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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

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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
Numbers
Closes
Society
Libraries
Values
Opens
Civilized
Measure
Library
Number
Value

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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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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
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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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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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Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary.
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If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.
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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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...because where we are is always the most important place.
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Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
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And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.
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I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is The Iliad and The Odyssey. I told those stories many, many times.
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We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.
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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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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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She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
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Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.
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Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
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Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
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There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!
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