Philip Pullman Quotes - Page 2

I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.

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.

Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. 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.

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.

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

One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen.

There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time.

There’s a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them.

she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.

We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.

He let her do it, then looked around for his fingers. There they were, curled like a bloody quotation mark on the lead. He laughed.

Lyra marveled at the effect hope could have.

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

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

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.

I don't like rats any more than the next bloke, but they ain't wicked and cruel like people can be. They're just ratty in their habits.

For a human being, nothing comes naturally,' said Grumman. 'We have to learn everything we do.