Philip Pullman Quotes

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

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 of the old.

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

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

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 and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would.

Once upon a time' lasts forever.

Imagination is a form of seeing

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

We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

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

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

And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.

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

No one has the right to live without being shocked.

We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.

A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do.

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

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

Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.

You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

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

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.

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

Teachers often make the mistake of thinking they're the boss of the class; they're not. The boss of the class is sitting down there somewhere.

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

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

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

...because where we are is always the most important place.

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 and the immense silence of the North.

It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have it as a gift? What is worth having is worth working for.

This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story.

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.

Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.

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.

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism

When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.

The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.

You going to be a scientist when you grow up?” That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.

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 get them, if the good books won't supply them.

There’s been terrible things we seen, en’t there? And more a coming, more’n likely. So I think I’d rather not know what’s in the future. I’ll stick to the present.