I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.

All good things pass away.

I'm perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.

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

I got a book token for Christmas and exchanged it for a book called A History of Art, and that book (which I still have-battered and falling to pieces) became more precious to me than any Bible.

The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind; it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.

It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, "Make this a feminist story!" I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons.