Quotes from 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.

Had reason ever created a poem, or a symphony, or a painting? If rationality can't see things like the secret commonwealth, it's because rationality's vision is limited. The secret commonwealth is there. We can't see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it's the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure ...

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.

The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconically.

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.

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.

You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.

many good liars have no imagination at all its which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction

But we can trust him Roger, I swear, she said with a final effort,Because he's Will.

She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy? The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer. When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once.

Behind her the sun was still shining, so that every grove and every single tree between her and the storm blazed ardent and vivid, little frail things defying the dark with leaf and twig and fruit and flower.

He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.

Seems to me the place to fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.

It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.

Why, yes, the mo­ment you're born, your death comes in­to the world with you, and it's your death that takes you out.

She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North.

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?

It might have been a new way for her heart to beat.

Thou shalt not might' reach the head but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart. Also: We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them.

Everyone, from the Mother Superior to the priests to my parents--they were so upset and reproachful...I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn't.

Lyra had never seen such a sight, never heard such a bellow; it was like a mountain laughing.

We all show false faces to the world, and a good thing too, for a hundred reasons. We should be consistent with our friends and lovers, so as not to be unkind. But if in your heart you are not kind, it's better to be false, to act kindly even if you don't feel it, because the deed is important and not the reason for it. That kind of falsity is the triumph of our civilization.