, who had travelled much in the far north. He was lean, of middle height, and his movements were careful, as if he thought he might break something inadvertently, as if he w.. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 9dff829 | Each kiss was nearer to the last one of all. | love romance romantic | Philip Pullman | |
| dbd1537 | It's about wrong and less wrong. Bad and less bad. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 0bcdbc9 | Seems to me the place to fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 9d6dc1a | There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. 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." | Philip Pullman | ||
| 4bafbe4 | Finally, and almost simultaneously, the children discovered what it was like to be drunk. "Do they like doing this?" gasped Roger, after vomiting copiously. "Yes," said Lyra, in the same condition. "And so do I," she added stubbornly. Lyra" -- | Philip Pullman | ||
| ffa42a3 | The steamy, noisy kitchen was the safest place in the world, it seemed to him. Safety had never been anything to think about before; it was something you took for granted, like his mother's endless, effortless, generous food, and the fact that there would always be hot plates ready to serve it on. | Philip Pullman | ||
| fe35fa6 | Stories aren't made of language: they're made of something else. A little earlier I said that stories were about life; perhaps they're made of life. | stories writing writing-advice | Philip Pullman | |
| 6f86d6f | No literary work longer than a haiku is going to be entirely without faults. | Philip Pullman | ||
| f427bcd | And she sobbed so passionately he thought that hearts really did break, and hers was breaking now, for she fell to the ground wailing and shuddering, and Pantalaimon beside her became a wolf and howled with bitter grief. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 35b2430 | We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We | Philip Pullman | ||
| e744334 | 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. | Philip Pullman | ||
| 5323820 | her." "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." | Philip Pullman |