Philip Pullman Quotes

"When you stopped believing in God," he went on, "did you stop believing in good and evil?"

"No. But 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. 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."

She said that all the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. She and the rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have always tried to keep them closed.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

When you look at organised religion of whatever sort — whether it's Christianity in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism — wherever you see organised religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression. It's almost a universal law.

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

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.

She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS. Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a woman's voice said, "Come in."

So Lyra and her dæmon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked towards the sun, and walked into the sky.

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

There he dwelt, a prisoner acting like a king.

We all show false faces to the world, and a good thing too, for a hundred reasons. We should be consistent with our friends and lovers, so as not to be unkind. But if in your heart you are not kind, it's better to be false, to act kindly even if you don't feel it, because the deed is important and not the reason for it.
That kind of falsity is the triumph of our civilization.

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 us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup — of everyone's psychological makeup.

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.

...his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects.

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