Quotes by Philip Pullman

“I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.”

“Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves ...”

“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 ov...”

“Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that ...”

“You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.”

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

“To be sure, there's a warm passion behind what you say. But if you give in to that passion, friends, you're doing what I always warned you agin: you're a placing the satisfaction of your own feelin...”

“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.”

“We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the ...”

“Theres been terrible things we seen, ent there? And more a coming, moren likely. So I think Id rather not know whats in the future. Ill stick to the present.”

“Stories dont teach us to be good; it isnt as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting...”

“Eventually sinking into despair, [Heinrich von Kleist] shot himself in 1811 as part of a suicide pact made with a woman suffering from incurable cancer.”

“There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.The reason for that is that in adult literary fiction, stories are the...”

“Maybe art itself was a kind of voodoo, possessing you, giving you supernatural power, letting you see in the dark.”

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.”

“Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isnt enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where thats not enough. Al...”

“The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated i...”

“It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturing Jews and all that sort of stuff; and it comes from the other side, too, from the Protestants b...”

“And Will knew what it was to see his dmon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would...”

“She has committed great sins, but they've been forgiven, and that's why she loves so deeply.”