Philip Pullman quote: "I don't believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?"

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in y...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagina...
PHILIP PULLMAN

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.
PHILIP PULLMAN

There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willi...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and si...
PHILIP PULLMAN

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

I can’t bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel,” she continued. “Sooner anything than that. I us...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.
PHILIP PULLMAN

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish an...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it,...
PHILIP PULLMAN

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwar...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief... I'm not in the business of offending people...
PHILIP PULLMAN

When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The vi...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time...
PHILIP PULLMAN

He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotatio...
PHILIP PULLMAN

It's not like watching TV; it's not even like watching a film in a cinema. Everyone in that big spac...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Oh, Will," she said, "What can we do? Whatever can we do? I want to live with you forever. I want to...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Walk Into the Sky.
PHILIP PULLMAN

I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other aga...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
PHILIP PULLMAN

Adam and Eve are like imaginary number, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in yo...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll underst...
PHILIP PULLMAN

It comes from history. It comes from the record of the Inquisition, persecuting heretics and torturi...
PHILIP PULLMAN

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we...
PHILIP PULLMAN

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's p...
PHILIP PULLMAN

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job li...
PHILIP PULLMAN

What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if i...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only...
PHILIP PULLMAN

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Tell them stories.
PHILIP PULLMAN

It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

People are too complicated to have simple labels.
PHILIP PULLMAN

As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.
PHILIP PULLMAN

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if...
PHILIP PULLMAN

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

I was connected to God like that, and because he was there, I was connected to the whole of his crea...
PHILIP PULLMAN

You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

And then Serafina understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrim...
PHILIP PULLMAN

If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or n...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?

Well, then, you're discontente...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into th...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Symbols and emblems were everywhere. Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Eve...
PHILIP PULLMAN

One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if...
PHILIP PULLMAN

If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is war to be fought, we don'...
PHILIP PULLMAN

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never...
PHILIP PULLMAN

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair...death wil...
PHILIP PULLMAN

The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it dir...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

All good things pass away.
PHILIP PULLMAN

Human beings can't see anything without wanting to destroy it. That's original sin. And I'm going to...
PHILIP PULLMAN

So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.
PHILIP PULLMAN

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

You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.
PHILIP PULLMAN

That's the duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. W...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but may...
PHILIP PULLMAN

for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
PHILIP PULLMAN

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

This is what’ll happen,” she said, “and it’s true, perfectly true. When you go out of here, ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you...
PHILIP PULLMAN

She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn'...
PHILIP PULLMAN

My flat's about half a mile away, and you know what I'd like most of all in the world? I'd like a cu...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed th...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Darling, no one would ever dream of performing an operation on a child without testing it first. And...
PHILIP PULLMAN

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

Just be yourself. You don't have to put on an act."
"To be myself, I have to put on an act," Gi...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don...
PHILIP PULLMAN

...because where we are is always the most important place.
PHILIP PULLMAN

We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us, there is no elsewhere.
PHILIP PULLMAN

No,' he said, 'memory's a poor thing to have. It's your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes an...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well,...
PHILIP PULLMAN

because he's Will
PHILIP PULLMAN

It takes long practice, yes. You have to work. Did you think you could snap your fingers, and have i...
PHILIP PULLMAN

We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Iorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must.
Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, th...
PHILIP PULLMAN

...But it gradually seemed to me that I'd made myself believe something that wasn't true. I'd made m...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive aga...
PHILIP PULLMAN

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

But Balthamos couldn't tell; he only knew that half his heart had been extinguished. He couldn't kee...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, I'd follow you down to the world of t...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and th...
PHILIP PULLMAN

I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of...
PHILIP PULLMAN

And at the word alone, Will felt a great wave of rage and despair moving outwards from a place deep ...
PHILIP PULLMAN

There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child! Did y...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Well," said Mary, "love is ferocious, too.
PHILIP PULLMAN

She shook her head and whispered, "No. No! That can't be true. Impossible!"

"You think th...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate; his manner was to raise an eyebrow and greet it laconica...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.
PHILIP PULLMAN

Finally, I’d say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don’t be afraid to be superstitious. I...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.
PHILIP PULLMAN

And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundam...
PHILIP PULLMAN

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some ...
PHILLIP PULLMAN

I like those crisis moments - if you're on top of it and don't get pulled under by panic and...
BILL PULLMAN

Oh, great. This is going to be like shooting baskets with Magic Johnson watching.
BILL PULLMAN

With While You Were Sleeping, it was so much fun and such a Cinderella story, that I didn't want to ...
BILL PULLMAN

There was an idea of accepting everyone; there was no sense of exclusion.
BILL PULLMAN

Rural towns aren't always idyllic. It's easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocrisy.
BILL PULLMAN

Oh, great. This is going to be like shooting baskets with Magic Johnson watching. [On watching Indep...
BILL PULLMAN

I'm a playwright and a novelist and a journalist. It's a weird Salinger-Mailer-Miller combination. W...
BILL PULLMAN

Oh, great. This is going to be like shooting baskets with Magic Johnson watching. [On watching Inde...
BILL PULLMAN

Rural towns aren't always idyllic. It's easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocris...
BILL PULLMAN

Well, I can do certain jobs because smells don't bother me. But that means I'm usually the o...
BILL PULLMAN

defied cynicism and entered politics.
BILL PULLMAN

...We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests....
BILL PULLMAN

A story about... I play a guy who is with... Patricia Arquette is my wife and we're having troubles....
BILL PULLMAN

