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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.

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
Speak
Fixed
Fate
Destiny

More quotes by Philip Pullman

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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.
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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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Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same
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But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.
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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?
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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.
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There’s been terrible things we seen, en’t there? And more a coming, more’n likely. So I think I’d rather not know what’s in the future. I’ll stick to the present.
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Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.
Philip Pullman
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
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If you can't think of what to write, tough luck write anyway.
Philip Pullman
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.
Philip Pullman
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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
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The great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.
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Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
Philip Pullman