Quotes by Philip Pullman

“All good things pass away.”

“Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sidew...”

“Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, that she could command these immortal presences. And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the ...”

“If there is a war to be fought, we dont consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not to fight.”

“This is whatll happen, she said, and its true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, all the particles that make you up will loosen and float apart, just like your daemons did. If youve seen peo...”

“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.”

“When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At on...”

“I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief... I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely...”

“Dust is not a constant. Theres not a fixed quantity that has always been the same. Conscious beings make Dustthey renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom an...”

“I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mys...”

“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 p...”

“I don't know where I belong, so I'm free. No one's got a hold on me.”

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

“I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent an...”

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. No...”

“Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden ...”

“Don Quixote could never manage without his patient servant Sancho Panza.”

“I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, ...”

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”

“I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he...”