“Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.''If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.''But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'They moved on.”

“Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.''If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.''But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'They moved on.”

“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.”