"his dark materials" notable snips

[prismaticbleed]

his dark materials

because this book changed my life.

 

 

p102

 

"Nothing will hold my hand… save only judgment. To strike a day too soon is as bad as striking a hundred miles off. To be sure, there's warm passion behind what you say. But if you give in to that passion, friends, you're doing what I always warned you against: you're placing the satisfaction of your own feelings above the work you have to do. Our work here is first rescue, then punishment. It isn't gratification for upset feelings. Our feelings don't matter. If we rescue the kids but we can't punish the Gobblers, we've done the main task. But if we aim to punish the Gobblers first and by doing so lose the chance of rescuing the kids, we've failed. But be assured of this… when the time comes to punish, we shall strike such a blow as will make their hearts faint and fearful… don't you worry that [my] heart is too soft to strike a blow when the time comes. And the time will come under judgment. Not under passion."

 

 

p124

 

"[Daemons] always have settled, and they always will. That's part of growing up. There'll come a time when you'll be tired of his changing about, and you'll want a settled kind of form for him… there's compensations for a settled form… knowing what kind of person you are. Take old Belisaria. She's a seagull, and that means I'm a kind of seagull too. I'm not grand and splendid nor beautiful, but I'm a tough old thing and I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food and company. That's worth knowing, that is... there's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a daemon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learnt o be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."

 

 

p193

 

… every daemon was free. Some were trying to speak, and they clustered around her feet and even tried to pluck at her leggings, thoiugh the taboo held them back. She could tell why, poor things; they missed the heavy solid warmth of their humans' bodies; just as Pantalaimon would have done, they longed to press themselves against a heartbeat.

 

 

p203-7

 

It was as if an alien hand had reached right inside where no hand had a right to be, and wrenched at something deep and precious. She felt faint, dizzy, sick, disgusted, limp with shock. One of the men was holding Pantalaimon… poor Pan was shaking, nearly out of his mind with horror and disgust… he curved towards his Lyra as she reached with both hands for him… they fell still. They were captured. She felt those hands… it wasn't allowed… not supposed to touch… wrong… she could hardly breathe… every second of the way she watched Pantalaimon, and he reached for her, and their eyes never left each other.

 

…She was free, and Pantalaimon sprung toward her like a spark of lightning, and she clutched him to her fierce breast, and he dug his wildcat claws into her flesh, and every stab of pain was dear to her. "Never! Never! Never!" she cried, and backed against the wall to defend him to their death… for a second or so more, he was still her own dear soul… Pantalaimon pulled free of the monkey's solicitous paws and stumbled into Lyra's arms. "Never, never," she breathed into his fur, and pressed his beating heart to hers… Pantalaimon simply lay against her bare skin, inside her clothes, loving her back to herself…

 

 

p210

 

"You see, your daemon's a wonderful friend and companion when you're young, but at the age we call puberty… daemons bring all sort of troublesome thoughts and feelings, and that's what lets Dust in. A quick little operation before that, and you're never troubled again. And your daemon stays with you, only… just not connected. Like a … like a wonderful pet, if you like. The best pet in the world…" even if Lyra hadn't known them to be lies… she would have hated it with a furious passion. Her dear soul, the darling companion of her heart, to be cut away and reduced to a little trotting pet? Lyra nearly blazed with hatred…

 

 

p259-60

 

Drops of hot blood were flying through the air: one landed on Lyra's furs, and she pressed her hand to it like a token of love… Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away. So she looked…

 

 

p272-7

 

"Dust… seemed to cluster where human beings were… and especially to adults. Children too, but not nearly as much until their daemons have taken a fixed form… the Magisterium decided that Dust was the physical evidence for original sin."

 

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they saw the true forms of their daemons, and spoke with them. But when the man and the woman knew their own daemons, they knew that a great change had come upon them, for until that moment it had seemed that they were one with all the creaures of the earth and the air, and there was no difference between them. And they saw the difference, and they knew good and evil, and they were ashamed…"

 

"But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one; you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it."

