Quote

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

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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
Anything
Takes
Grain
Writing
Fire
Demon
Inert
Politics
Vampire
Sullen
Face
Feed
Witches
Faces
Flames
Vampires
Business
Ghost
Ghosts
Write
Works
Demons
Thought
Talent
Witch

More quotes by Philip Pullman

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One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.
Philip Pullman
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Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same
Philip Pullman
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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
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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
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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.
Philip Pullman
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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
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Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.
Philip Pullman
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I'm perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.
Philip Pullman
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No one has the right to live without being shocked.
Philip Pullman
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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
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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
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Tolkien seems to me reactionary, conservative, fearful of a modern world. Fearful of anything that isn't sanctioned by the passage of long eons of time. I think what I'm doing in His Dark Materials is politically the reverse of that.
Philip Pullman
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And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?
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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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
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Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.
Philip Pullman
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The great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.
Philip Pullman
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...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
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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
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We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of # libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.
Philip Pullman