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A Story, To Me, Has A Particular Sprite, Like The Angel Of The Spirit Of That Story - And It's My Job To Attend To What It Wants To Do. When I Tell The Story Of Cinderella, The Sprite Does Not Want Me To Make It Into An Allegory Of The Fall Of Communism. The Sprite Would Be Unhappy If I Did That.

-Philip Pullman

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A Story, To Me,

Philip Pullman

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A Story, To Me, Has A Particular Sprite, Like The Angel Of The Spirit Of That Story - And It's My Job To Attend To What It Wants To Do. When I Tell The Story Of Cinderella, The Sprite Does Not Want Me To Make It Into An Allegory Of The Fall Of Communism. The Sprite Would Be Unhappy If I Did That.

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But Suppose Your Dæmon Settles In A Shape You Don't Like? Well, Then, You're Discontented, En't You? There's Plenty Of Folk As'd Like To Have A Lion As A Dæmon And They End Up With A Poodle. And Till They Learn To Be Satisfied With What They Are, They're Going To Be Fretful About It. Waste Of Feeling, That Is. But It Didn't Seem To Lyra That She Would Ever Grow Up.

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 Fiery Crimson Like The Fires Of Hell, They Swung And Shimmered Loosely With More Grace Than The Most Skillful Dancer.

Her Last Conscious Thought Was Disgust At Life; Her Senses Had Lied To Her. The World Was Not Made Of Energy And Delight But Of Foulness, Betrayal, And Lassitude. Living Was Hateful, And Death Was No Better, And From End To End Of The Universe This Was The First And Last And Only Truth.

Everyone, From The Mother Superior To The Priests To My Parents--they Were So Upset And Reproachful...i Felt As If Something They All Passionately Believed In Depended On Me Carrying On With Something I Didn't.

I Practiced On The Greatest Model Of Storytelling We've Got, Which Is "the Iliad" And "the Odyssey." I Told Those Stories Many, Many Times.

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.

'thou Shalt Not' Might Reach The Head, But It Takes 'once Upon A Time' To Reach The Heart.

Once Upon A Time

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.

And Then Serafina Understood Something For Which The 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. That Was How These Creatures Looked Now, These Beautiful Pilgrims Of Rarefied Light, Standing Around The Girl With The Dirty-face And The Tartan Skirt And The Boy With The Wounded Hand Who Was Frowning In His Sleep.

Tolkien, Who Created This Marvellous Vehicle, Doesn't Go Anywhere In It. He Just Sits Where He Is. What I Mean By That Is That He Always Seems To Be Looking Backwards, To A Greater And More Golden Past; And What's More He Doesn't Allow Girls Or Women Any Important Part In The Story At All. Life Is Bigger And More Interesting Than The Lord Of The Rings Thinks It Is.

Human Beings Can't See Anything Without Wanting To Destroy It. That's Original Sin. And I'm Going To Destroy It. Death Is Going To Die.

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.

Teachers Often Make The Mistake Of Thinking They're The Boss Of The Class; They're Not. The Boss Of The Class Is Sitting Down There Somewhere.

But We Can Trust Him Roger, I Swear," She Said With A Final Effort,"because He's Will.

A Story, To Me, Has A Particular Sprite, Like The Angel Of The Spirit Of That Story - And It's My Job To Attend To What It Wants To Do. When I Tell The Story Of Cinderella, The Sprite Does Not Want Me To Make It Into An Allegory Of The Fall Of Communism. The Sprite Would Be Unhappy If I Did That.

There Will Be Days When The Stuff Is Not Flowing Freely. What You Do Then Is Make It Up!

When It Comes To Telling Children Stories, They Don’t Need Simple Language. They Need Beautiful Language.

Tell Him, We Are Not Devils But We Have Friends Who Are.

The Crucifixion Saved Him [jesus]. He Never Had To Deal With The Fact That The Kingdom Of God Wasn't Ever Going To Come. His Disciples, Of Course, Had To Deal With It, And Little By Little They Had To Realize That It's A Metaphorical Thing. Well, That's Not What Jesus Meant. I'm Fairly Sure He Meant It Literally. But He Must Have Been The Most Fascinating Man.

All Stories Teach, Whether The Storyteller Intends Them To Or Not. They Teach The World We Create. They Teach The Morality We Live By. They Teach It Much More Effectively Than Moral Precepts And Instructions.

Marisa! Marisa!” The Cry Was Torn From Lord Asriel, And With The Snow Leopard Beside Her, With A Roaring In Her Ears, Lyra’s Mother Stood And Found Her Footing And Leapt With All Her Heart, To Hurl Herself Against The Angel And Her Daemon And Her Dying Lover, And Seize Those Beating Wings, And Bear Them All Down Together Into The Abyss.

