The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, #2)

by Philip Pullman

It was like being in someone else’s dream.

It didn’t take him long to hide. Will could vanish easily enough, because he was good at it; he was even proud of his skill. Like Serafina Pekkala on the ship, he simply made himself part of the background.

It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.

Will felt a great weight lift off his shoulders. He had been carrying it all day, and he hadn’t noticed how it had nearly pressed him into the ground; but now he felt light and free and at peace.

I know this feeling well.

he’d lash them with his tongue, and boy, he had a tongue like barbed wire.

there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.

So she flew on, never losing sight of the angels, and gradually as she came closer they took on a clearer shape. They shone not as if they were burning but as if, wherever they were and however dark the night, sunlight was shining on them. They were like humans, but winged, and much taller;

there was something in the way these children spoke; as a practiced liar, she knew liars when she met them, and they were lying about something.

Lee felt his heart lift with it. He’d said once to Serafina Pekkala that he didn’t care for flying, that it was only a job; but he hadn’t meant it. Soaring upward, with a fair wind behind and a new world in front—what could be better in this life?

she knew about angels. St. Augustine had said, “Angel is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is spirit; if you seek the name of their office, it is angel; from what they are, spirit, from what they do, angel.”

“seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.

“There are two great powers,” the man said, “and they’ve been fighting since time began.

Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other.

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who...

“The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty—those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves—the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed.