Quote

I'm perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.

Philip Pullman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Happy
Atheistic
Superstitious
Perfectly

More quotes by Philip Pullman

Image
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.
Philip Pullman
Image
...because where we are is always the most important place.
Philip Pullman
Image
'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.
Philip Pullman
Image
That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
No one has the right to live without being shocked.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
It's only through honesty and courage that science can work at all. The Ptolemaic understanding of the solar system was undermined and corrected by the constant pressure of more and more honest reporting.
Philip Pullman
Image
When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
Philip Pullman
Image
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
Image
Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
Philip Pullman
Image
Do not lie to the Scholar.
Philip Pullman
Image
And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?
Philip Pullman
Image
One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.
Philip Pullman
Image
A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.
Philip Pullman