Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

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.

Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

I'm perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.

For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.