 

"Dust… was a physical proof that something happened when innocence changed into experience… 'For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return…'"

 

"Everyone was frightened of [Dust]; no one knew what to do; and when she offered to direct an investigation, the Magisterium was so relieved that they backed her with money and resources of all kinds… Why did the church let them do anything like that? Because there was a precedent… the Church wouldn't flinch at the idea of a little cut… so much more hygienic than the old methods… it would be gentle by comparison… it isn't. Of course not. That's why they had to hide away… in darkness and obscurity. And why the Church was glad to have someone like your mother in charge. Who could doubt someone so charming, so well-connected, so sweet and reasonable?"

 

"That other universe… one of uncountable billions of parallel worlds… no one ever thought it would be possible to cross from one universe to another… we learned to see the world up there. If light can cross, so can we. And we had to learn to see it… every other universe came about as a result of possibility. Take the example of tossing a coin… if it comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart… one moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except thhat other worlds have sprung into being, on which they did happen."

 

"Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to destroy it. Death is going to die."

 

 

p364

 

"They’re conscious… Shadows are particles of consciousness… they know we're here. They answer back. And… you can't see them unless you expect to. Unless you put your mind in a certain state. You have to be confident and relaxed at the same time. You have to be… 'capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact or reason.' You have to get into that state of mind."

 

 

p402

 

Nor did she know how far [the angels'] awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.

 

She felt a fierce joy possessing her… she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat daemon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.

 

 

p432-5

 

"Stop… relax. Don't push. This is a subtle knife, not a heavy sword. You're gripping it too tight. Loosen your fingers. Let your mind wander down your arm to your wrist and then into the handle, and out along the blade. No hurry, go gently, don't force it. Just wander. Then along to the very tip, where the edge is sharpest of all. You become the tip of the knife. Just do that now. Go there and feel that, and then come back." …Will's body stopped trembling. No less intense, he was focused differently now… the little movements he was making with the tip now looked purposeful instead of random… "Don't force it. Come back now, come back to yourself… this time, when you feel it… make a cut. Don't hesitate. Don't be surprised. Don't drop the knife." …Having felt it once, he knew what to search for again…

 

"So much for opening. Now you must learn to close… feel for the edge as you felt with the knife to begin with. You won't find it unless you put your soul into your fingertips…"

 

"It's your wound. You aren't wrong at all. you're doing it right, but your hand won't let you concentrate on it. I don't know an easy way of getting around that, except maybe if you didn't try to shut it out… you're trying to do two things with your mind, both at once. You're trying to ignore the pain and close that window. I remember when I was reading the alethiometer once when I was frightened… I was still frightened all the time I was reading it. Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out."

 

"First, never open without closing. Second, never let anyone else use the knife. It is yours alone. Third, never use it for a base purpose. Fourth, keep it secret. If there are other rules, I have forgotten them, and if I've forgotten them it is because they don't matter. You have the knife. You are the bearer. You should not be a child. But our world is crumbling, and the mark of the bearer is unmistakable… you have come here for a purpose, and maybe you don't know what that purpose is, but the angels do who brought you here. Go. You are brave, and your friend is clever. And you have the knife. Go."

 

 

P479+

 

Dark matter is conscious? EVIDENTLY.

 

Every single thing about what was happening was impossible. All her education, all her habits of mind, all her sense of herself as a scientist were shrieking at her silently: This is wrong! It isn't happening! You're dreaming! And yet there they were on the screen: her questions, and answers from some other mind…

 

"Angel is the name of their office, not their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is spirit; if you seek the name of their office, it is angel; from what they are, spirit, from what they do, angel."

 

And shadow matter is what we have called spirit?

 

FROM WHAT WE ARE, SPIRIT; FROM WHAT WE DO; MATTER. MATTER AND SPIRIT ARE ONE.

 

 

p493

 

Will whispered… "Pan, am I going to die?…the spell didn't work. I keep losing blood…. it won't stop. I'm frightened…"

 

"Lyra doesn't think you are… she thinks you're the bravest fighter she ever saw, as brave as Iorek Byrnison."

