quotes by Philip Pullman

"We don't need a list 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."
— Philip Pullman

"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 well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them."
— Philip Pullman

"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 (His Dark Materials)

"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, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites."
— Philip Pullman

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

"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."
— Philip Pullman

"...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. 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... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3) (His Dark Materials))

"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."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"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 is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup."
— Philip Pullman

"People are too complicated to have simple labels."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"I am a religious person, although I am not a believer."
— Philip Pullman

"'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 looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.'"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon."
— Philip Pullman

"I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer."
— Philip Pullman

"Writer's block…a lot of howling nonsense would be avoided if, in every sentence containing the word WRITER, that word was taken out and the word PLUMBER substituted; and the result examined for the sense it makes. Do plumbers get plumber's block? What would you think of a plumber who used that as an excuse not to do any work that day?

The fact is that writing is hard work, and sometimes you don't want to do it, and you can't think of what to write next, and you're fed up with the whole damn business. Do you think plumbers don't feel like that about their work from time to time? Of course there will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP. I like the reply of the composer Shostakovich to a student who complained that he couldn't find a theme for his second movement. “Never mind the theme! Just write the movement!” he said.

Writer's block is a condition that affects amateurs and people who aren't serious about writing. So is the opposite, namely inspiration, which amateurs are also very fond of. Putting it another way: a professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are. "
— Philip Pullman

"'That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.'
They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious."
— Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1))

"because he's Will"
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"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."
— Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3))

"I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."
— Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass)

"You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us."
— Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1))