Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman CBE, FRSLis an English writer. He is the author of several best-selling books, most notably the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and the fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945"...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth19 October 1946
thinking ideas way
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.
looks stories way
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.
writing stories way
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.
maps way adults
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.
philosophy way candle
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.
books feed genuine nourish satisfy truth
Books which satisfy us and feed us and nourish us have to have this substratum of genuine truth in them, ... And I don't see much of that in most fantasy.
answers bully fighting reasons response
Fighting isn't the right response to bullying-for adults. Adults have to find out what makes the bully the way he is and look for reasons and answers and understanding. That's an adult's responsibility.
alive central space watching
It's not like watching TV; it's not even like watching a film in a cinema. Everyone in that big space is alive and everyone is focussed on one central activity.
human learn
For a human being, nothing comes naturally. We have to learn everything we do.
absence christian doctrine object presence
It's not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue,
audience children experience fresh opera performed run simply theatre
The experience of being in the audience when a play or an opera is being performed is not simply passive. Children need to go to the theatre as much as they need to run about in the fresh air.
bang begin slap telling troubles whenever
And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from?
adam calculate cannot eve imaginary imagined include minus square
Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.
adam calculate cannot eve god imaginary imagined include manners minus root square
Adam and Eve are like imaginary number, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.