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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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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
Must
Harmless
Every
Follow
Something
Story
Time
Upon
Doesn
Else
Stories
Might

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If you can't think of what to write, tough luck write anyway.
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A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.
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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.
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Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
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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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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.
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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.
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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
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I don't see any sign of God in this world, in the place where we live and things we know. It can all be explained to my mind perfectly satisfactorily without God. But in the great darkness beyond this little spark of light where I live, of course there may be all kinds of things. There may be a god. So I'm really an agnostic.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
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After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
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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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Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.
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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.
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There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
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