110+ Philip Pullman Quotes On Books, Fantasy And Imagination

Philip Pullman is a British writer of novels, short stories, and plays. He is best known for his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, which consists of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Pullman is also the author of the fantasy trilogy The Book of Dust, which is set in the same universe as His Dark Materials. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Philip Pullman on love, books, fantasy.

Top 10 Philip Pullman Quotes

1. True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.
2. You cannot change what you are, only what you do.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
7. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.
8. 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.
9. Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.
10. For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

Philip Pullman Short Quotes

• Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
• For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.
• because he's Will
• We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
• Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.
• No one has the right to live without being shocked.
• And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.
• Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same
• I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.
• 'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.

Philip Pullman Quotes About Love

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

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. — Philip Pullman

Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it. — Philip Pullman

And barely ten minutes later the soft sound of wingbeats came to their ears, and Balthamos stood up eagerly. The next moment, the two angels were embracing, and Will, gazing into the flames, saw their mutual affection. More than affection: they loved each other with a passion. — Philip Pullman

...his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects. — Philip Pullman

To get the best out of life here ...Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again. — Philip Pullman

No,' he said, 'memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didn't know I could ever love anything so much. — Philip Pullman

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

Philip Pullman Quotes About Books

Once upon a time' lasts forever. — Philip Pullman

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. — 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

The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind; it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity. — Philip Pullman

We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. — 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

My books are about killing God. — Philip Pullman

I got a book token for Christmas and exchanged it for a book called A History of Art, and that book (which I still have-battered and falling to pieces) became more precious to me than any Bible. — Philip Pullman

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. — Philip Pullman

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence. — Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Quotes About Imagination

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it. — Philip Pullman

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

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. — Philip Pullman

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason. — Philip Pullman

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current. — Philip Pullman

Imagination is a form of seeing — Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Quotes About Writing

If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames. — Philip Pullman

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

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

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose. — Philip Pullman

There is time, and there is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God. — Philip Pullman

Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Quotes About Write

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. — Philip Pullman

A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are. — Philip Pullman

Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I’ll write Ulysses.” — Philip Pullman

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

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

Philip Pullman Quotes About Story

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions. — Philip Pullman

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

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. — Philip Pullman

The state of mind which I put myself when I tell a story is one in which superstition flourishes very easily. And I welcome that because it helps me. — Philip Pullman

The way you speak of the characters in your story shows what you think of the values of conservatives‚ or evolution, for example. It shows where your moral center is. So you are in the message business whether you like it or not. — Philip Pullman

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. When I tell the story of Cinderella, the sprite does not want me to make it into an allegory of the fall of communism. The sprite would be unhappy if I did that. — Philip Pullman

I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. — Philip Pullman

It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, "Make this a feminist story!" I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons. — Philip Pullman

I'm with the Grimms on this: stories for young and old. You can't characterize them any better than that. — Philip Pullman

I wanted the chance to look again at very famous stories and see what made them work well, whether there were any ways in which they could be improved. Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text. — Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Quotes About Religion

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all. — Philip Pullman

I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God.... My books are about killing God. — Philip Pullman

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good. — Philip Pullman

The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake. — Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Famous Quotes And Sayings

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else. — Philip Pullman

I'm for open-mindedness and tolerance. I'm against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of 'We have the truth.' The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth. — Philip Pullman

The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you're better off not touching it until you're all grown up. I'm going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don't open it. — Philip Pullman

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! — Philip Pullman

Marisa! Marisa!” The cry was torn from Lord Asriel, and with the snow leopard beside her, with a roaring in her ears, Lyra’s mother stood and found her footing and leapt with all her heart, to hurl herself against the angel and her daemon and her dying lover, and seize those beating wings, and bear them all down together into the abyss. — Philip Pullman

Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text. It's not like the text of Paradise Lost or James Joyce's Ulysses, and you have to adhere to that exact text. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff. — Philip Pullman

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature. — Philip Pullman

Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. — Philip Pullman

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

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. — 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

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart. — Philip Pullman

I know whom we must fight...it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse.That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place. — Philip Pullman

What is worth having is worth working for. — Philip Pullman

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish. — Philip Pullman

The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

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

We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that. — Philip Pullman

We have to learn everything we do. — Philip Pullman

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. — Philip Pullman

From what we are, spirit; from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one. — Philip Pullman

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

You speak of destiny as if it was fixed. — Philip Pullman

Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary. — Philip Pullman

There is another consequence of any belief in a single god, and that is that it is a very good excuse for people to behave very badly. — Philip Pullman

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. — Philip Pullman

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 worlds, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven. — 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

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. — Philip Pullman

What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else. — Philip Pullman

My real purpose in telling middle-school students stories was to practice telling stories. And I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. And the way I would justify it to the head teacher if he came in or to any parents who complained was, look, I'm telling these great stories because they're part of our cultural heritage. I did believe that. — Philip Pullman

He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it? — Philip Pullman

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

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically. — Philip Pullman

Symbols and emblems were everywhere. Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Everything stood for something else; if you had the right dictionary, you could read Nature itself. It was hardly surprising to find philosophers using the symbolism of their time to interpret knowledge that came from a mysterious source. — Philip Pullman

All good things pass away. — Philip Pullman

Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed. — Philip Pullman

It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing. — Philip Pullman

Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, I'd follow you down to the world of the dead without thinking twice about it, just like you followed Roger; and that would be two lives gone for nothing, my life wasted like yours. No, we should spend our whole lifetimes together, good long busy lives, and if we can't spend them together, we... we'll have to spend them apart. — Philip Pullman

When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends. — Philip Pullman

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

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it? — Philip Pullman

I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake. — Philip Pullman

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. — Philip Pullman

...when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, Lyra’s Oxford and Will’s would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged–although they would never truly touch. — Philip Pullman

People are too complicated to have simple labels. — Philip Pullman

You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them. — Philip Pullman

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

Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was. — Philip Pullman

Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing. — Philip Pullman

Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee." He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we." She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra." Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died. — Philip Pullman

The fact was that where Will is concerned, she was developing a new kind of sense, as if he were simply more in focus than anyone she'd known before. Everything about him was clear and close and immediate. — Philip Pullman

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out. — Philip Pullman

Do not lie to the Scholar. — Philip Pullman

I'm superstitious about the paper that I use, for example. I've written all my novels on a paper of a particular size with lines of a particular distance apart and with two holes in the paper for the folder clip. — Philip Pullman

Life Lessons by Philip Pullman

1. Philip Pullman's works emphasize the importance of standing up for what you believe in, no matter the cost. He also encourages readers to think for themselves and to question authority.
2. Pullman's stories also emphasize the power of friendship, loyalty, and courage in the face of adversity.
3. Finally, Pullman's works emphasize the importance of being true to yourself and of embracing your own unique identity.