British - Writer | October 19, 1946 -
Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet.
Philip Pullman
TryingWoodUnderstandUpSomething
The arts are beyond price; they're beyond value. They're of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being.
ValueWorthPriceBeyondHumanArts
Authors are not a special case, deserving of more sympathy than many other groups. We are a particular case of a general degradation of the quality of life, and we are not going to stop pointing it out, because we speak for many other groups as well.
LifeQualitySympathySpeakStop
The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.
BookStoryDelightFunctionPoem
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. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.
LifeLovePeopleWorldRestMy Life
Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.
YouWonderfulMuchComicsForm
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.
LoveBeautifulEyesMenPainBrave
And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?
TodayMeStoryEndProblemFirst
For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.
TimeThoughtLongLong TimeHigh
For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.
MusicSilenceListeningWritingYou
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!
EducationMeReadingViewLiterature
I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.
EducationMePassionateEverything
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