Philip Pullman Quotes
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It's not my business to remedy deaths! It's my business to tell stories. Lyra and the other heroines didn't come with placards saying, "Make this a feminist story!" I'm glad people enjoy seeing a female protagonist in a big adventure story, but I didn't do it for political reasons.
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I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.
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The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air. . .and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness.
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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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What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.
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I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.
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Once upon a time' lasts forever.
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The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.
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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.
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My real purpose in telling middle-school students stories was to practice telling stories. And I practiced on the greatest model of storytelling we've got, which is "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." I told those stories many, many times. And the way I would justify it to the head teacher if he came in or to any parents who complained was, look, I'm telling these great stories because they're part of our cultural heritage. I did believe that.
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There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!
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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.
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Everything means something.
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Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is.
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The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing.
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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.
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When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed. At that moment all Will's choices existed at once. But to keep them all in existence meant doing nothing. He had to choose, after all.
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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. When I tell the story of Cinderella, the sprite does not want me to make it into an allegory of the fall of communism. The sprite would be unhappy if I did that.
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For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.
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The way you speak of the characters in your story shows what you think of the values of conservatives‚ or evolution, for example. It shows where your moral center is. So you are in the message business whether you like it or not.
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The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism 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?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.
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From what we are, spirit; from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one.
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When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
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It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing.
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We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.
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Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.
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Iorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must. Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse.
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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.
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It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.
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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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