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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.
Philip Pullman
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Philip Pullman
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: October 19
Audiobook Narrator
Executive Producer
Film Writer
Librarian
Novelist
Playwright
University Teacher
Writer
Norwich
Norfolk
Sir Philip Pullman
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Fingers
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More quotes by 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
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
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
Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
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
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
'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.
Philip Pullman
For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.
Philip Pullman
For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.
Philip Pullman
So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.
Philip Pullman
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
Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?
Philip Pullman
Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
Philip Pullman
If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us...inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?
Philip Pullman
Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same
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
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
