# Quote — Philip Pullman, Northern Lights: His Dark Materials 1

> It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive... Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.

- Author: [Philip Pullman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman.md)
- Book: [Northern Lights: His Dark Materials 1](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/northern-lights-his-dark-materials-1.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Pullman#Northern_Lights_(1995)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/northern-lights-his-dark-materials-1/it-lay-heavily

## More from this book

> "That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?"
>
> "It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust."
>
> Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/northern-lights-his-dark-materials-1/that-light-said.md)

> "But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?"
>
> "Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/northern-lights-his-dark-materials-1/but-suppose-your.md)

> Think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn’t be imagined without it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-pullman/northern-lights-his-dark-materials-1/think-of-adam.md)