Philip Pullman Quotes

Good and bad are names for what people do

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.

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

I don’t know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.

I don't know where they come from, but I know where they come to: my desk. And if I'm not there, they go away again.

You know which page of a novel is the most difficult to write? It's page 70. The first page is easy: it's exciting, it's new, a whole world lies in front of you. The last page is easy: you've got there at last, you know what's going to happen, all you have to do is find a resonant closing sentence. But page 70 is where the misery strikes.

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

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

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 concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

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

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 duty of the old,' said the Librarian, 'to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.' They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.

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

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.

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.

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 lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are

I'm for open-mindedness and tolerance. I'm against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of 'We have the truth.' The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth.

As for disgraceful betrayals of wisdom such as the pretense that there is something called "creation science" and we ought to give it equal time in schools with proper science - I'm ashamed to belong to a human race that is so sunk in abject ignorance and willful stupidity.