Long Before Writing, People Were Telling Each Other Stories And The Audiobook Goes All The Way Back To That Tradition.

Life Is Hard . . . But We Cling To It All The Same

The Fairy Tale Is In A Perpetual State Of Becoming And Alteration. To Keep To One Version Or One Translation Alone Is To Put Robin Redbreast In A Cage.

Everything Means Something.

His Dark Materials

I Am A Religious Person, Although I Am Not A Believer.

Men Pass In Front Of Our Eyes Like Butterflies, Creatures Of A Brief Season. We Love Them; They Are Brave, Proud, Beautiful, And Clever.

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.

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.

All The Stories Of The Bible That I Know Came To Me First From My Grandfather's Lips... He Would See Stories In Everything. He Told Stories Very Easily And Very Generously, So I Loved Him For That. He Was A Simple Man, A Victorian; He Was Born In 1890-something. He Saw No Reason And Had Never Seen Any Reason To Question His Christian Faith. His Faith Was Strong And Simple And That's It. And I, Like His Other Grandchildren And The Children In His Parish, Sheltered Underneath It.

Argue With Anything Else, But Don't Argue With Your Own Nature.

Stories Are The Most Important Thing In The World. Without Stories, We Wouldn't Be Human Beings At All.

Imagination Is A Form Of Seeing

I'm Superstitious About The Paper That I Use, For Example. I've Written All My Novels On A Paper Of A Particular Size With Lines Of A Particular Distance Apart And With Two Holes In The Paper For The Folder Clip.

So Lyra And Her Daemon Turned Away From The World They Were Born In, And Looked Toward The Sun, And Walked Into The Sky.

No,' He Said, 'memory's A Poor Thing To Have. It's Your Own Real Hair And Mouth And Arms And Eyes And Hands I Want. I Didn't Know I Could Ever Love Anything So Much.

And Barely Ten Minutes Later The Soft Sound Of Wingbeats Came To Their Ears, And Balthamos Stood Up Eagerly. The Next Moment, The Two Angels Were Embracing, And Will, Gazing Into The Flames, Saw Their Mutual Affection. More Than Affection: They Loved Each Other With A Passion.

The Moment In The Account Of Adam And Eve In The Book Of Genesis Is When They Realize They're Naked And Try And Cover Themselves With Fig Leaves. That Seemed To Me A Perfect Allegory Of What Happened In The 20th Century With Regard To Literary Modernism. Literary Modernism 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?...a Lot Of Modernism Does Seem To Come Out Of A Fear Of Being Thought An Ordinary Storyteller.

One Curious Thing About Growing Up Is That You Don't Only Move Forward In Time; You Move Backwards As Well, As Pieces Of Your Parents' And Grandparents' Lives Come To You.

I Look At The State Of The American Politics And I Scratch My Head In Wonder. How Can The Republican Party, Any Party, Have Fallen Into To Such A State Of Self-destructiveness - Self-destructive Stupidity? How Is It Possible? I Don't Know. It's An Absolute Mystery To Me.

It's Only Through Honesty And Courage That Science Can Work At All. The Ptolemaic Understanding Of The Solar System Was Undermined And Corrected By The Constant Pressure Of More And More Honest Reporting.

She Longed For Cutlasses, Pistols, And Brandy; She Had To Make Do With Coffee, And Pencils, And Verbs.

I Got A Book Token For Christmas And Exchanged It For A Book Called A History Of Art, And That Book (which I Still Have-battered And Falling To Pieces) Became More Precious To Me Than Any Bible.

...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.

Well, I Have An Idea, Usually A Visual Image Of Some Sort. A Setting. A Particular, I Don't Know, Urban Scene, A Particular Time Of Day. Something That Grips My Imagination For Some Reason.

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.

Half A Dozen Brats Turned With Expressions Of Derision, And Lyra Threw Her Cigarette Down, Recognizing The Cue For A Fight. Everyone's Daemon Instantly Became Warlike: Each Child Was Accompanied By Fangs, Or Claws, Or Bristling Fur, And Pantalaimon, Contemptuous Of The Limited Imaginations Of These Gyptian Daemons, Became A Dragon The Size Of A Deer Hound.

I Don't See Any Sign Of God In This World, In The Place Where We Live And Things We Know. It Can All Be Explained To My Mind Perfectly Satisfactorily Without God. But In The Great Darkness Beyond This Little Spark Of Light Where I Live, Of Course There May Be All Kinds Of Things. There May Be A God. So I'm Really An Agnostic.

Seems To Me-" Lee Said, Feeling For The Words, "seems To Me The Place You Fight Cruelty Is Where You Find It, And The Place You Give Help Is Where You See It Needed.

