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I wanted the chance to look again at very famous stories and see what made them work well, whether there were any ways in which they could be improved. Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.

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
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More quotes by Philip Pullman

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I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again.
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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.
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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
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All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.
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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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The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.
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I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.
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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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But we can trust him Roger, I swear, she said with a final effort,Because he's Will.
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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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As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.
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I'm with the Grimms on this: stories for young and old. You can't characterize them any better than that.
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I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
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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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Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
Philip Pullman
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Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.
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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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A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do.
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There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
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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