His Dark Materials: The Complete Collection: now a major BBC TV series

was a doorway into the spirit world – they’d known about it for centuries – part of the initiation of a medicine-man involved going through and bringing back a trophy

he was no match for the bland and vacuous docility Lyra could command when she wanted to;

fierce attention.

Was there only one world after all, which spent its time dreaming of others?

A chill ran down her back, and mouse-shaped Pantalaimon shivered in her pocket. She shook herself; there were mysteries enough without imagining more.

That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

It was worth living a difficult life, if you had a great aim like that. So

And almost at once, it seemed (though he’d been asleep for nearly three hours) he woke up knowing two things simultaneously. First, he knew where the case was. And second, he knew that the men were downstairs, opening the kitchen door.

She sipped her chocolatl, which was thin and weak; how like these tedious priests, she thought, to take their self-righteous abstinence out on their visitors too.