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.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.

I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

As Jane Austen might have put it: It is a truth universally acknowledged that young protagonists in search of adventure must ditch their parents.

My books are about killing God.

A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do. When I tell the story of Cinderella, the sprite does not want me to make it into an allegory of the fall of communism. The sprite would be unhappy if I did that.