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But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know.

Philip Pullman

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Philip Pullman
Age: 77
Born: 1946
Born: October 19
Audiobook Narrator
Executive Producer
Film Writer
Librarian
Novelist
Playwright
University Teacher
Writer
Norwich
Norfolk
Sir Philip Pullman
Small
Things
Compared

More quotes by Philip Pullman

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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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Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.
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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.
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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
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Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
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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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If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us...inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?
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.
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
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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.
Philip Pullman
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People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.
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?
Philip Pullman
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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.
Philip Pullman
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I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.
Philip Pullman
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It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, Make this a feminist story! I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons.
Philip Pullman
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We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.
Philip Pullman
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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.
Philip Pullman
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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.
Philip Pullman
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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
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The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.
Philip Pullman