Quotes from Philip Pullman

Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

The best sort of activity is one that combines mental effort with sensuous delight. That's why I love drawing.

Imagination is a form of seeing

And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?

Education and health were always matters of charity. You educated children and you helped the sick because they were good things to do, not because you were going to make money out of them. If you let the money-making principle, the profit-seeking motive, anywhere near education and health, things go bad.

Everyone in the book's ecology, starting with the author and including the publisher, the distributor, the booksellers, the libraries, and ending up with the reader, should benefit from a healthy book trade.

I love the way ravens fly; they are the most acrobatic and daring birds.

If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care.

...his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects.

Teachers often make the mistake of thinking they're the boss of the class; they're not. The boss of the class is sitting down there somewhere.

Life is hard . . . but we cling to it all the same

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy; she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.

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

All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.

Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet.

Once upon a time' lasts forever.

Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.

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

One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently.

I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd have to decide, each time I stopped, how long I was likely to stop for in order to know whether or not to put the cap on. But I never know. So instead, I use a ballpoint - a Montblanc, to be precise - the most comfortably balanced pen I've ever found.

I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular.

My parents tolerated me reading comics because they knew I was also reading 'proper' books, too.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.