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Philip Pullman Quotes

Philip Pullman quotes about writing

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
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose. 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
There is time, and there is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God. Philip Pullman
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
What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism. Philip Pullman
As Auden is believed to have said, no poem saved a single Jew from the gas chambers. Never mind. Write the poems anyway. Play the music in spite of that. Philip Pullman
[I]n adult literary fiction, stories are there on sufferance. Other things are felt to be more important: technique, style, literary knowingness. Adult readers who do deal in straightforward stories find themselves sidelined into a genre such as crime or science fiction, where no one expects literary craftsmanship. But stories are vital. Stories never fail us, because, as Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "events never grow stale." There's more wisdom in a story than in volumes of philosophy.... Philip Pullman
I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites. Philip Pullman
I’m working on another Lyra book right now – it’s called The Book of Dust. “It’s going very well and it will be finished when I write the words ‘The End’. Philip Pullman
in writing like this, he was letting truth from beyond time into history, and thus making history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor... 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: "My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing."
My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing. Philip Pullman
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

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