The Zero Effect.
BILL PULLMAN

I love to watch my kids stand under the tree and munch on (fruit). It's a constant pleasure to see t...
BILL PULLMAN

The shock is over with. Now we have to come back and create something that is compatible and accepta...
ROCKY PULLMAN

There was also an undercurrent of desperation about the town's sagging image. They put up booster si...
BILL PULLMAN

Oddly, I've been brought into a conflict the town is facing now. A pharmacy chain is threatening to ...
BILL PULLMAN

The stuff was hitting it. Like the swells, knocked all that bark off.
GEORGE PULLMAN

She'll tell you, we climbed trees to get here.
GEORGE PULLMAN

There's definitely a pattern of great British shows that get reinvented in America and do really...
BILL PULLMAN

I was 21, and rehearsing a play, took a fall and was in a coma for a few days. And when I recovered,...
BILL PULLMAN

I co-own the ranch with my brother, and he and his wife are really the backbone of the operation.
BILL PULLMAN

Theater has always been most important to my psyche.
BILL PULLMAN

I do take lots of time off between projects, but when the right thing comes along, I don't like ...
BILL PULLMAN

Truthfully, I almost avoided 'While You Were Sleeping,' because I find those romantic comedi...
BILL PULLMAN

I was brought up in a very small town in upstate New York.
BILL PULLMAN

There's a point you get to on the stage where you're not remembering lines but living them, ...
BILL PULLMAN

I also turn down what's probably a good amount of coinage to be made out of playing dads, an inc...
BILL PULLMAN

With While You Were Sleeping, it was so much fun and such a Cinderella story, that I didn't want...
BILL PULLMAN

When they lost, they lost everything. It's really been a hard load. We're coming in here with a trai...
GEORGE PULLMAN

Elegance is all in the mind of the wearer.
PHILIP TREACY

Hats make people feel good, and that's the point of them.
PHILIP TREACY

I don't like department stores. I had a chain of department stores back in 1994 which was Lewis&...
PHILIP GREEN

I'm in the retail business, not the circus business.
PHILIP GREEN

You are forced to have the best data capture, the best information, when you have goods in hundreds ...
PHILIP GREEN

I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I...
PHILIP GREEN

You've got to love what you do to really make things happen.
PHILIP GREEN

They already know all about brands... but what 16- and 17-year-olds won't necessarily have is ex...
PHILIP GREEN

We're in a celebrity culture, and when I turn on the news today I hear about Lindsay Lohan, Tige...
PHILIP YANCEY

Either I will find a way, or I will make one.
PHILIP SIDNEY

I am brave, but I take a view. It is an educated view. I am careful. I am not reckless.
PHILIP GREEN

Royalty is completely different than celebrity. Royalty has a magic all its own.
PHILIP TREACY

Be wise; soar not too high to fall; but stoop to rise.
PHILIP MASSINGER

My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a v...
PHILIP ZIMBARDO

Bullies are often people who are shy and can't make friends easily, so, as the theme of the movi...
PHILIP ZIMBARDO

Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species...
PHILIP ROTH

Ignorance is not bliss - it is oblivion
PHILIP WYLIE

All this, and Heaven too!
PHILIP HENRY

Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what ...
PHILIP ZIMBARDO

It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree it strives ever upwards when it is mos...
PHILIP SIDNEY

The hardship of living in a refugee camp made me psychologically strong.
PHILIP EMEAGWALI

Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim ...
PHILIP CROSBY

The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the w...
PHILIP CALDWELL

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't ...
PHILIP LARKIN

Nor custom, nor example, nor cast numbers Of such as do offend, make less the sin.
PHILIP MASSINGER

I got a good heart but my attitude gat people thinking I'm evil
GENEREUX PHILIP

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an arm...
PHILIP ROTH

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy un...
PHILIP ROTH

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork and drive the bru...
PHILIP LARKIN

After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school board is extremely p...
PHILIP STREIFER

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly whe...
PHILIP ROTH

You may boldly say, you did not plough Or trust the barren and ungrateful sands With the fruit...
PHILIP MASSINGER

If God could run out of grace, He would’ve for me by now. And yet every morning I wake up, He says...
GENEREUX PHILIP

To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God ...
PHILIP YANCEY

Keep away from the kinship of the individuals who continually ask and examine the imperfections of o...
GENEREUX PHILIP

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.
PHILIP KNIGHT

Patience, the beggar's virtue, shall find no harbor here.
PHILIP MASSINGER

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.
PHILIP WYLIE

I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so...
PHILIP ROTH

It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you con...
PHILIP ROTH

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the...
PHILIP GUEDALLA

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.
PHILIP JOHNSON

Only in America do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, an...
PHILIP ROTH

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survive...
PHILIP BUTLER

When in doubt, delete it.
PHILIP COSBY

When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
PHILIP ROTH

For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devil'...
PHILIP LARKIN

He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
PHILIP MASSINGER

We do pretty much whatever we want to.
PHILIP JOHNSON

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turn...
PHILIP LARKIN

It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
PHILIP GIBBS

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
PHILIP MASSINGER

The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the w...
PHILIP CALDWELL

I had always imagined that Clich? was a suburb of Paris, until I discovered it to be a street in Oxf...
PHILIP GUEDALLA

To doubt is worse than to have lost; And to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall...
PHILIP MASSINGER

To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth...
PHILIP ROTH

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is form...
PHILIP ROTH

Philip Pullman

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