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.

My mother married again after my father's death - another Royal Air Force officer, and a very different kind of man. We went to Australia when I was eight or nine. We lived there for a couple of years, and then came back and lived in North Wales for the whole of my teenage years... I learned how to write poems quite a lot. I just had a good time reading and reading and reading. So that's where I did most of my growing up.

Was there only one world after all which spent its time dreaming of others?

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.

Once upon a time' lasts forever.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?