Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religio… - Philip Pullman

We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us, there is no elsewhere.

Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the knife, it is yours." "I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with it." "You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are the bearer now." "I thought you said you was," said Lyra. "My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell...

On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents, in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver.

She was a person of sixteen or so — alone, and uncommonly pretty. She was slender and pale, and dressed in mourning, with a black bonnet under which she tucked back a straying twist of blond hair that the wind had teased loose. She had unusually dark brown eyes for one so fair. Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man.