Philip Pullman Quotes
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I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.
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Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
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'And then what?' said her Dæmon sleepily 'build what?''The Republic of Heaven.'
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The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone through into their poor starved eyes.
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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.
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Had she thought there was no meaning in life, no purpose, when God had gone? Yes, she had thought that. 'Well, there is now,' she said aloud, and again, louder: 'There is now!'
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The arts are beyond price; they're beyond value. They're of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being.
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Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.
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Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.
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In Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.
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You're lacking a human dimension of some sort if you're not interested in the arts.
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Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.
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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, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.
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For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.
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You cannot change what you are, only what you do.
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'But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?' 'Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold 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.'
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Everyone in the book's ecology, starting with the author and including the publisher, the distributor, the booksellers, the libraries, and ending up with the reader, should benefit from a healthy book trade.
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Possibly because I earn my living as a writer of fiction and possibly because it's just the sensible thing to do, I like to pay attention to everything I come across, including things that evoke the uncanny or the mysterious.
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Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing. She can be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded, she would have been safe for a little longer. I would have liked to spare her a journey to the North.
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She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.
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'Doesn’t it scare you, having your death close by all the time?' said Lyra. 'Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I'd be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.'
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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. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.
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I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with, but I don't like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It's damaging, and it should change.
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Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.