Writing Quotes by Philip Pullman

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.

— Philip Pullman

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

— Philip Pullman

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing

— Philip Pullman

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.

— Philip Pullman

A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.

— Philip Pullman

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

— Philip Pullman

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best…

— Philip Pullman

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

— Philip Pullman

Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition.

— Philip Pullman

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if…

— Philip Pullman

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

— Philip Pullman

One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them…

— Philip Pullman

If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished…

— Philip Pullman

For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening…

— Philip Pullman

I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and…

— Philip Pullman

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we…

— Philip Pullman

Possibly because I earn my living as a writer of fiction and possibly because it's just the sensible thing to do, I…

— Philip Pullman

The e-book revolution has made it very easy to pay writers a good deal less than what their work is worth. I…

— Philip Pullman

If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If…

— Philip Pullman

There is time, and there is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing…

— Philip Pullman

“Creation, whether it's writing, painting or whatever, is essentially despotic and autocratic in nature, because it's the work of one mind and…

— Philip Pullman

One of the ways in which writers most show their inventiveness is in the things they tell us about how they write.…

— Philip Pullman

If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I…

— Philip Pullman

“It’s important to put it like that: not “I am a writer,” but rather “I write stories.” If you put the emphasis…

— Philip Pullman

My mother married again after my father's death - another Royal Air Force officer, and a very different kind of man. We…

— Philip Pullman

I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd…

— Philip Pullman

“There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children’s book.…

— Philip Pullman

“there was a sort of embarrassment about storytelling that struck home powerfully about one hundred years ago, at the beginning of modernism.…

— Philip Pullman

“I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what…

— Philip Pullman

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the…

— Philip Pullman

“There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.…

— Philip Pullman

“in writing like this, he was letting truth from beyond time into history, and thus making history the handmaid of posterity and…

— Philip Pullman

I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.

— Philip Pullman

As Jane Austen might have put it: It is a truth universally acknowledged that young protagonists in search of adventure must ditch…

— Philip Pullman

“I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding…

— Philip Pullman

Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the…

— Philip Pullman

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it…

— Philip Pullman

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's…

— Philip Pullman

This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to…

— Philip Pullman