Philip Pullman quotes - page 5

He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was. So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it. (Philip Pullman)
So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren't human, but they were people, she told herself; it's not them, they're us.
Philip Pullman
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
Her dæmon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the darkness of the hall.
Philip Pullman
How can I just go and sit in the library or somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, knowing what's going to happen? I don't intend to do that, I promise you.
Philip Pullman
The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics - what we call experimental theology - is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.
Philip Pullman
The Master of Jordan College is a foolish old man. Why he gave it to her I can't imagine; you need several years of intensive study to make any sense of it at all.
Philip Pullman
He showed me that to rebel was right and just, when you considered what the agents of the Authority did in His name.... And I thought of the Bolvangar children, and the other terrible mutilitations I have seen in our own southlands; and he told me of many more hideous cruelties dealt out in the Authority's name-of how they capture witches, in some worlds, and burn them alive, sisters. Yes, witches like ourselves... He opened my eyes. He showed me things I had never seen, cruelties and horrors all committed in the name of the Authority, all designed to destroy the joys and the truthfulness of life.
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
Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
Philip Pullman
You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does. (Philip Pullman)
The fact was that where Will is concerned, she was developing a new kind of sense, as if he were simply more in focus than anyone she'd known before. Everything about him was clear and close and immediate.
Philip Pullman
Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed....
Philip Pullman
There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.
Philip Pullman
But his ambition is limitless. He dares to do what men and women don't even dare to think.
Philip Pullman
There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time.
Philip Pullman
I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway somewhere.
Philip Pullman
It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself.
Philip Pullman
They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant.
Philip Pullman
I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'.
Philip Pullman
I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual' or ‘spirituality.' []. (Philip Pullman)
That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.' They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.
Philip Pullman
Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all.
Philip Pullman
Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
Philip Pullman
But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?" "Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.
Philip Pullman