Monday 22 March 2021

The book of dust - My favourite passages.


Volume Two. 

 P151- How absurd it was,that the two of them were one person, and yet they found it so hard to talk together or even endure each other's company in silence.More and more she found herself whispering to a phantom, to her idea of what Will was like now in that unreachable world of his.

P190- When the old man rowed you out into the dark I felt torn open,he said, his voice shaking. It nearly killed me.But the worst thing, worse than the pain, was the abandonment. That you should just leave me there alone. Do you realise how I gazed and stared and called out to you and tried so hard to keep you in sight as you moved off into the dark? The last thing I could see was your hair, the very last thing I could see till the dark swallowed it up. I'd have been willing to have just that, just a little gleam of your hair, just the faintest patch of light that was you, as long as it stayed there so I could see it. I'd have been waiting there still. Just to know you were there, and I could see you. I'd never have moved away as long as I could see that.

P190- I hate every part of me that isn't you.

P191- Sometimes I think if I could kill myself without killing you, I might do it.

P191- It's not just what you did then. Its what you're doing now. I told you this the other day;You're killing yourself and me, with the way you're thinking. YOU'RE IN A WORLD FULL OF COLOUR AND YOU WANT TO SEE IT IN BLACK AND WHITE. 

P191- Can't you see the emptiness of the worlds they describe,

P191- There's no room for them in the universe you want to believe in.

P200- We'd been quarreling,it was horrible. We just couldn't agree about important things. It was like being split in half.

P267- He thought how much he loved Lyra and how much he missed her, her warmth, her hands, and how much she would have loved to be here with him watching.

P267- Something had made Lyra immune to the intoxication of night beauty such as this. Something had robbed her of that vision, and he would find it and bring it back to her, and they would never be apart again, and stay together as long as they lived.

P284- It was like a dam breaking, it was like a flood

P285 - There were no tears left to weep.

P290 - And its the difference between good and evil. Evil can be unscrupulous, and good can't. Evil has nothing to stop it doing what it wants, while good has one hand tied behind its back. To do the things it needs to do to win, it'd have to become evil to do 'em.

P295- This was like talking into a void.

P309- She knew-it was a memory. All the same,she thought, it was the best thing she had. Could she really ever let it go?

P395- Most people are weak and stupid and easily led. Only a few are capable of doing anything original.

P395- You're expecting the sun to describe shadows. The sun has never seen a shadow. 

P472- We quarreled. I had no idea it would lead to this. I didn't think it was possible. But we didn't speak for a long time, and one day he just vanished."how painful for you" "oh the pain...yes, but the hardest thing was just having no one to talk to".

P479- Small things,perhaps, but a hundred of them, and they kept coming. Her daemon had seen all that, and disliked it, and then he'd had enough. 

P479- She was enticing monsters out of the darkness of herself.

P522- I begged, I pleaded with him, but he was lost in his madness. I said we would both die if he didn't stop, but nothing would make him stay with me. 

P550- But he was a human being,or part of one, and he felt just as Lyra did. unhappy and guilty, and wretchedly lonely.If he ever saw Lyra again he would run towards her, and he imagined her bending to greet him, arms wide, and they'd both swear eternal love and promise never to part again, and it would all go back to the way it used to be. At the same time, he knew it wouldn't. But he had to hold on to something in the dark nights, and imagination was all he had. 

P567- You need to look like someone who's suffering from a depression of the spirits, because that makes people turn away. They don't like looking at suffering. But its very easy to become depressed by mimicking it. Don't fall into that trap. Your daemon would tell you that,if he was here. Your body affects your mind. You need to act, not be.

P659-The authority never wishes for his creation to be split apart. You were created with a daemon, and he is somewhere now longing to be reunited with you. When that happens, nature will be restored a little, and the authority will be happy. 

P661- Why would any daemon pretend to belong to someone else? They're us, They're part of us. They must miss us just as we miss them. 

P676- We shall be treading on the borders of the invisible. 

 and just a couple from volume one. 

P207-This little room was where he felt how big the world could be.

P524-The pain she was feeling was so deep it seemed to inhabit every atom of her.