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

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She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.
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A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff.
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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.
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Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.
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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 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.
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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?
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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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So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.
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Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same
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One of the ways in which writers most show their inventiveness is in the things they tell us about how they write. Generally speaking, I don't like to make a plan before I've written a story. I find it kills the story - deadens it, makes it uninteresting. Unless I'm surprised by something in a story, the reader's not going to be surprised either.
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When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.
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Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.
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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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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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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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When it comes to telling children stories, they don’t need simple language. They need beautiful language.
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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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I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.
Philip Pullman
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The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.
Philip Pullman