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.
Las propias palabras, que no son cosas, que sólo las designan lo mejor que pueden, y designándolas las modelan, incluso las que sirvieron de manera ejemplar, suponiendo que tal pudiera suceder en alguna ocasión, son millones de veces usadas y otras tantas desechadas, y después nosotros, humildes, con el rabo entre las piernas, como el perro Encontrado cuando la vergüenza lo encoge, tenemos que ir a buscarlas nuevamente, barro pisado que también ellas son, amasado y masticado, deglutido y restituido.
And that's what we'll do every day. If you or your friends spray-paint obscenities on our walls, we'll scrub them off, and the people will come. if you break our windows, we'll fix them, and the people will come. If you hurt us, we'll wash off the blood, slap on some bandages and the people will come...any wound you inflict, we'll stitch up. We're not going to stop, no matter what you do. This work is too important. Too many lives are at stake.