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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.

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
Spirit
Stories
Sprite
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More quotes by Philip Pullman

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The great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text.
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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.
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If you can't think of what to write, tough luck write anyway.
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We have to learn everything we do.
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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
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We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.
Philip Pullman
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You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
Philip Pullman
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Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.
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.
Philip Pullman
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Tolkien seems to me reactionary, conservative, fearful of a modern world. Fearful of anything that isn't sanctioned by the passage of long eons of time. I think what I'm doing in His Dark Materials is politically the reverse of that.
Philip Pullman
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I don't see any sign of God in this world, in the place where we live and things we know. It can all be explained to my mind perfectly satisfactorily without God. But in the great darkness beyond this little spark of light where I live, of course there may be all kinds of things. There may be a god. So I'm really an agnostic.
Philip Pullman
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I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.
Philip Pullman
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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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The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.
Philip Pullman
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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.
Philip Pullman
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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
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Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.
Philip Pullman
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You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be out in the open, part of everything alive again.
Philip Pullman
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I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
Philip Pullman
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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