Quotes by Philip Pullman

“I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me...”

“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was ...”

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”

“I cant bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel, she continued. Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worseto be tortured foreverI thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you...”

“If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure. ”

“Thats the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.”

“You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.”

“We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.”

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

“I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.”

“As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchalle...”

“When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.”

“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're more c...”

“People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, ki...”

“Hope holds you fast like an anchor so you don't give way.”

“Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was ...”

“I think there's a difference between (a) offending people for its own sake, which I don't necessarily want to do, because some people are good and decent and it would be unkind to upset them simply...”

“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. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it h...”

“You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We lov...”