Philip Pullman Quotes
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Theatre is one of those things that children will love if they're helped to get there to see it. No child will find his or her own way to the theatre.
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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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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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Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet.
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Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.
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I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!
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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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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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Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
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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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Seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.
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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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'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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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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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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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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I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.
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For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.
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One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently.
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In Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.
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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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'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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Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.
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Every government secretary of state or minister should jolly well go to the theatre, go to a concert, go to an art gallery, go to a museum, become somehow interested in these things. If they're not interested, they shouldn't be in government, full stop.