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Quotations: TSK

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Quotations: The Subtle Knife

A listing of popular quotations from The Subtle Knife, written by Philip Pullman

Thorold, Chapter two:

I've never spoke of it before and I shan't again; I'd be afraid to speak it aloud to you if you weren't a witch and beyond the power of the Church; but that makes sense and nothing else does. He's a-going to find the Authority and kill Him.

Narration, Chapter three:

He wasn't prepared for Lyra's wide-eyed helplessness. He couldn't konw how much of her childhood had been spent running about streets almost identical with these, and how proud she's been of belonging to Jordan College, whose Scholars were the cleverest, whose coffers the richest, whose beauty the most splendid of all. And now it simply wasn't there, and she wasn't Lyra of Jordan anymore; she was a lost little girl in a strange world, belonging nowhere.

Mary Malone, Chapter four:

The computer. We call it the Cave. Shadows on the wall of the Cave, you see, from Plato.

Sir Charles Latrom, Chapter seven:

So that's where you have to go, and I don't care how you do it, but I want that knife. Bring it to me, and you can have the alethiometer. I shall be sorry to lose it, but I'm a man of my word. That's what you have to do: bring me the knife.

Narration, Chapter eight:

He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.

Giacomo Paradisi, Chapter eight:

We thought we knew about bonds. We thought a bond was something negotiable, something that could be bought and sold or exchanged and converted....But about these bonds, we were wrong. We undid them, and we let the Specters in.

Dust, Chapter twelve:

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

John Parry, Chapter fourteen:

The Oblation Board and the Spectres of Indifference are both bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Spectres feast on it, but it's Dust they're both obsessed by.

Lee Scoresby, Chapter fourteen:

Because, Dr. Grumman, or John Parry, or whatever name you take up in whatever world you end up in, you be aware of this: I love that little child like a daughter. If I'd had a child of my own, I couldn't love her more. And if you break that oath, whatever remains of me will pursue whatever remains of you, and you'll spend the rest of eternity wishing you never existed. That's how important that oath is.

Lee Scoresby, Chapter fourteen:

Shame to die with one bullet left, though.

Narration, Chapter fourteen:

Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

John Parry, Chapter fifteen:

There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time....

John Parry, Chapter fifteen:

'The knife,' he went on after a minute, 'they never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God.'

John Parry, Chapter fifteen:

Then you are a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.

Will Parry, Chapter fifteen:

You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true? He was my father and neither of us knew it till the second you killed him! Witch, I wait all my life and come all this way and I find him at last, and you kill him....