Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. “Well, there is now,” she said aloud, and aga… - Philip Pullman

He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren't very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject — what a burden his life was.

On an unseasonably, uncomfortably, unnaturally warm day in mid-October I sit here trying not to think about global warming. But it's difficult. Is this fear going to pass away like the other fears I remember — nuclear war, overpopulation leading to mass starvation, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain? Well, those problems haven't gone away exactly. The new one just seems bigger than all the rest.

Was there only one world after all which spent its time dreaming of others?