The e-book revolution has made it very easy to pay writers a good deal less than what their work is worth. I do strongly believe that we writers ought to hold out for much better royalties.

The great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.

Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?

You are dead- what am I speaking to?