Top 300 Philip Pullman Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling.”

— Philip Pullman

152. “You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.”

— Philip Pullman

153. “As for what it’s against – the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.”

— Philip Pullman

154. “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.”

— Philip Pullman

155. “I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.”

— Philip Pullman

Featured in: Strong Quotes

156. “Hope holds you fast like an anchor so you don’t give way.”

— Philip Pullman

157. “He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed.”

— Philip Pullman

158. “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.”

— Philip Pullman

159. “The steamy, noisy kitchen was the safest place in the world, it seemed to him. Safety had never been anything to think about before; it was something you took for granted, like his mother’s endless, effortless, generous food, and the fact that there would always be hot plates ready to serve it on.”

— Philip Pullman

160. “I am a story teller. If I wanted to send a message I would have written a sermon.”

— Philip Pullman

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

161. “I wish... ” she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.”

— Philip Pullman

162. “Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I’ll write Ulysses.””

— Philip Pullman

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

163. “But there had always been ghosts in the mountains, everyone knew that.”

— Philip Pullman

164. “Everything means something,” Lyra said severely. “We just have to find out how to read it.”

— Philip Pullman

165. “She was learning that if she pretended to be weak and frightened, and dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she could turn aside all manner of pressing questions.”

— Philip Pullman

166. “Stories... entertain and teach; they help us both enjoy life and endure it. After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the things we need most in the world.”

— Philip Pullman

167. “Eventually, child, you will come to the land of the dead with no effort, no risk, a safe, calm journey, in the company of your own death, your special, devoted friend, who’s been beside you every moment of your life, who knows you better than yourself.”

— Philip Pullman

168. “Because Lyra now realized, if she hadn’t done so before, that all the fear in her nature was drawn to Mrs. Coulter as a compass needle drawn to the Pole.”

— Philip Pullman

169. “I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.”

— Philip Pullman

170. “And then Serafina understood something for which witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence.”

— Philip Pullman

171. “This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”

— Philip Pullman

172. “If Mrs. Coulter saw his reaction, she didn’t show it. She went on: “Look, Will, I don’t know how you came to meet my daughter, and I don’t know what you know already, and I certainly don’t know if I can trust you; but equally, I’m tired of having to lie. So here it is: the truth.”

— Philip Pullman

173. “Death is going to die.”

— Philip Pullman

174. “Beacause if they think the Dust is bad, it must be good.”

— Philip Pullman

175. “She’s innocent, and she loves easily.”

— Philip Pullman

176. “Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.”

— Philip Pullman

177. “I am a religious person, although I am not a believer.”

— Philip Pullman

178. “Keep away from the literal-minded folk, and ignore the scoffers.”

— Philip Pullman

179. “That is a question with too complicated an answer.”

— Philip Pullman

180. “At one point he seemed to be showing the moon to Lyra, pointing up at it and holding her so she could see, or perhaps he was showing Lyra to the moon; at any rate he looked like a lord in his own domain, with nothing to fear and all the silvery night to enjoy.”

— Philip Pullman

181. “Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, I’d follow you down to the world of the dead without thinking twice about it, just like you followed Roger; and that would be two lives gone for nothing, my life wasted like yours. No, we should spend our whole lifetimes together, good long busy lives, and if we can’t spend them together, we... we’ll have to spend them apart.”

— Philip Pullman

182. “The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters’ food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them.”

— Philip Pullman

183. “You en’t gyptian, Lyra. You might pass for gyptian with practice, but there’s more to us than gyptian language. There’s deeps in us and strong currents. We’re water people all through, and you en’t, you’re a fire person. What you’re most like is marsh fire, that’s the place you have in the gyptian scheme. You got witch oil in your soul. Deceptive, that’s what you are child.”

— Philip Pullman

184. “I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all.”

— Philip Pullman

185. “Doesn’t it scare you having your death close by all the time?” said Lyra. “Why ever would it? If he’s there, you can keep an eye on him. I’d be a lot more nervous not knowing where he was.”

— Philip Pullman

186. “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.”

— Philip Pullman

187. “Maybe art itself was a kind of voodoo, possessing you, giving you supernatural power, letting you see in the dark.”

— Philip Pullman

188. “And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same.”

— Philip Pullman

189. “He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.”

— Philip Pullman

190. “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.”

— Philip Pullman

191. “Behind them lay pain and death and fear; ahead of them lay doubt, and danger, and fathomless mysteries.”

— Philip Pullman

192. “To be sure, there’s a warm passion behind what you say. But if you give in to that passion, friends, you’re a doing what I always warned you agin: you’re a placing the satisfaction of your own feelings above the work you have to do.”

— Philip Pullman

193. “In some lights they were hardly there at all, just visible as a drifting quality in the light, a rhythmic evanescence, like veils of transparency turning before a mirror.”

— Philip Pullman

194. “The fate of Susan Pevensie indicates some sort of crazed, deranged Manichaeism. Here’s a simple test: What is the greatest Christian virtue? Well, it’s charity, isn’t it? It’s love. If somebody who knew nothing about Christian doctrine, and who had been told that Lewis was a great Christian teacher, read all the way through those books, would he get that message? No.”

— Philip Pullman

195. “Maybe so,” he said, “but whatever little chance of safety there is, I want her to have it.”

— Philip Pullman

196. “I’m perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.”

— Philip Pullman

197. “The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.”

— Philip Pullman

198. “There is time, and there is what is beyond time. There is darkness, and there is light. There is the world and the flesh, and there is God.”

— Philip Pullman

199. “He had to stay close to the ship, of course, for he could never go far from her; but she sensed his desire to speed as far and as fast as he could, for pure exhilaration. She shared his pleasure, but for her it wasn’t simple pleasure, for there was pain and fear in it too. Suppose he loved being a dolphin more than he loved being with her on land? What would she do then? Her.”

— Philip Pullman

200. “Both of them sat silent on the moss-covered rock in the slant of sunlight through the old pines and thought how many tiny chances had conspired to bring them to this place. Each of those chances might have gone a different way.”

— Philip Pullman