“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. is soon forgotten, butlasts forever.”
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Philip Pullman 161
English author 1946Related quotes
Time Management (2007)
Context: General Advice: Never break a promise, but re-negotiate them if need be. If you haven’t got time to do it right, you don’t have time to do it wrong. Recognize that most things are pass/fail. Feedback loops: ask in confidence.
“God has promised to supply our needs. What we don’t have now we don’t need now.”
Source: The Path of Loneliness: Finding Your Way Through the Wilderness to God
“We don’t need self-confidence we need God-confidence”
“You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
The Paris Review interview (1982)
Context: I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”
I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote. The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.
Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: “You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books.”
That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, “But this is true. How did she know?” And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.
“We don’t need any more promises. We need to start keeping the promises we already made.”
Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s message for the New Year, 2004. un.org http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sgsm9095.doc.htm
“We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.”
Wall and Piece (2005)
“We don’t need an invitation to access our greatness.”
As quoted in [Ennis, Dawn, Meet 5 trans activists making a difference in LA, https://www.losangelesblade.com/2018/01/08/meet-5-trans-activists-making-a-difference-in-la/, Los Angeles Blade, 29 January 2019, January 8, 2018]