I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.

Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, I'd follow you down to the world of the dead without thinking twice about it, just like you followed Roger; and that would be two lives gone for nothing, my life wasted like yours. No, we should spend our whole lifetimes together, good long busy lives, and if we can't spend them together, we... we'll have to spend them apart.

All things from the north are devilish.

Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die.

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is.