Quotes from Philip Pullman

Tell them stories. That's what we didn't know. All this time, and we never knew! But they need the truth. That's what nourishes them. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, everything. Just tell them stories.

The strength was draining out of him minute by minute. Maybe he'd never move again.

Asriel among the bears: Iofur Raknison, I'm going to be entirely frank with you, followed by a string of confident and overbearing lies—had he noticed the bear-king's doll-dæmon, the clue that he was unbearlike enough to be tricked? Or was it just luck?—but he knew the bears well enough. He was very like his daughter.

Seems to me," Lee said, feeling for the words. "Seems to me, the place you find cruelty is where you find it. And the place you give help is where you see it needed. Or is that wrong, Dr Grumman? I'm only an ignorant aëronaut.

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.

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

until he came to the northern edge of Jericho: small terraces of brick houses where the workers from the Fell Press or the Eagle Ironworks lived with their families. The area was half-gentrified now, but it still held old corners and dark alleys, an abandoned burial ground and a church with an Italianate campanile standing guard over the boatyard and the chandlery.

arrows flew down like rain, straight rods of rain tipped with death.

She was not beautiful—she would never be that, nor pretty, nor conventionally attractive…

I'm a great believer in providing children with experiences that are not for them but can be overheard.

by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious…

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.

And there it was: like a sheet of glass hanging unsupported in the air, but glass with no attention-catching reflections in it: just a square patch of difference.

Anything that was associated with human workmanship and human thought was surrounded by Shadows.…

Well, this is a mystery," said Farder Coram, "and I'm glad I lived long enough to see it. To go into the dark of death is a thing we all fear, say what we like, we fear it. But if there's a way out for that part of us that has to go down there, then it makes my heart lighter.

She felt light-headed, as if part of her were somewhere else and dreaming of this, and she'd wake up soon and find everything normal.

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 glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.

Jill, the time's come. They're going to close us down. Tell all the Heads of Section that Christabel is now in operation.

When I'm writing, I'm more conscious of the sound, actually, than the meaning. I know what the rhythm of the sentence is going to be before I know what the words are going to be in it.

I remember. He meant the kingdom was over, the kingdom of heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

She felt half inclined to lie down and die. But her body wanted food and drink, and she took this as a sign that her body at least wanted to go on living.

eighteenth century. It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur.

They both 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.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if were are not, said the witch, or die of despair.