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Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman Quotes

Film writer

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Famous Philip Pullman Quotes

“Had reason ever created a poem, or a symphony, or a painting? If rationality can’t see things like the secret commonwealth, it’s because rationality’s vision is limited. The secret commonwealth is there. We can’t see it with rationality any more than we can weigh something with a microscope: it’s the wrong sort of instrument. We need to imagine as well as measure ...”

ReasonImaginationRationalitySecret Commonwealth
Book:The Secret Commonwealth
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“You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you're cautious, you're anxious… You're pessimistic." She knew he was right, but it wasn't right that he should speak to her accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for. "I used to be young," was all she could find to say.”

ImaginationGrowing Up
Book:The Secret Commonwealth
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“Lyra”, she said, "how's Pan going to recognise your imagination, when he finds it?” “I don’t know. It’s a metaphor.” “Well I know that. But it worked, didn't it? I made you think, he was looking for something that had vanished. So you followed him.” “Because I thought he might have been right. Something was missing.” “What did you feel was missing?” “A … certainty about the world. A sort of sense that fundamentally was true and reliable and just there. A sense that we belonged there too. Belonged in the physical world. Whatever that sense was, I’d had it once, and I didn’t have it any more.” “Maybe imagination was the wrong word.” “No, it was exactly the right word. People think imagination is just making things up, they’re just wrong. Even angels are wrong. Imagination is seeing things properly, real things, seeing them fully in all their context with all their connections in place, all the things they mean around them… The secret commonwealth. p. 433”

ImaginationSecret Commonwealth
Book:The Rose Field
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“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.”

ChildrenFightingImaginationHalfExpressionSizeDragonsDozenCigaretteRecognizingFurFangsDeerClawsHoundsBratDerisionContemptuous
Author:Philip Pullman
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