If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?

Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same

Iorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must. Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse.

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.