If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart. Philip Pullman More Quotes by Philip Pullman More Quotes From Philip Pullman ...because where we are is always the most important place. Philip Pullman important She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy; she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs. Philip Pullman verbscoffeelife Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. Philip Pullman butterflybeeswriting I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike "identity", must include what we do. And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest ("gay", "black", "Muslim", whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity. Philip Pullman passiongaythinking Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories. Philip Pullman true-storystoriesneeds She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever. Philip Pullman heartadventurethinking Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both. Philip Pullman suspenselove-storystories Because the great thing about fairy tales and folk tales is that there is no authentic text. It's not like the text of Paradise Lost or James Joyce's Ulysses, and you have to adhere to that exact text. Philip Pullman ulyssesfairy-taleparadise 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. Philip Pullman moralitystoriesworld I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction! Philip Pullman readingoxfordyears Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it. Philip Pullman hopelesspassionatebelieve The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you're better off not touching it until you're all grown up. I'm going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don't open it. Philip Pullman kidsbooksex We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. Philip Pullman silencerightsbook Once upon a time' lasts forever. Philip Pullman lastsonce-upon-a-timeforever 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. Philip Pullman starsfeelingswinter All the stories of the Bible that I know came to me first from my grandfather's lips... He would see stories in everything. He told stories very easily and very generously, so I loved him for that. He was a simple man, a Victorian; he was born in 1890-something. He saw no reason and had never seen any reason to question his Christian faith. His faith was strong and simple and that's it. And I, like his other grandchildren and the children in his parish, sheltered underneath it. Philip Pullman strongchristianchildren Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever. Philip Pullman once-upon-a-timeforgottenforever A lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller. So they tell it backwards and they tell it in the present tense and they cut loose the pages and shuffle them around - all that kind of stuff. Philip Pullman cuttingdoeordinary 'Thou shalt not' might reach the head, but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart. Philip Pullman once-upon-a-timeheartmight But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it. Philip Pullman squaressciencethinking