Then She Was Pressing Her Little Proud Broken Self Against His Face, As Close As She Could Get, And Then They Died.

I Seemed To Have Spent The Whole Time Either Reading, Which I Loved, Or Laughing, Which I Love, Or Fooling About, Which I Loved. There Was The Usual Teenage Angst: "nobody Understands Me" And "i'm The Only Genius In The World" And All That Stuff. But That Didn't Get Very Deep.

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.... We Have To Be All Those Difficult Things Like Cheerful And Kind And Curious And Patient, And We've Got To Study And Think And Work Hard, All Of Us, In All Our Different Worlds, And Then We'll Build... The Republic Of Heaven.

My Real Purpose In Telling Middle-school Students Stories Was To Practice Telling Stories. And I Practiced On The Greatest Model Of Storytelling We've Got, Which Is "the Iliad" And "the Odyssey." I Told Those Stories Many, Many Times. And The Way I Would Justify It To The Head Teacher If He Came In Or To Any Parents Who Complained Was, Look, I'm Telling These Great Stories Because They're Part Of Our Cultural Heritage. I Did Believe That.

For Every Once Upon A Time There Must Be A Story To Follow, Because If A Story Doesn't, Something Else Will, And It Might Not Be As Harmless As A Story.

Once Upon A Time

I Have Maintained A Passionate Interest In Education, Which Leads Me Occasionally To Make Foolish And Ill-considered Remarks Alleging That Not Everything Is Well In Our Schools. My Main Concern Is That An Over-emphasis On Testing And League Tables Has Led To A Lack Of Time And Freedom For A True, Imaginative And Humane Engagement With Literature.

For A Long Time I Thought I Was A Poet, But That's A High Title To Claim.

I Am A Story Teller. If I Wanted To Send A Message I Would Have Written A Sermon.

We Shouldn't Live As If [other Worlds] Mattered More Than This Life In This World, Because Where We Are Is Always The Most Important Place.

I Am A Strong Believer In The Tyranny, The Dictatorship, The Absolute Authority Of The Writer.

You'll Drift Apart, It's True, But You'll Be Out In The Open, Part Of Everything Alive Again.

My Only Real Claim To Anyone's Attention Lies In My Writing

I Was Born In Norwich In 1946, And Educated In England, Zimbabwe, And Australia, Before My Family Settled In North Wales.

On A Cold, Fretful Afternoon In Early October, 1872, A Hansom Cab Drew Up Outside The Offices Of Lockhart And Selby, Shipping Agents, In The Financial Heart Of London, And A Young Girl Got Out And Paid The Driver. She Was A Person Of Sixteen Or So--alone, And Uncommonly Pretty. She Was Slender And Pale, And Dressed In Mourning, With A Black Bonnet Under Which She Tucked Back A Straying Twist Of Blond Hair That The Wind Had Teased Loose. She Had Unusually Dark Brown Eyes For One So Fair. Her Name Was Sally Lockhart; And Within Fifteen Minutes, She Was Going To Kill A Man.

We Have To Build The Republic Of Heaven Where We Are, Because For Us There Is No Elsewhere.

His Dark Materials

I Stopped Believing There Was A Power Of Good And A Power Of Evil That Were Outside Us. And I Came To Believe That Good And Evil Are Names For What People Do, Not For What They Are.

People Should Decide On The Books' Meanings For Themselves. They'll Find A Story That Attacks Such Things As Cruelty, Oppression, Intolerance, Unkindness, Narrow-mindedness, And Celebrates Love, Kindness, Open-mindedness, Tolerance, Curiosity, Human Intelligence.

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

I Feel With Some Passion That What We Truly Are Is Private, And Almost Infinitely Complex, And Ambiguous, And Both External And Internal, And Double- Or Triple- Or Multiply Natured, And Largely Mysterious Even To Ourselves; And Furthermore That What We Are Is Only Part Of Us, Because Identity, Unlike "identity", Must Include What We Do. And I Think That To Find Oneself And Every Aspect Of This Complexity Reduced In The Public Mind To One Property That Apparently Subsumes All The Rest ("gay", "black", "muslim", Whatever) Is To Be The Victim Of A Piece Of Extraordinary Intellectual Vulgarity.

She Was Riding A Bear! And The Aurora Was Swaying Above Them In Golden Arcs And Loops, And All Around Was The Bitter Arctic Cold And The Immense Silence Of The North.

Disney Is A Huge Presence When It Comes To Fairy Tales Because He’s Made Of Them Such Brilliant Artifacts In Terms Of Movie-making. But It’s Very Hard To Ignore What He’s Done To Them. I'm Not Interested In Denigrating Disney Or Even Commenting On Him Very Much. I'm More Interested In Seeing What I Can Do With The Stories Myself.

