“She starkly sees her inanimate future blocked out before her right through to her own end—without him... ...and worst of all, she knows she will be asked about him and be called upon to talk about him and tell the story again and again...her jaws will work without end with all that talking her jaws will chew up the ravel of all her remaining life, telling the same story until it becomes bare and alien and something blunt to her; more the belonging of other people, and no longer hers. Now she has to live ordinarily...she's going to have to numb herself if she's going to go on—no going on from this point without getting numb.”

“Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.”

“Toy is talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories that crisscross and contradict and dead end.Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.”

“But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always.”

“She could no longer see herself without him somewhere in her life, & there was no one she could even imagine being her 1st besides him.”

“Livia nodded. Seeing him puttering around in her kitchen, turning on the familiar faucet, solidified her feeling of destiny. She knew, staring at his back, that he would not go hungry again. She would have him, warm and safe, with her every day. It was perfectly clear. She would need to talk with her father. It was time for her to be on her own.”