564 Quotes by philip pullman

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that’s an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn’t show it. She went on: “Look, Will, I don’t know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don’t know what you know already, and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you; but equally, I’m tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth.

The other side’s got an energy that our side en’t got. Comes from their certainty about being right. If you got that certainty, you’ll be willing to do anything to bring about the end you want. It’s the oldest human problem, Lyra, an’ it’s the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can’t. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it’d have to become evil to do ’em.

There is time, and there is what is beyond time. There is darkness, and there is light. There is the world and the flesh, and there is God.

Write some letters.” “Don’t want to.” “Bake a cake to give that boy a slice of.” “He might come while I’m still making it, and then we’d have to make conversation for an hour and a half till it was ready. Anyway, we’ve got some biscuits.” “Well, I give up,” he said.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don’t try and shut it out.

If you thought for one moment that I would release my daughter into the care – the care! – of a body of men with a feverish obsession with sexuality, men with dirty fingernails, reeking of ancient sweat, men whose furtive imaginations would crawl over her body like cockroaches – if you thought I would expose my child to that... you are more stupid than you take me for.

I guess you are,” said Lee. “You have a strange way about you, Dr Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?” “Yes,” said Grumman. “And among academicians, and among spirits. 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.

There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it.