“Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive. That it should be not like a palace with marble walls and polished floors, and guards standing at the door, but like a tree with its roots deep in the soil, that shelters every kind of bird and beast and gives blossom in the spring and shade in the hot sun and fruit in the season, and in time gives up its good sound wood for the carpenter; but that sheds many thousands of seeds so that new trees can grow in its place. Does the tree say to the sparrow, 'Get out, you don't belong here?' Does the tree say to the hungry man, 'This fruit is not for you?' Does the tree test the loyalty of the beasts before it allows them into the shade?”

“Princess, princess, youngest daughter,Open up and let me in!Or else your promise by the waterIsn’t worth a rusty pin.Keep your promise, royal daughter,Open up and let me in!”

“We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of Libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.”

“You are dead- what am I speaking to?”

“I’m working on another Lyra book right now – it’s called The Book of Dust.“It’s going very well and it will be finished when I write the words ‘The End’.”

“Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.”

“I’m with the fool in the psalm. You thought we could get on without you; no – you didn’t care whether we got on without you or not. You just got up and left. So that’s what we’re doing, we’re getting on.”

“I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation.”

“Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.”

“she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.”

“When you stopped believing in God," he went on, "did you stop believing in good and evil?""No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.”