Philip Pullman Quotes

181 quotes in 2513 categories

• If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages,…
• That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety…
• I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.
• I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he…
• I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good…
• I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may…
• I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.
• I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old,…
• As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy…
• Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what…
• I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.
• We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair...death will sweep through all…
• People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates…
• We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.
• There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to…
• She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold…
• When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
• What is worth having is worth working for.
• There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
• If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of…

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