The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2)

by Philip Pullman

said Lyra, who had no idea.

How do you think the alethiometer works? I suppose the symbols have got so many meanings, you can read anything you want into them, so they don’t mean anything at all, really.

Altogether, the entity known as the Magisterium consisted of a seething mass of rivalrous, jealous, mutually suspicious bodies similar only in their liking for power and their ambition to wield it.

He told me there were truth tellers, and they needed to know what the truth was, so as to tell it. And there were liars, and they needed to know what the truth was, so they could change it or avoid it. And there were bullshitters, who didn’t care about the truth at all. They weren’t interested. What they spoke wasn’t the truth and it wasn’t lies; it was bullshit. All they were interested in was their own performance.

we should delicately and subtly undermine the idea that truth and facts are possible in the first place. Once the people have become doubtful about the truth of anything, all kinds of things will be open to us.”

She felt as if she had been used by some hidden power, as if all the events on her journey, and for long before, had been arranged with meticulous care with only one purpose: and it was a purpose that had nothing to do with her, and one that she’d never understand, even if she knew what it was.