Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.
Philip PullmanAnd 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 girl with the dirty-face and the tartan skirt and the boy with the wounded hand who was frowning in his sleep.
Philip PullmanThere is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly.
Philip Pullman