When You Choose One Way Out Of Many, All The Ways You Don't Take Are Snuffed Out Like Candles, As If They'd Never Existed. At That Moment All Will's Choices Existed At Once. But To Keep Them All In Existence Meant Doing Nothing. He Had To Choose, After All.

The First Ghost To Leave The World Of The Dead Was Roger. He Took A Step Forward, And Turned To Look Back At Lyra, And Laughed In Surprise As He Found Himself Turning Into The Night, The Starlight, The Air. . .and Then He Was Gone, Leaving Behind Such A Vivid Little Burst Of Happiness.

A Professional Writer Is Someone Who Writes Just As Well When They're Not Inspired As When They Are.

Men And Women Are Moved By Tides Much Fiercer Than You Can Imagine, And They Sweep Us All Up Into The Current.

I Will Love You For Ever, Whatever Happens. Till I Die And After I Die, And When I Find My Way Out Of The Land Of The Dead I'll Drift About Forever, All My Atoms, Till I Find You Again.

If A Witch Needs Something, Another Witch Will Give It To Her. If There Is War To Be Fought, We Don't Consider Cost One Of The Factors In Deciding Whether Or Not It Is Right To Fight. Nor Do We Have Any Notion Of Honor. An Insult To A Bear Is A Deadly Thing. To Us...inconceivable. How Could You Insult A Witch? What Would It Matter If You Did?

We Feel Cold, But We Don't Mind It, Because We Will Not Come To Harm. And If We Wrapped Up Against The Cold, We Wouldn't Feel Other Things, Like The Bright Tingle Of The Stars, Or The Music Of The Aurora, Or Best Of All The Silky Feeling Of Moonlight On Our Skin. It's Worth Being Cold For That.

There Are Some Who Live By Every Rule And Cling Tightly To Their Rectitude Because They Fear Being Swept Away By A Tempest Of Passion, And There Are Others Who Cling To The Rules Because They Fear That There Is No Passion There At All, And That If They Let Go They Would Simply Remain Where They Are, Foolish And Unmoved; And They Could Bear That Least Of All. Living A Life Of Iron Control Lets Them Pretend To Themselves That Only By The Mightiest Effort Of Will Can They Hold Great Passions At Bay.

For A Human Being, Nothing Comes Naturally,' Said Grumman. 'we Have To Learn Everything We Do.

Maybe Sometimes We Don't Do The Right Thing Because The Wrong Thing Looks More Dangerous, And We Don't Want To Look Scared, So We Go And Do The Wrong Thing Just Because It's Dangerous. We're More Concerned With Not Looking Scared Than With Judging Right.

Read Like A Butterfly, Write Like A Bee.

There's Some That Came Here Never Believing They Were Dead. They Insisted All The Way That They Were Alive, It Was A Mistake, Someone Would Have To Pay; Made No Difference. There's Others Who Longed To Be Dead When They Were Alive, Poor Souls; Lives Full Of Pain Or Misery; Killed Themselves For A Chance Of A Blessed Rest, And Found That Nothing Had Changed Except For The Worse, And This Time There Was No Escape; You Can't Make Yourself Alive Again.

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.

I Wanted The Chance To Look Again At Very Famous Stories And See What Made Them Work Well, Whether There Were Any Ways In Which They Could Be Improved. Because The Great Thing About Fairy Tales And Folk Tales Is That There Is No Authentic Text.

The Great Thing About Fairy Tales And Folk Tales Is That There Is No Authentic Text.

There Are Some Themes, Some Subjects, Too Large For Adult Fiction; They Can Only Be Dealt With Adequately In A Children's Book.

No One Has The Right To Live Without Being Shocked.

Freedom Of Speech

What Work Do I Have To Do Then?" Said Will, But Went On At Once, "no, On Second Thought, Don't Tell Me. I Shall Decide What I Do. If You Say My Work Is Fighting, Or Healing, Or Exploring, Or Whatever You Might Say, I'll Always Be Thinking About It. And If I Do End Up Doing That, I'll Be Resentful Because It'll Feel As If I Didn't Have A Choice, And If I Don't Do It, I'll Feel Guilty Because I Should. Whatever I Do, I Will Choose It, No One Else.

Sticks And Stones, I'll Break Yer Bones, But Names Ain't Worth A Quarrel.

Everything Has A Meaning, If Only We Could Read It.

His Dark Materials

Children Are Not Less Intelligent Than Adults; What They Are Is Less Informed.

But I Know That All The Things I Do Know Are Very Small Compared With The Things That I Don't Know.

A Lot Of Modernism Does Seem To Come Out Of A Fear Of Being Thought An Ordinary Storyteller. So They Tell It Backwards And They Tell It In The Present Tense And They Cut Loose The Pages And Shuffle Them Around - All That Kind Of Stuff.

