Teachers often make the mistake of thinking they're the boss of the class; they're not. The boss of the class is sitting down there somewhere.

This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story.

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air. . .and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness.

I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

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.

There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay.