“I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me...”

“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was ...”

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”

“I cant bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel, she continued. Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worseto be tortured foreverI thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you...”

“Thats the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”

“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.”

“I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

“People don't want other people to be people.”

“I don't subscribe to labels. Unless I'm labeling other people.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”