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Philip Pullman Quotes

Philip Pullman quotes about reading

British Writer October 19, 1946

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Quotes

Creation, whether it's writing, painting or whatever, is essentially despotic and autocratic in nature, because it's the work of one mind and one mind alone which has absolute power of life or death over this sentence, or that phrase or whatever it is. It brooks no interference and can only work if it's the one mind doing it. Reading, on the other hand, interpretation, is inherently, intrinsically democratic, because it is fundamentally a process of negotiation between the mind and the text,... Philip Pullman
[T]he act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. It isn't like a lecture: it's like a conversation. There's a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader questions, the book responds, the reader considers. We bring our own preconceptions and expectations, our own intellectual... Philip Pullman
The best way to get kids to read a book is to say: 'This book is not appropriate for your age, and it has all sorts of horrible things in it like sex and death and some really big and complicated ideas, and you’re better off not touching it until you’re all grown up. I’m going to put it on this shelf and leave the room for a while. Don’t open it. Philip Pullman
Symbols and emblems were everywhere. Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Everything stood for something else; if you had the right dictionary, you could read Nature itself. It was hardly surprising to find philosophers using the symbolism of their time to interpret knowledge that came from a mysterious source. Philip Pullman
If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid? Philip Pullman
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! Philip Pullman
There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them. Philip Pullman
Thou shalt not might' reach the head but it takes 'Once upon a time' to reach the heart. Also: We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them. Philip Pullman
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. Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman quote: "I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read."
I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman quote: "Read like a butterfly, write like a bee."
Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman quote: "Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it."
Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it. Philip Pullman

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