Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Training
Possible
Write
Form
Best
Verse
Writing
Verses
Good
Strict
Prose

More quotes by Philip Pullman

Image
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
Image
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
Image
It's only through honesty and courage that science can work at all. The Ptolemaic understanding of the solar system was undermined and corrected by the constant pressure of more and more honest reporting.
Philip Pullman
Image
Do not lie to the Scholar.
Philip Pullman
Image
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.
Philip Pullman
Image
The great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.
Philip Pullman
Image
Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.
Philip Pullman
Image
Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
Philip Pullman
Image
The justice of it seems to children correct and right - I mean, we laugh at it! We underestimate children's ability to know what is a story and what isn't.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.
Philip Pullman
Image
If you can't think of what to write, tough luck write anyway.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
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