 

"I suppose I better try not to seem frightened, then… I think Lyra's braver than me. I think she's the best friend I ever had."

 

"She thinks that about you as well."

 

 

p538

 

A daemon is not an animal, of course; a daemon is a person. A real cat, face to face with a daemon in cat form, would not be puzzled for a moment. She would see a human being.

 

 

p690

 

"I said I don't know, because I haven't looked clearly at what it is that I'm going to do. At what it means. It frightens me… so I have to think it through. Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. It's very hard."

 

"You must no longer think about your mother… If your mind is divided, the knife will break."

 

 

p743

 

"You just don't know what I have in my head or my heart, do you? …You're not kind, you're not generous, you're not considerate-- you're not cruel, even-- that would be better, if you were cruel, because it'd mean you took us seriously, you didn't just go along with us when it suited you… I can't trust you at all now! …Go ahead! Punish me, since you can! …You got no notion how I feel sad and wicked and sorry about my friend Roger-- you kill people just like that, they don't matter to you-- but it's a torment and a sorrow to me that I never said good-bye to him, and I want to say sorry and make it as good as I can-- you'd never understand that, for all your pride… and if I have to die to do what's proper, then I will, and be happy while I do. I've seen worse than that."

 

 

p781-2

 

"When she spoke just now, you all listened…" "Because it was true… it was feeding us… we couldn't help it… it was true. Because we had no idea that there was anything but wickedness… it brought news of the world and the sun and the wind and the rain… it was true." "Then… instead of seeing only the wickedness and cruelty and greed of the ghosts that come down here, from now on you will have the right to ask all the ghosts to tell you the stories of their lives, and they will have to tell the truth about what they’ve seen and touched and heard and loved and known in the world. Every one of those ghosts has a story…you'll have the right to hear them…"

 

"That's not enough. We want more than that. We had a task under the old dispensation. We had a place and a duty. We fulfilled the Authority's commands diligently, and for that we were honored. Hated and feared, but honored, too. What will happen to our honor now? Why should the ghosts take any notice of us, if they can simply walk out into the world again? We have our pride, and you should not let that be dispensed with. We need an honorable place! We need a duty and a task to do, one that will bring us the respect we deserve!"

 

"You are quite right. Everyone should have a task to do that's important, one that brings them honor, one they can perform with pride. So here is your task, and it's one that only you can do, because you are the guardians and the keepers of this place. Your task will be to guide the ghosts… through the land of the dead to the new opening out into the world. In exchange, they will tell you their stories as a fair and just payment for this guidance."

 

"And we have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things."

 

 

p783-4

 

"When we were alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to Heaven… a place of joy and glory… in a state of bliss. That's what they said. And that's what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, wile all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew. Because the land of the dead isn't a place of reward or a place of punishment. It's a place of nothing. The good come here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in gloom… but now this child has come offering us a way out and I'm going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves… we'll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was."

 

"This is a bitter message… the world we lived in was a vale of corruption and tears. Nothing there could satisfy us. But the Almighty has granted us this blessed place for all eternity… what this evil girl promises is nothing but lies…"

 

Lyra felt bewildered. Was she wrong? Was she making some great mistake? She looked around: gloom and desolation on every side. But she'd been wrong about the appearance of things, trusting Mrs. Coulter because of her beautiful smile and her sweet-scented glamour. It was so easy to get things wrong; and without her daemon to guide her, maybe she was wrong about this, too. But Will was shaking her arm. Then he put his hands to her face and held it roughly. "You know that's not true, just as well as you can feel this. Take no notice! They can all see he's lying, too." …She had to trust her body and the truth of what her senses told her; she knew Pan would have.

 

 

p813-4

 

"Remember this about daemons. The man… had to return to his own world periodically; he could not live permanently in mine. The philosophers… who traveled between worlds for three hundred years or more, found the same thing to be true, and gradually their world weakened and decayed as a result. And then there is what happened to me… I was as fit and healthy as it's possible for a human to be. Then I walked out of my own world by accident, and couldn't find the way back… many years after I arrived there, I was mortally sick. And this is the reason for all those things: your daemon can only live its full life in the world it was born in. Elsewhere it will eventually sicken and die. We can travel, if there are openings into other worlds, but we
can only live in our own… we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere."

