Quotes by Philip Pullman

“True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.”

“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 racked with pain.”

“We dont need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and donts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.”

“Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.”

“Walk Into the Sky.”

“Argue with anything else, but dont argue with your own nature.”

“Its not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue,”

“Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. Id spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldnt matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.”

“Fighting isnt the right response to bullying-for adults. Adults have to find out what makes the bully the way he is and look for reasons and answers and understanding. Thats an adults responsibility.”

“When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom - freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”

“In society, we worry about children who are off the rails, about five-year-olds bullying other children at school, about bringing up the next generation, and yet in the past we have just not invested in the skills of people we ask to work in that sector.”

“For a human being, nothing comes naturally. We have to learn everything we do.”

Ill be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, well cling together so tight that nothing and no onell ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... Well 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, theyll have to take two, one of you and one of me, well be joined so tight...

I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure hed see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything Id ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didnt. There is none.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if youre willing to risk failure.

That’s the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

You dont win races by wishing, you win them by running faster than everyone else does.

We shouldnt live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.

Theres a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that were even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books wont supply them.