Iorek Byrnison: Can Is Not The Same As Must. Lyra Silvertongue: But If You Must And You Can, Then There's No Excuse.

People Are Too Complicated To Have Simple Labels.

To Get The Best Out Of Life Here ...good Grief. There's Plenty Of It About, So Indulge. Give Yourself Some Thing To Remember. Fall In Love. Fall Out Of Love. Gamble. Get Drunk. See How Long You Can Stay Awake. Go For Long Walks At Night. Discover What You're Afraid Of Doing, And Then Do It.

Falling In Love

You Going To Be A Scientist When You Grow Up?” That Sort Of Question Deserved A Blank Stare, Which It Got.

I Wanted To Avoid What Some Modern Tellers Have Done, Quite Legitimately, To Make Fairy Tales More Like Novels And Short Stories, To Characterize The Heroes And The Heroines Much More Than They Are Characterized In Grimm. I Like The Psychological Flatness Of Them, The Fact That They're More Like Masks Than Individuals.

I'm For Open-mindedness And Tolerance. I'm Against Any Form Of Fanaticism, Fundamentalism Or Zealotry, And This Certainty Of 'we Have The Truth.' The Truth Is Far Too Large And Complex. Nobody Has The Truth.

There Is Another Consequence Of Any Belief In A Single God, And That Is That It Is A Very Good Excuse For People To Behave Very Badly.

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.

The Idea Hovered And Shimmered Delicately, Like A Soap Bubble, And She Dared Not Even Look At It Directly In Case It Burst. But She Was Familiar With The Way Of Ideas, And She Let It Shimmer, Looking Away, Thinking About Something Else.

My Books Are About Killing God.

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.

It Takes Long Practice, Yes. You Have To Work. Did You Think You Could Snap Your Fingers, And Have It As A Gift? What Is Worth Having Is Worth Working For.

I've Been Surprised By How Little Criticism I've Got. Harry Potter's Been Taking All The Flak. I'm A Great Fan Of J.k. Rowling, But The People - Mainly From America's Bible Belt - Who Complain That Harry Potter Promotes Satanism Or Witchcraft Obviously Haven't Got Enough In Their Lives. Meanwhile, I've Been Flying Under The Radar, Saying Things That Are Far More Subversive Than Anything Poor Old Harry Has Said. My Books Are About Killing God.

When You Choose One Way Out Of Many, All The Ways You Don't Take Are Snuffed Out Like Candles, As If They'd Never Existed.

From What We Are, Spirit; From What We Do, Matter. Matter And Spirit Are One.

But Think Of Adam And Eve Like An Imaginary Number, Like The Square Root Of Minus One: You Can Never See Any Concrete Proof That It Exists, But If You Include It In Your Equations, You Can Calculate All Manner Of Things That Couldn't Be Imagined Without It.

I Told Him I Was Going To Betray You, And Betray Lyra, And He Believed Me Because I Was Corrupt And Full Of Wickedness; He Looked So Deep I Felt Sure He'd See The Truth. But I Lied Too Well. I Was Lying With Every Nerve And Fiber And Everything I'd Ever Done...i Wanted Him To Find No Good In Me, And He Didn't. There Is None.

I Don't Know Where My Ideas Come From, But I Know Where They Come To. They Come To My Desk, And If I'm Not There, They Go Away Again.

We Don't Need Lists Of Rights And Wrongs, Tables Of Do's And Don'ts: We Need Books, Time, And Silence. Thou Shalt Not Is Soon Forgotten, But Once Upon A Time Lasts Forever.

Once Upon A Time' Lasts Forever.

Once Upon A Time

Because The Great Thing About Fairy Tales And Folk Tales Is That There Is No Authentic Text. It's Not Like The Text Of Paradise Lost Or James Joyce's Ulysses, And You Have To Adhere To That Exact Text.

Just Sort Of Relax Your Mind And Say Yes, It Does Hurt, I Know. Don't Try And Shut It Out.

If You Want To Write Anything That Works, You Have To Go With The Grain Of Your Talent, Not Against It. If Your Talent Is Inert And Sullen In The Face Of Business Or Politics...but Takes Fire At The Thought Of Ghosts And Vampires And Witches And Demons Then Feed The Flames, Feed The Flames.

There’s Been Terrible Things We Seen, En’t There? And More A Coming, More’n Likely. So I Think I’d Rather Not Know What’s In The Future. I’ll Stick To The Present.

When He'd Sworn At Her And Been Sworn At In Return, They Became Great Friends.

Just Finished 'secrecy' - Truly Enthralling Both As A Love Story And As A Tale Of Suspense - But Much More Than Both.

