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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!

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
Something
Told
Basic
Years
System
British
Never
Study
English
Education
Entire
Literature
Importance
Culminating
Reading
View
Oxford
Point
Fiction
Studying
Three
Views
Passed

More quotes by Philip Pullman

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All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?
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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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True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.
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And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.
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We have to learn everything we do.
Philip Pullman
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Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
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Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.
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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.
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'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.
Philip Pullman
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I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.
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The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.
Philip Pullman
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But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.
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D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.
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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.
Philip Pullman
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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
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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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I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.
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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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Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
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Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.
Philip Pullman