Philip Pullman Quotes

And Pantalaimon didn't ask why, because he knew; and he didn't ask whether Lyra loved Roger more than him, because he knew the true answer to that, too. And he knew that if he spoke, she wouldn't be able to resist; so the dæmon held himself quiet so as not to distress the human who was abandoning him, and now they were both pretending that it wouldn't hurt, it wouldn't be long before they were together again, it was all for the best. But Will knew that the little girl was tearing her heart out of her breast.

~ Philip Pullman

I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his creation.

~ Philip Pullman

Her upbringing had given her an independence of mind that made her more like a girl of today than one of her own time - which was why she had walked out, and why she was not daunted by the prospect of being alone.

~ Philip Pullman

It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief.

~ Philip Pullman

When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.

~ 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

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

You going to be a scientist when you grow up?” That sort of question deserved a blank stare, which it got.

~ Philip Pullman

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.

~ Philip Pullman

A few minutes after he arrived, Lee was talking to a group of astronomers eager to learn what news he could bring them, for there are few natural philosophers as frustrated as astronomers in a fog.

~ Philip Pullman

Ruta Skadi was four hundred and sixteen years old, with all the pride and knowledge of an adult witch queen. She was wiser by far than any short-lived human, but she had not the slightest idea of how like a child she seemed beside these ancient beings. Nor did she know how far their awareness spread out beyond her like filamentary tentacles to the remotest corners of universes she had never dreamed of; nor that she saw them as human-formed only because her eyes expected to. If she were to perceive their true form, they would seem more like architecture than organism, like huge structures composed of intelligence and feeling.But they expected nothing else: she was very young.

~ Philip Pullman

She shook her head and whispered, No. No! That can't be true. Impossible!You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true!

~ Philip Pullman

All she knew was that she must be in love with someone, or she wouldn't feel so miserable.

~ Philip Pullman

The children will come to no harm.Except for the older ones. Like that poor kid down there.Mr. Scoresby, that is the way this world works. And if you want to put an end to cruelty and injustice, you must take me farther on. I have a job to do.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

Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.

~ Philip Pullman

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her.

~ Philip Pullman

I’m working on another Lyra book right now – it’s called The Book of Dust.“It’s going very well and it will be finished when I write the words ‘The End’.

~ Philip Pullman

The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky.

~ Philip Pullman

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.

~ Philip Pullman

she allowed herself to dwell on the cause of this strange, apprehensive exultation that she sensed flickering at the edge of her mind: it was the rarest thing of all - a man whom she knew at once, and without any qualification, to be her equal.

~ Philip Pullman

Princess, princess, youngest daughter,Open up and let me in!Or else your promise by the waterIsn’t worth a rusty pin.Keep your promise, royal daughter,Open up and let me in!

~ Philip Pullman

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.

~ Philip Pullman

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.

~ Philip Pullman

I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you say, I'll always be thinking about it, and if I end up doing that, I'll feel resentful because it'll feel as 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.

~ Philip Pullman

I don't like rats any more than the next bloke, but they ain't wicked and cruel like people can be. They're just ratty in their habits.

~ Philip Pullman

Tell them stories.

~ Philip Pullman

You are dead- what am I speaking to?

~ Philip Pullman

When we were alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to heaven. And they said that heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. That's what they said. And that's what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew. Because the land of the dead isn't a place of reward or a place of punishment, it is a place of nothing. The good come here as well as the wicked, and all of us languish in this gloom forever, with no hope of freedom, or joy, or sleep, or rest, or peace. But now this child has come offering us a way out and I'm going to follow her. Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glistening in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.

~ Philip Pullman