Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The state of mind which I put myself when I tell a story is one in which superstition flourishes very easily. And I welcome that because it helps me.
Philip Pullman
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Helping
Flourishes
Tell
Superstition
Stories
Superstitions
States
Helps
Mind
Welcome
Easily
State
Story
More quotes by Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
Philip Pullman
I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.
Philip Pullman
When it comes to telling children stories, they don’t need simple language. They need beautiful language.
Philip Pullman
If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.
Philip Pullman
I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.
Philip Pullman
I'm for open-mindedness and tolerance. I'm against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of 'We have the truth.' The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth.
Philip Pullman
This is the value for me of writing books that children read. Children aren't interested in your appalling self-consciousness. They want to know what happens next. They force you to tell a story.
Philip Pullman
There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.
Philip Pullman
If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
I look at the state of the American politics and I scratch my head in wonder. How can the Republican Party, any party, have fallen into to such a state of self-destructiveness - self-destructive stupidity? How is it possible? I don't know. It's an absolute mystery to me.
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
Philip Pullman
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
Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I’ll write Ulysses.”
Philip Pullman
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.
Philip Pullman
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
For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence
Philip Pullman