I Think It's Perfectly Possible To Explain How The Universe Came About Without Bringing God Into It, But I Don't Know Everything, And There May Well Be A God Somewhere, Hiding Away. Actually, If He Is Keeping Out Of Sight, It's Because He's Ashamed Of His Followers And All The Cruelty And Ignorance They're Responsible For Promoting In His Name. If I Were Him, I'd Want Nothing To Do With Them.

I Know Whom We Must Fight...it Is The Church. For All Its History, It's Tried To Suppress And Control Every Natural Impulse.that Is What The Church Does, And Every Church Is The Same: Control, Destroy, Obliterate Every Good Feeling.

You Cannot Change What You Are, Only What You Do.

The Christian Religion Is A Very Powerful And Convincing Mistake.

I'm With The Grimms On This: Stories For Young And Old. You Can't Characterize Them Any Better Than That.

Lonely? I Don't Know. They Tell Me This Is Cold. I Don't Know What Cold Is, Because I Don't Freeze. So I Don't Know What Lonely Means Either. Bears Are Made To Be Solitary.

What Is Worth Having Is Worth Working For.

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.

I Have Stolen Ideas From Every Book I Have Ever Read.

If You Want Something You Can Have It, But Only If You Want Everything That Goes With It, Including All The Hard Work And The Despair, And Only If You're Willing To Risk Failure.

Both The Oblation Board And The Specters Of Indifference Are Bewitched By This Truth About Human Beings: That Innocence Is Different From Experience. The Oblation Board Fears And Hates Dust, And The Specters Feast On It, But It's Dust Both Of Them Are Obsessed By.

This Is The Value For Me Of Writing Books That Children Read. Children Aren't Interested In Your Appalling Self-consciousness. They Want To Know What Happens Next. They Force You To Tell A Story.

The Way You Speak Of The Characters In Your Story Shows What You Think Of The Values Of Conservatives‚ Or Evolution, For Example. It Shows Where Your Moral Center Is. So You Are In The Message Business Whether You Like It Or Not.

You Speak Of Destiny As If It Was Fixed.

He's [jesus] The Most Fascinating Character In History, Really - The Character Who's Made More Difference To The World Than Anyone Since Him. I Daresay That Muslims Would Say Muhammad Was That Character, But I Think Jesus Had A Sort Of 600-year Start On Him.

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?

As Jane Austen Might Have Put It: It Is A Truth Universally Acknowledged That Young Protagonists In Search Of Adventure Must Ditch Their Parents.

The Intentions Of A Tool Are What It Does. A Hammer Intends To Strike, A Vise Intends To Hold Fast, A Lever Intends To Lift. They Are What It Is Made For. But Sometimes A Tool May Have Other Uses That You Don't Know. Sometimes In Doing What You Intend, You Also Do What The Knife Intends, Without Knowing.

Religion Begins In Story. Yes, It Does, Because Religion Is An Attempt To Make Sense Of What Is Incomprehensible To Us, What Is Inexplicable, What Is Awe-inspiring, What Is Frightening, What Moves Us To Great Wonder, And So On. That Is The Religious Impulse, And It Is Part Of Our Psychological Makeup -- Of Everyone's Psychological Makeup.

The E-book Revolution Has Made It Very Easy To Pay Writers A Good Deal Less Than What Their Work Is Worth. I Do Strongly Believe That We Writers Ought To Hold Out For Much Better Royalties.

All The History Of Human Life Has Been A Struggle Between Wisdom And Stupidity.

Being In Love Was Like China: You Knew It Was There, And No Doubt It Was Very Interesting, And Some People Went There, But I Never Would.

All Good Things Pass Away.

She Wondered Whether There Would Ever Come An Hour In Her Life When She Didn't Think Of Him -- Didn't Speak To Him In Her Head, Didn't Relive Every Moment They'd Been Together, Didn't Long For His Voice And His Hands And His Love. She Had Never Dreamed Of What It Would Feel Like To Love Someone So Much; Of All The Things That Had Astonished Her In Her Adventures, That Was What Astonished Her The Most. She Thought The Tenderness It Left In Her Heart Was Like A Bruise That Would Never Go Away, But She Would Cherish It Forever.

She Found Out That Having Something To Do Prevented You From Feeling Seasick, And That Even A Job Like Scrubbing A Deck Could Be Satisfying, If It Was Done In A Seamanlike Way. She Was Very Taken With This Notion, And Later On She Folded The Blankets On Her Bunk In A Seamanlike Way, And Put Her Possessions In The Closet In A Seamanlike Way, And Used 'stow' Instead Of 'tidy' For The Process Of Doing So. After Two Days At Sea, Lyra Decided That This Was The Life For Her.

Being A Practiced Liar Doesn't Mean You Have A Powerful Imagination. Many Good Liars Have No Imagination At All; It's That Which Gives Their Lies Such Wide-eyed Conviction.