 

 

p870

 

"St. Paul talks about spirit and soul and body… three parts in human nature… Angels wish they had bodies. They told me that angels can't understand why we don't enjoy the world more. It would be sort of ecstasy for them to have our flesh and our senses.

 

 

*p871-5*

 

"I used to be a nun… I'd never been out of England. The whole business-- the plane flight, the hotel, the bright sunlight, the foreign languages all around me, the well-known people who were going to speak, and the thought of my own paper… I was keyed up with excitement… and I was so innocent-- you have to remember that. I'd been such a good little girl, I'd gone to Mass regularly, I'd thought I had a vocation for the spiritual life. I wanted to serve God with all my heart. I wanted to take my whole life and offer it up… and place it in front of Jesus to do as he liked with. And I suppose I was pleased with myself. Too much. I was holy and I was clever. Ha! That lasted until, oh, half past nine on the evening of August the tenth, seven years ago… it was the evening after I'd given my paper… I was full of relief and pleasure… and pride, too, no doubt… some of my colleagues were going to a restaurant… normally I'd have made some excuse, but this time I thought, Well, I'm a grown woman… I thought I'd loosen up a bit. I was discovering another side of myself… one that liked the taste of wine and grilled sardines and the feeling of warm air on my skin and the beat of music in the background. I relished it. So we sat down to eat in the garden. I was at the end of a long table under a lemon tree… sitting opposite was a man I'd seen once or twice around the conference… he wasn't handsome. He wasn't a ladies man or a charmer. If he had been, I'd have been shy, I wouldn't have known how to talk to him. But he was nice and clever and funny and it was the easiest thing in the world to sit there in the lantern light under the lemon tree with the scent of the flowers and the grilled food and the wine, and talk and laugh and feeling myself hoping that he thought I was pretty… what about my vows? What about dedicating my life to Jesus and all that? …It gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

 

And then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff and I suddenly realized that I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back… all at once I was back tasting it for the first time as a young girl. I was twelve years old. I was at a party… this boy-- I didn't know him-- he asked me to dance, and so we had the first dance and then the next, and by that time we were talking… And you know what it is when you like someone, you know it at once; well, I liked him such a lot. And we kept on talking and then there was a birthday cake. And he took a bit of marzipan and he just gently put it in my mouth-- I remember trying to smile, and blushing, and feeling so foolish-- and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan."

 

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on:

 

"And I think it was at that party… that we kissed each other for the first time. It was in a garden… and 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. We saw each other about half a dozen times, no more. And then his parents moved away and I never saw him again. It was such a sweet time, so short… but there it was. I'd known it. I had been to China."

 

It was the strangest thing: Lyra knew exactly what she meant, and half an hour earlier she would have had no idea at all. And inside her, that rich house with all its doors open and all its rooms lit stood waiting, quiet, expectant.

 

"And at half past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal, someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I thought, Will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise never to fall into temptation again? Will anyone be the better for making me miserable? And the answer came back-- no. No one will. There's no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn't know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all. Either way I felt free and lonely and I didn't know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I'd even swallowed it… I could tell he knew something had happened. I couldn't tell him there and then; it was too strange and private almost for me… so that was how I stopped being a nun… Everyone, from the Mother Superior to the priests to my parents-- they were so upset and reproachful… I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn't. But in another way it was easy, because it made sense. For the first time ever I felt I was doing something with all of my nature and not only a part of it. So I was lonely for a while, but then I got used to it…"

 

"You said one of the reasons you became a scientist was that you wouldn't have to think about good and evil. Did you think about them when you were a nun?"

 

"Hmm. No. But I knew what I should think: it was whatever the Church taught me to think. And when I did science, I had to think about other things altogether. So I never had to think about them for myself at all."

 

"When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?"

"No. But 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. 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."

 

"Do you miss God?"

