Quotes from Philip Pullman

Once we use the word spiritual, we don't have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it.

Will, I used to come here in my Oxford and sit on this exact same bench whenever I wanted to be alone, just me and Pan. What I thought was that if you - maybe just once a year - if we could come here at the same time, just for an hour or something, then we could pretend we were close again-because we would be close, if you sat here and I sat just here in my world - Yes, he said, as long as I live, I'll come back. Whenever I am in the world, I'll come back here -

Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We

Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

Has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it?

She was learning that if she pretended to be weak and frightened, and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she could turn aside all manner of pressing questions.

No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses Milton in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words.

If you speak to people, you just attract their attention," he said, with a shaking voice. "You should just keep quiet and still and they overlook you. I've been doing it all my life. I know how to do it. Your way, you just—you make yourself visible.

Both of them sat silent on the moss-covered rock in the slant of sunlight through the old pines and thought how many tiny chances had conspired to bring them to this place. Each of those chances might have gone a different way.

Being cheerful starts now, Will thought as hard as he could, but it was like trying to hold a fighting wolf still in his arms when it wanted to claw at his face and tear out his throat; nevertheless, he did it, and he thought no one could see the effort it cost him.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it

Eventually, child, you will come to the land of the dead with no effort, no risk, a safe, calm journey, in the company of your own death, your special, devoted friend, who's been beside you every moment of your life, who knows you better than yourself.

When you stopped believing in God, he went on, did you stop believing in good and evil? No. But 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. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

It was nothing more than what it was.

There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror.

There he dwelt, a prisoner acting like a king.

swathed in an old tweed coat on which the damp had settled like a thousand tiny pearls.

And remember this: take the hard road, not the easy one. The road that leads to life is a hard one, and it passes through a narrow gate, but the road to destruction is easy, and the gate is broad. Plenty take the easy road; few take the hard one. Your job is to find the hard one, and go by that.

and then my uncle killed him anyway just to teach him a lesson.

No literary work longer than a haiku is going to be entirely without faults.

You know, it isn't really surprising that there are things about ourselves that still remain a mystery to us," he said. "Maybe we should be comforted that the knowledge is there, even if it's withheld for a while.

The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all.