Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die.

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.

I seemed to have spent the whole time either reading, which I loved, or laughing, which I love, or fooling about, which I loved. There was the usual teenage angst: "Nobody understands me" and "I'm the only genius in the world" and all that stuff. But that didn't get very deep.

Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee." He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we." She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra." Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

There is time, and there is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God.

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.