Philip Pullman
I will love you for ever, whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again.Collection: Love You
Was there only one world after all which spent its time dreaming of others?Collection: Dream
All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions.Collection: Stories
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.Collection: Life
I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Evil
Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed.Collection: Children
Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.Collection: Forever
I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight.Collection: Flower
Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.Collection: Stars
'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart.Collection: Heart
If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway.Collection: Writing
I know whom we must fight...it is the Church. For all its history, it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse.That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.Collection: Fighting
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.Collection: Lying
I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake.Collection: Sleep
And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.Collection: Hurt
I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God.... My books are about killing God.Collection: Book
For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.Collection: Once Upon A Time
There are some who live by every rule and cling tightly to their rectitude because they fear being swept away by a tempest of passion, and there are others who cling to the rules because they fear that there is no passion there at all, and that if they let go they would simply remain where they are, foolish and unmoved; and they could bear that least of all. Living a life of iron control lets them pretend to themselves that only by the mightiest effort of will can they hold great passions at bay.Collection: Letting Go
If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?Collection: Book
I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.Collection: Writing
I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak. I'm a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people - mainly from America's Bible Belt - who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven't got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.Collection: Book
I got a book token for Christmas and exchanged it for a book called A History of Art, and that book (which I still have-battered and falling to pieces) became more precious to me than any Bible.Collection: Art
I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales.Collection: Zimbabwe
What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticismCollection: Morning
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good proseCollection: Writing
People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.Collection: Kindness
We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.Collection: Fate
The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.Collection: Adults
A professional writer is someone who writes just as well when they're not inspired as when they are.Collection: Writing
Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.Collection: Betrayal
There will be days when the stuff is not flowing freely. What you do then is MAKE IT UP!Collection: Stuff
To get the best out of life here ...Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it.Collection: Falling In Love
I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.Collection: Religious
Iorek Byrnison: Can is not the same as must. Lyra Silvertongue: But if you must and you can, then there's no excuse.Collection: No Excuses
We measure the value of a civilized society by the number of # libraries it opens, not the number it closes down.Collection: Numbers
And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.Collection: Life Is Hard
Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.Collection: Names
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 place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven.Collection: Hard Work
Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.Collection: Hurt
Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.Collection: Men
A murderer was a worthy companion.Collection: Worthy
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.Collection: Memories
And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.Collection: Heaven
It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It's impossible, and if it isn't impossible, it's irrelevant, and if it isn't either of those things, it's embarrassing.Collection: Doe
We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.Collection: Children
But we can trust him Roger, I swear," she said with a final effort,"Because he's Will.Collection: Effort
When he'd sworn at her and been sworn at in return, they became great friends.Collection: Return
...when all the openings were closed, then the worlds would all be restored to their proper relations with one another, Lyra’s Oxford and Will’s would lie over each other again, like transparent images on two sheets of film being moved closer and closer until they merged–although they would never truly touch.Collection: Lying