Via Pullman Quotes & Sayings

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this. — Maureen Johnson

Everyone, from the Mother Superior to the priests to my parents
they were so upset and reproachful ... I felt as if something they all passionately believed in depended on me carrying on with something I didn't. — Philip Pullman

A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out; something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of nightghasts, not the waking world of sense. — Philip Pullman

You are an enemy of the Church, Lee Scoresby. By their fruits shall ye know them. — Philip Pullman

What is worth having is worth working for. — Philip Pullman

Rooks were cawing somewhere, and bells were ringing, and from the oxpens the steady beat of a gas engine announced the ascent of the evening Royal Mail zeppelin for London. — Philip Pullman

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both. — Philip Pullman

No one has the right to live without being shocked. — Philip Pullman

Chicago's merchant princes like devils. George Pullman continued to cut jobs and wages without reducing rents, even though his company's treasury was flush with over $60 million in cash. Pullman's friends cautioned that he was being pigheaded and had underestimated the anger of his workers. He moved his family out of Chicago and hid his best china. On — Erik Larson

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal.
But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart. — Philip Pullman

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student. — Anonymous

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. — Philip Pullman

... And here it is: You don't win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else. And to do that you have to train hard and strive your utmost, and sometimes even that isn't enough, because another runner just might be more talented than you are. Here's the truth: 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. That's the problem with Karl: He was afraid of failing, so he never really tried. — Philip Pullman

The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello. It — Philip Pullman

Fine vapors escape from whatever is doing the living. The night is cold and delicate and full of angels Pounding down the living. The factories are all lit up, The chime goes unheard. We are together at last, though far apart. - from "The Ecclesiast" by John Ashbery — Philip Pullman

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 is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them. — Philip Pullman

Tell him, we are not devils but we have friends who are. — Philip Pullman

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 sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff. — Philip Pullman

I seemed to have spent the whole time either reading, which I loved, or laughing, which I love, or fooling about, which I loved. There was the usual teenage angst: "Nobody understands me" and "I'm the only genius in the world" and all that stuff. But that didn't get very deep. — Philip Pullman

We don't need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. — Philip Pullman

No,' he said, 'memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want. I didn't know I could ever love anything so much ... — Philip Pullman

On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents, in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver.
She was a person of sixteen or so
alone, and uncommonly pretty. She was slender and pale, and dressed in mourning, with a black bonnet under which she tucked back a straying twist of blond hair that the wind had teased loose. She had unusually dark brown eyes for one so fair. Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man. — Philip Pullman

A murderer was a worthy companion. — Philip Pullman

If a witch offers you her love,you should take it. If you don't it's your own fault if bad things happen to you ... — Philip Pullman

Lyra has never seen such a sight, never heard such a bellow; it was like a mountain laughing. — Philip Pullman

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognised the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on... — Philip Pullman

Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much, that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it? — Philip Pullman

If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered. — Grover Cleveland

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish. — Philip Pullman