 

"Yes, terribly. And I still do. And what I miss most is the sense of being connected to the whole of the universe. I used to feel I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of creation. But if he's not here, then…"

 

 

p880

 

They were trying to hold back the Dust flood. They were striving to put some barriers up against the terrible stream: wind, moon, clouds, leaves, grass, all those lovely things were crying out and hurling themselves into the struggle to keep the shadow particles in this universe, which they so enriched. Matter loved Dust. It didn't want to see it go. That was the meaning of this night, and that was Mary's meaning, too. 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 again, louder: "There is now!"

 

As she looked again at the clouds and the moon in the Dust flow, they looked as frail and doomed as a dam of little twigs and tiny pebbles trying to hold back the Mississippi. But they were trying, all the same. They'd go on trying till the end of everything.

 

 

p884

 

"Usually they end up something that fits. I mean something like your real nature. Like if your daemon's a dog, that means you like doing what you're told, and knowing who's boss, and following orders, and pleasing people who are in charge… so it helps to know what you're like and to find what you're good at…"

 

 

*P889-90

 

Will and Lyra followed the stream into the wood, walking carefully, saying little, until they were in the very center. There was a little clearing in the middle of the grove, which was floored with soft grass and moss-covered rocks. The branches laced across overhead, almost shutting out the sky and letting through little moving spangles and sequins of sunlight, so that everything was dappled with gold and silver. And it was quiet. Only the trickle of the stream, and the occasional rustle of leaves high up in a little curl of breeze, broke the silence. Will put down the package of food; Lyra put down her little rucksack. There was no sign of the daemon shadows anywhere. They were completely alone. They took off their shoes and socks and sat down on the mossy rocks at the edge of the stream, dipping their feet in the cold water and feeling the shock of it invigorate their blood.

 

"I'm hungry," Will said. "Me too," said Lyra, though she was also feeling more than that, something subdued and pressing and half-happy and half-painful, so that she wasn't quite sure what it was. They unfolded the cloth and ate some bread and cheese. For some reason their hands were slow and clumsy, and they hardly tasted the food… then Lyra took one of those little red fruits. With a fast-beating heart, she turned to him and said, "Will…"

 

And she lifted the fruit gently into his mouth.

 

She could see from his eyes that he knew at once what she meant, and that he was too joyful to speak. Her fingers were still at his lips, and he felt them tremble, and he put his own hand up to hold hers there, and then neither of them could look; they were confused; they were brimming with happiness. Like two moths clumsily bumping together, with no more weight than that, their lips touched. Then before they knew how it happened, they were clinging together, blindly pressing their faces toward each other.

 

"Like Mary said," he whispered, "you know straight away when you like someone-- when you were asleep, on the mountain, before she took you away, I told Pan--"

 

"I heard, " she whispered, "I was awake and I wanted to tell you the same and now I know what I must have felt all the time: I love you, Will, I love you--"

 

The word love set his nerves ablaze. All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her body and her warm, honey-fragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted of the little red fruit. Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world was holding its breath.

 

 

*p895+

 

"In leaving you both on the shores of the dead, Lyra and Will did something… that witches have done… there's a region of our north land, a desolate, abominable place, where a great catastrophe happened in the childhood of the world, and where nothing has lived since. No daemons can enter it. To become a witch, a girl must cross it alone and leave her daemon behind. You know the suffering they must undergo. But having done it, they find that their daemons were not severed… they are still one whole being; but now they can roam free, and go to far places and see strange things and bring back knowledge… you must help your humans, not hinder them. You must help them ad guide them and encourage them toward wisdom. That's what daemons are for."

 

…"I have no name. I didn't know I was born until I was torn away from his heart."

 

…"You have been keeping away from Will and Lyra to punish them. I know why… my Kaisa did just the same after I came through the desolate barrens. But he came to me eventually, because we loved each other still."

 

 

p899-900

 

"They're in love… they've only just discovered it…"

 

"Something happened today… something tiny but crucial… if you wanted to divert a mighty ricer into a different course, and all you had was a dingle pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this.