She thought thought that without noticing that she'd thought it, and she soon forgot it, and only remembered it much later.
I was aching—all my body was aching for him, and I could tell he felt the same—and we were both almost too shy to move. Almost. But one of us did and then without any interval between—it was like a quantum leap, suddenly—we were kissing each other, and oh, it was more than China, it was paradise.
If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?
I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.
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.
Well," said Mary, "love is ferocious, too.
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.
We'll find a way. There is a way. We just don't know it yet. Don't stop….
Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.
All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.
No,' he said, 'memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didn't know I could ever love anything so much...
That is a question with too complicated an answer.
He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror.
Maybe so, he said, but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.
She felt loose and free and light in a universe without purpose.
Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.
She was learning that if she pretended to be weak and frightened, and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she could turn aside all manner of pressing questions.
Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.
Hope holds you fast like an anchor so you don't give way.
Both of them sat silent on the moss-covered rock in the slant of sunlight through the old pines and thought how many tiny chances had conspired to bring them to this place. Each of those chances might have gone a different way.
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. They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.
There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time.
The world is a cruel place sometimes, and warm-hearted people do most of the good in it. And much of the time, they're mocked and scorned for their pains.
There is time, and there is what is beyond time. There is darkness, and there is light. There is the world and the flesh, and there is God.
Whatever happened behind now was simply that: behind. Lyra had left it. She felt she was leaving the world altogether, so remote and intent she was, so high they were climbing, so strange and uncanny was the light that bathed them.
One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.
Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.
As Auden is believed to have said, no poem saved a single Jew from the gas chambers. Never mind. Write the poems anyway. Play the music in spite of that.
Death is going to die.
Whatever Mal says, I believe. So take that fucking smile off your face, you.
There's been terrible things we seen, en't there? And more a coming, more'n likely. So I think I'd rather not know what's in the future. I'll stick to the present.
We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.
People are too complicated to have simple labels.
She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy; she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.
Maybe art itself was a kind of voodoo, possessing you, giving you supernatural power, letting you see in the dark.
When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.
Doesn't it scare you having your death close by all the time?" said Lyra. "Why ever would it? If he's there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.
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.
My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing.
Each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.
His massive, plain, blunt presence was enough to calm them.
Thou shalt not might' reach the head but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart. Also: We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them.
The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.
Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually wracked with pain.
