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

And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

...because where we are is always the most important place.

I'm with the Grimms on this: stories for young and old. You can't characterize them any better than that.

You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

Tolkien seems to me reactionary, conservative, fearful of a modern world. Fearful of anything that isn't sanctioned by the passage of long eons of time. I think what I'm doing in His Dark Materials is politically the reverse of that.

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.