Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth.
Philip PullmanThere will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!
Philip PullmanThe way you speak of the characters in your story shows what you think of the values of conservativesโ or evolution, for example. It shows where your moral center is. So you are in the message business whether you like it or not.
Philip PullmanDo 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.
Philip Pullman