Philip Pullman citations

Page 4

“Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.”

“Make this the golden rule, the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath: Everything we ask a child to do should be worth doing.”

“I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.”

“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.”

“It’s like having to make a choice: a blessing or a curse. The one thing you can’t do is choose neither.”

“Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current.”

“I’m just trying to wake up - I’m so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn’t care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake…”

“… his face bore an expression that mingled haughty disdain with a tender, ardent sympathy, as if he would love all things if only his nature could let him forget their defects.”

“If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day.”

“Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.”

“Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.”

“Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.”

“You think things have to be possible? Things have to be!”

“The fact was that where Will is concerned, she was developing a new kind of sense, as if he were simply more in focus than anyone she'd known before. Everything about him was clear and close and immediate.”

“It does not make sense. It cannot exist. It’s impossible, and if it isn’t impossible, it’s irrelevant, and if it isn’t either of those things, it’s embarrassing.”

“Everything means something.”

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

“The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.”

“He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?”

“Tell him, we are not devils but we have friends who are.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You don't read it in the sense of reading a message; it doesn't work like that. What's happening is that the Shadows are responding to the attention you pay them.”

“That is how it seems…. But we can’t read the darkness, Mr. Scoresby. It is more than possible that I might be wrong.”

“As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.”

“On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
So on they climbed.”

“She is the goddess of the dead. She comes to you smiling and kindly, and you know it is time to die.”

“The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics — what we call experimental theology — is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.”

“Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare, ignoring the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reaching a state in which movement alone was good and stillness bad, so that he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And since the failure of the witches' spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some curse greater than their own powers.”