Philip Pullman Quotes

"Seems to me-" Lee said, feeling for the words, "seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed...."

In Lyra’s heart, revulsion struggled with compassion, and compassion won.

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

Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don’t understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are.

I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it.

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

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.

A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself. All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can't live without those things because it's too bleak, it's too bare and we don't need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven. This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.

When she saw how they worked, not on their own but two by two, working their trunks together to tie a knot, she realized why they'd been so astonished by her hands, because of course she could tie knots on her own. At first she felt that this gave an advantage — she needed no one else — and then she realized how it cut her off from others. Perhaps all human beings were like that.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Your death taps you on the shoulder, or takes your hand, and says, ‘Come along o’ me, it’s time.

"Oh, Will," she said, "what can we do? Whatever can we do? I want to live with you forever. I want to kiss you and lie down with you and wake up with you every day of my life till I die, years and years and years away. I don't want a memory, just a memory…"

"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. Oh, Lyra, I wish this night would never end! If only we could stay here like this, and the world could stop turning, and everyone else could fall into a sleep…"

The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky.

Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually wracked with pain.

There's some that came here never believing they were dead. They insisted all the way that they were alive, it was a mistake, someone would have to pay; made no difference. There's others who longed to be dead when they were alive, poor souls; lives full of pain or misery; killed themselves for a chance of a blessed rest, and found that nothing had changed except for the worse, and this time there was no escape; you can't make yourself alive again.