I remember. He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in thi… - Philip Pullman

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven.

...because where we are is always the most important place.

If you're going to make a living at this business - more importantly, if you're going to write anything that will last - you have to realise that a lot of the time, you're going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs.

Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries.

She was afraid of John Faa, and what she was most afraid of was his kindness.