When You Live For Many Hundreds Of Years, You Know That Every Opportunity Will Come Again.

One Of The Ways In Which Writers Most Show Their Inventiveness Is In The Things They Tell Us About How They Write. Generally Speaking, I Don't Like To Make A Plan Before I've Written A Story. I Find It Kills The Story - Deadens It, Makes It Uninteresting. Unless I'm Surprised By Something In A Story, The Reader's Not Going To Be Surprised Either.

After Nourishment, Shelter And Companionship, Stories Are The Thing We Need Most In The World.

Tell Them Stories. They Need The Truth You Must Tell Them True Stories, And Everything Will Be Well, Just Tell Them Stories.

If There Is A War To Be Fought, We Don’t Consider Cost One Of The Factors In Deciding Whether Or Not To Fight.

And Then What?" Said Her Daemon Sleepily. "build What?" "the Republic Of Heaven," Said Lyra.

Thou Shalt Not Is Soon Forgotten, But Once Upon A Time Is Forever.

Once Upon A Time

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.

If A Coin Comes Down Heads, That Means That The Possibility Of Its Coming Down Tails Has Collapsed. Until That Moment The Two Possibilities Were Equal. But On Another World, It Does Come Down Tails. And When That Happens, The Two Worlds Split Apart.

The Lord Of The Rings' Is Fundamentally An Infantile Work. Tolkien Is Not Interested In The Way Grownup, Adult Human Beings Interact With Each Other. He's Interested In Maps And Plans And Languages And Codes.

A Story, To Me, Has A Particular Sprite, Like The Angel Of The Spirit Of That Story - And It's My Job To Attend To What It Wants To Do.

Every Little Increase In Human Freedom Has Been Fought Over Ferociously Between Those Who Want Us To Know More And Be Wiser And Stronger, And Those Who Want Us To Obey And Be Humble And Submit.

A Murderer Was A Worthy Companion.

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.

If We All Gave All Our Goods To The Poor, The Church Would Fall Apart. If We All Hated Our Father And Mother, As Jesus Told Us To, There'd Be An End Of The Church's Emphasis On The Family As Being The One Important Thing Holding The Whole Society Together. There Are All Sorts Of Ways In Which The Church's Teachings Contradict Directly What Jesus Says In The Gospel.

Do Not Lie To The Scholar.

It's Not My Business To Remedy Deaths! It's My Business To Tell Stories. Lyra And The Other Heroines Didn't Come With Placards Saying, "make This A Feminist Story!" I'm Glad People Enjoy Seeing A Female Protagonist In A Big Adventure Story, But I Didn't Do It For Political Reasons.

True Education Flowers At The Point When Delight Falls In Love With Responsibility.

Falling In Love

We Are All Subject To The Fates. But We Must Act As If We Are Not, Or Die Of Despair.

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.”

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

Was There Only One World After All Which Spent Its Time Dreaming Of Others?

...when All The Openings Were Closed, Then The Worlds Would All Be Restored To Their Proper Relations With One Another, Lyra’s Oxford And Will’s Would Lie Over Each Other Again, Like Transparent Images On Two Sheets Of Film Being Moved Closer And Closer Until They Merged–although They Would Never Truly Touch.

Even If It Means Oblivion, Friends, I'll Welcome It, Because It Won't Be Nothing. We'll Be Alive Again In A Thousand Blades Of Grass, And A Million Leaves; We'll Be Falling In The Raindrops And Blowing In The Fresh Breeze; We'll Be Glittering In The Dew Under The Stars And The Moon Out There In The Physical World, Which Is Our True Home And Always Was.

She Had Asked: What Is He? A Friend Or An Enemy? The Alethiometer Answered: He Is A Murderer. When She Saw The Answer, She Relaxed At Once. He Could Find Food, And Show Her How To Reach Oxford, And Those Were Powers That Were Useful, But He Might Still Have Been Untrustworthy Or Cowardly. A Murderer Was A Worthy Companion. She Felt As Safe With Him As She'd Done With Iorek Byrnison The Armoured Bear.

The Range Of Individuality In Children Is Infinite, But Every Class Of Children Seemed To Have The Same Groups. And There Was A Chief Girl And A Chief Boy - A Girl That All The Other Girls Of That Age Looked Up To And Imitated And A Boy That All The Boys Looked Up To And Imitated. I Realized That If I Got Them On My Side And Exclusively Taught Them For A Couple Of Weeks, Maybe For The First Full Term, Then I Wouldn't Have Any Trouble. Teachers Often Make The Mistake Of Thinking They're The Boss Of The Class; They're Not. The Boss Of The Class Is Sitting Down There Somewhere.

