The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)

by Philip Pullman

“Trepanning?”

“That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”

His mother thinks he’s nine years old, but she has a poor memory that the drink has rotted; he might be eight, or ten.

breviary.

She knocks, the door is opened, they go in, the door is closed. Tony will never come out—at least, by that entrance; and he’ll never see his mother again. She, poor drunken thing, will think he’s run away, and when she remembers him, she’ll think it was her fault, and sob her sorry heart out.

It was a mighty voice, a woman’s voice, but a woman with lungs of brass and leather.

knurled

lorgnette.

Chthonic

The two old men couldn’t help smiling, but whereas Farder Coram’s smile was a hesitant, rich, complicated expression that trembled across his face like sunlight chasing shadows on a windy March day, John Faa’s smile was slow, warm, plain, and kindly.

beautiful description

He’s been a follering all what’s been going on with Dust and the Gobblers and Lord Asriel and everything else, and he’s been a follering you.

Your father never perished in no airship accident, because your father is Lord Asriel.”

“Poison out of a special Turkish serpent,” Lyra invented, “what they catch by playing a pipe to lure out and then they throw it a sponge soaked in honey and the serpent bites it and can’t get his fangs free, and they catch it and milk the venom out of it.

“What we’re a going to do next is this. We’re a going to charter a ship and sail north, and find them kids and set ’em free. From what we know, there might be some fighting to do. It won’t be the first time, nor it won’t be the last, but we never had to fight yet with people who kidnap children, and we shall have to be uncommon cunning. But we en’t going to come back without our kids.

we shall have to be uncommon cunning

if you give in to that passion, friends, you’re a doing what I always warned you agin: you’re a placing the satisfaction of your own feelings above the work you have to do. Our work here is first rescue, then punishment. It en’t gratification for upset feelings. Our feelings don’t matter. If we rescue the kids but we can’t punish the Gobblers, we’ve done the main task. But if we aim to punish the Gobblers first and by doing so lose the chance of rescuing the kids, we’ve failed.

fo’c’sle

derrick

bittern,

pips

met a prospector on the quayside, a New Dane from the country of Texas, and this man had a balloon, of all things.

A New Dane?

Snow began to fall early on, and soon the world was reduced to the gray shadows of the dogs ahead, the lurching and creaking of the sledge, the biting cold, and a swirling sea of big flakes only just darker than the sky and only just lighter than the ground. Through it all the dogs continued to run, tails high, breath puffing steam. North and further north they ran, while the pallid noontide came and went and the twilight wrapped itself again around the world.

Naturally Lyra was eager to fly with him, and naturally it was forbidden;

when they had seen Mrs. Coulter they were bubbling with a suppressed hysterical fear; but now there was a control and purpose to their talkativeness. Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.

The only eyes you could see were the round black ends of the rifle barrels and the blazing yellow eyes of the wolf dæmons above the slaver dripping from their jaws.

Lyra’s mind was full of dark questions that flew around like witches, swift and untouchable,

🧙‍♀️

I’ll get them there, she kept saying to herself. I come here to get ’em and I’ll bloody get ’em.

It was a jaw-cracking, lung-bursting yawn that lasted almost a minute, or felt like it,

Sticks and stones, I’ll break yer bones, but names ain’t worth a quarrel.

Flying is just a job to me, and I’m just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice.

There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it.

think he’s attached himself to the little girl as a kind of protector. She helped him get his armor back, you see. Who knows what bears feel? But if a bear ever loved a human being, he loves her.

When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn’t.

you cannot change what you are, only what you do.

Poor little child; he flickered into life and out of it like a mayfly.

the profound intensity of the cold,

Coxcomb!”

A bear pulled up a sledge on which a cauldron of charcoal was smoldering, and thrust a resinous branch into the heart of it.

Do you know what the word castration means? It means removing the sexual organs of a boy so that he never develops the characteristics of a man. A castrato keeps his high treble voice all his life, which is why the Church allowed it: so useful in Church music. Some castrati became great singers, wonderful artists. Many just became fat spoiled half-men. Some died from the effects of the operation. But the Church wouldn’t flinch at the idea of a little cut, you see.

wtf

And to her: tricking her: how dare he?

The colons?