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Philip Pullman Quotes | Quotes said by Philip Pullman

  • Philip Pullman Quote #1

    A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #2

    A graduate of Oxford University with a degree in

  • Philip Pullman Quote #3

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

  • Philip Pullman Quote #4

    All good things pass away.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #5

    All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #6

    All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

  • Philip Pullman Quote #7

    And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #8

    And Pantalaimon didn't ask why, because he knew; and he didn't ask whether Lyra loved Roger more than him, because he knew the true answer to that, too. And he knew that if he spoke, she wouldn't be able to resist; so the dæmon held himself quiet so as not to distress the human who was abandoning him, and now they were both pretending that it wouldn't hurt, it wouldn't be long before they were together again, it was all for the best. But Will knew that the little girl was tearing her heart out of her breast.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #9

    And Will knew what it was to see his dæmon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyra's fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his dæmon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered the world of the dead; and the sweet rightfulness of her coming back to him at the edge of the moonlight dunes.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #10

    Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #11

    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 book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #12

    At Gabriel College there was a very holy object on the high altar of the Oratory, covered with a black velvet cloth... At the height of the invocation the Intercessor lifted the cloth to reveal in the dimness a glass dome inside which there was something too distant to see, until he pulled a string attached to a shutter above, letting a ray of sunlight through to strike the dome exactly. Then it became clear: a little thing like a weathervane, with four sails black on one side and white on the other, began to whirl around as the light struck it. It illustrated a moral lesson, the Intercessor explained, for the black of ignorance fled from the light, whereas the wisdom of white rushed to embrace it.

    {Alluding to William Crookes's radiometer.}

  • Philip Pullman Quote #13

    because he's Will

  • Philip Pullman Quote #14

    Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #15

    Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #16

    But Balthamos couldn't tell; he only knew that half his heart had been extinguished. He couldn't keep still: he flew up again, scouring the sky as if to seek out Baruch in this cloud or that, calling, crying, calling; and then he'd be overcome with guilt, and fly down to urge Will to hide and keep quiet, and promise to watch over him tirelessly; and then the pressure of his grief would crush him to the ground, and he'd remember every instance of kindness and courage that Baruch had ever shown, and there were thousands, and he'd forgotten none of them; and he'd cry that a nature so gracious could ever be snuffed out, and he'd soar into the skies again, casting about in every direction, reckless and wild and stricken, cursing the air, the clouds, the stars.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #17

    But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?

    Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk 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.

    But it didn't seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #18

    Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #19

    Everything about this is embarrassing she said. D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #20

    Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #21

    Finally, I’d say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don’t be afraid to be superstitious. If you have a lucky pen, use it. If you speak with more force and wit when wearing one red sock and one blue one, dress like that. When I’m at work I’m highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale, and that we tell it more successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what’s more, they’re completely amoral: like the air-spirits who helped Strong Hans escape from the cave, the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever has the ring, whoever is telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to tell a story is a human imagination, I reply, ‘Of course, and this is the way my imagination works.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #22

    For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #23

    Fritz had to stop himself from interrupting when Karl spoke about the difficulty of working. Stories are just as hard as clocks to put together, and they can go wrong just as easily--as we shall soon see with Fritz's own story in a page or two. Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #24

    He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #25

    He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different world, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #26

    He sat down and collected his thoughts. They were quite easy to collect, because there weren't very many of them, and they all concerned the same subject--what a burden his life was.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #27

    Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #28

    Her upbringing had given her an independence of mind that made her more like a girl of today than one of her own time - which was why she had walked out, and why she was not daunted by the prospect of being alone.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #29

    I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

  • Philip Pullman Quote #30

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

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