After Modernism, Things Changed. Indeed, Modernism Sometimes Seems To Me Like An Equivalent Of The Fall. Remember, The First Thing Adam And Eve Did When They Ate The Fruit Was To Discover That They Had No Clothes On. They Were Embarrassed. Embarrassment Was The First Consequence Of The Fall. And Embarrassment Was The First Literary Consequence Of This Modernist Discovery Of The Surface. "am I Telling A Story? Oh My God, This Is Terrible. I Must Stop Telling A Story And Focus On The Minute Gradations Of Consciousness As They Filter Through Somebody's.

It’s Like Having To Make A Choice: A Blessing Or A Curse. The One Thing You Can’t Do Is Choose Neither.

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.

Tolkien Seems To Me Reactionary, Conservative, Fearful Of A Modern World. Fearful Of Anything That Isn't Sanctioned By The Passage Of Long Eons Of Time. I Think What I'm Doing In His Dark Materials Is Politically The Reverse Of That.

Writing Is Tyranny ... But Reading Is Democracy.

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.

Freedom Of Speech

That's The Duty Of The Old, To Be Anxious On Behalf Of The Young. And The Duty Of The Young Is To Scorn The Anxiety Of The Old.

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.

We Need To Ensure That Children Are Not Forced To Waste Their Time On Barren Rubbish.

We Have To Learn Everything We Do.

The State Of Mind Which I Put Myself When I Tell A Story Is One In Which Superstition Flourishes Very Easily. And I Welcome That Because It Helps Me.

The Book Is Second Only To The Wheel As The Best Piece Of Technology Human Beings Have Ever Invented. A Book Symbolises The Whole Intellectual History Of Mankind; It's The Greatest Weapon Ever Devised In The War Against Stupidity.

Lee Saw The Fireball And Head Through The Roar In His Ears Hester Saying, "that's The Last Of 'em Lee." He Said, Or Thought, "those Poor Men Didn't Have To Come To This, Nor Did We." She Said, "we Held 'em Off. We Held Out. We're A-helping Lyra." Then She Was Pressing Her Little Proud Broken Self Against His Face, As Close As She Could Get, And Then They Died.

Looking At Them Now, Thought Jim, You'd Never Believe They Weren't In Love With Each Other, And Not With A Hopeless, Doomed Obsession Like Poor Isabel Meredith. This Was What Love Ought To Be Like: Playful And Passionate And Teasing, And Dangerous, Too, With Sharp Intelligence In It.

I'm Perfectly Happy About Being Superstitious And Atheistic.

And I Came To Believe That Good And Evil Are Names For What People Do, Not For What They Are. All We Can Say Is That This Is A Good Deed, Because It Helps Someone Or That's An Evil One Because It Hurts Them. People Are Too Complicated To Have Simple Labels.

We Measure The Value Of A Civilized Society By The Number Of #‎ Libraries It Opens, Not The Number It Closes Down.

Civilized Society

...because Where We Are Is Always The Most Important Place.

I Don't Profess Any Religion; I Don't Think It's Possible That There Is A God.... My Books Are About Killing God.

Make This The Golden Rule, The Equivalent Of The Hippocratic Oath: Everything We Ask A Child To Do Should Be Worth Doing.

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.

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?

All Things From The North Are Devilish.

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!

Corruption And Envy And Lust For Power. Cruelty And Coldness. A Vicious Probing Curiousity. Pure, Poisonous, Toxic Malice. You Have Never From Your Earliest Years Shown A Shred Of Compassion For Sympathy Or Kindness Without Calculating How It Would Return To Your Advantage. You Have Tortured And Killed Without Regret Or Hesitation; You Have Betrayed And Intrigued And Gloried In Your Treachery. You Are A Cess-pit Of Moral Filth.

We Are All Subject To The Fates. But We Must All Act As If We Are Not, Or Die Of Despair...death Will Sweep Through All The Worlds; It Will Be The Triumph Of Despair, Forever. The Universes Will All Become Nothing More Than Interlocking Machines, Blind And Empty Of Thought, Feeling, Life...

I Don't Expect Christians To See God As A Metaphor, But That's What He Is. Perhaps It Might Be Clearer To Call Him A Character In Fiction, And A Very Interesting One Too: One Of The Greatest And Most Complex Villains Of All - Savage, Petty, Boastful And Jealous, And Yet Capable Of Moments Of Tenderness And Extremes Of Arbitrary Affection - For David, For Example. But He's Not Real, Any More Than Hamlet Or Mr Pickwick Are Real. They Are Real In The Context Of Their Stories, But You Won't Find Them In The Phone Book.

Lee Was Too Cool By Nature To Rage At Fate; His Manner Was To Raise An Eyebrow And Greet It Laconically.

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.

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