La Belle Sauvage Quotes

“Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them to people.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“He was liked when noticed, but not noticed much, and that did him no harm either.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“How can knowing something be sinful?”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“War asks many people to do unreasonable things.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“We’ll find a way. There is a way. We just don’t know it yet. Don’t stop….”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Speaking for myself, I’ve always found great intelligence in a woman a highly attractive feature.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Nothing is just anything.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Once we use the word spiritual, we don’t have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“The steamy, noisy kitchen was the safest place in the world, it seemed to him. Safety had never been anything to think about before; it was something you took for granted, like his mother’s endless, effortless, generous food, and the fact that there would always be hot plates ready to serve it on.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Then it started to rain, so she went inside and made some coffee and did what she had never done in her life: tried the newspaper crossword. “What a stupid exercise,” said her dæmon after five minutes. “Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“consciousness is a perfectly normal property of matter, like mass or anbaric charge; that there is a field of consciousness which pervades the entire universe, and which makes itself apparent most fully – we believe – in human beings.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“he came awake like someone struggling to swim to the surface of a lake of laudanum, where the strongest delights were the deepest and there was nothing above but cold and fear and duty.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“At one point he seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it and holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon; at any rate he looked like a lord in his own domain, with nothing to fear and all the silvery night to enjoy.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you: we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“It's about wrong and less wrong. Bad and less bad.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“How can the weather have a state of mind?” said Papadimitriou. The gyptian said, “You think the weather is only out there? It’s in here too,” and tapped his head. “So do you mean that the weather’s state of mind is just our state of mind?” “Nothing is just anything,” the gyptian replied, and would say no more.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Did you seriously think for one moment,” she said, sounding fierce now, “that I would let this little baby, who has been given into our care, be taken away by three strangers on the strength of a single piece of paper? Three men who practically forced their way into this holy building without any invitation? Who frightened the oldest and the least well of us with threats and weapons—yes, weapons—waving your guns in her face? Who do you think you are? What do you think this place is? The sisters have been giving care and hospitality here for eight hundred years. Think what that means. Am I going to abandon all our holy obligations because three bullies in uniform come shouldering their way in and try to frighten us? And for a helpless baby not six months old? Now go. Get out and don’t come back.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Malcolm stared back calmly, though he felt anything but calm: if that monkey had a name, it might be Malice, he thought.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“The visitor was about the same age as Hallgrimsson, but he looked older; certainly his face bore the marks of more experience and trial than did the professor’s smooth cheeks and unlined brow. He was a gyptian of the people of Eastern Anglia, a man called Coram van Texel, who had travelled much in the far north. He was lean, of middle height, and his movements were careful, as if he thought he might break something inadvertently, as if he were unused to delicate glasses and fine tableware. His dæmon, a large cat with fur of a thousand beautiful autumnal colours, stalked the corners of the study before leaping gracefully to Coram’s lap. Ten years after this evening, and again ten years after that, Lyra would marvel at the colouring of that dæmon’s fur”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“If I told you half of what he's done to keep us alive and safe, well, you wouldn't imagine it could be true.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“She had been hurt too when they pulled apart; one day, perhaps, they'd be able to talk about it....”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“The inn was an old stone-built rambling comfortable sort of place. There was a terrace above the river, where peacocks (one called Norman and the other called Barry) stalked among the drinkers, helping themselves to snacks without the slightest hesitation and occasionally lifting their heads to utter ferocious and meaningless screams. There was a saloon bar where the gentry, if college scholars count as gentry, took their ale and smoked their pipes; there was a public bar where watermen and farm labourers sat by the fire or played darts, or stood at the bar gossiping, or arguing, or simply getting quietly drunk; there was a kitchen where the landlord’s wife cooked a great joint every day, with a complicated arrangement of wheels and chains turning a spit over an open fire; and there was a potboy called Malcolm Polstead.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“But what matters is not the similarities your imagination finds, but the similarities that are implicit in the image, and they are not necessarily the same. I have noticed that the more imaginative readers are often the less successful. Their minds leap to what they think is there rather than waiting with patience. And what matters most of all is where the chosen meaning comes in the hierarch of meaning, you see, and for that there is no alternative to the books. That is why the only alethiometers we know about are kept in or by great libraries.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“I've just read it so much, it memorized itself.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“The effect was as if each teacher was being examined by a fierce inspector, and each lesson became an ordeal in which not the pupils but the teachers were being tested.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Write some letters.” “Don’t want to.” “Bake a cake to give that boy a slice of.” “He might come while I’m still making it, and then we’d have to make conversation for an hour and a half till it was ready. Anyway, we’ve got some biscuits.” “Well, I give up,” he said.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“Its purpose was to defend democracy in this country, first of all. Then to defend the principles of freedom of thought and expression.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage

“with no more weight than a shadow.”
― Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage