“My mother married again after my father's death - another Royal Air Force officer, and a very different kind of man. We went to Australia when I was eight or nine. We lived there for a couple of years, and then came back and lived in North Wales for the whole of my teenage years... I learned how to write poems quite a lot. I just had a good time reading and reading and reading. So that's where I did most of my growing up.” MenWritingYearsKindDifferentWholeMotherReadingFatherForceGrowing UpGrowingAirCoupleMarriedEightNineGood TimesAustraliaOfficersDifferent KindsTeenageRoyalAir ForceWalesTeenage YearsHad A Good Time Author:Philip Pullman
“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.”” KnowsWritingKindPersonsStoriesCasesGrewCleverModernismUlyssesClever Person Author:Philip Pullman
“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.” KindDoeSeemsStuffCuttingPagesOrdinaryBackwardsStorytellerTenseModernismShufflePresent Tense Author:Philip Pullman
“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.” KnowsWorldMindKindMayLittlesLightCoursesDarknessThis WorldAll KindsSparksAgnosticWithout God Author:Philip Pullman
“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.” HumansKindBookStoriesOrderHolyAuthorityDoctrinePriesthoodMisuseHuman FreedomHoly Books Author:Philip Pullman
“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.” IfsThinkingWorldKindImportantDifferentHardHeavenDifficultStudyThis WorldHard WorkPatientFinishedKingdomsCuriousThis LifeRepublicCheerfulDifficult ThingsDifferent WorldsKingdom Of HeavenHis Dark Materials Book:The Amber Spyglass Source: The Amber Spyglass
“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.” IfsKindFactsKnownClearFocusConcernedDeveloping Book:The subtle knife Source: The subtle knife
“D'you know how embarrassing it is to mention good and evil in a scientific laboratory? Have you any idea? One of the reasons I became a scientist was not to have to think about that kind of thing.” ThinkingKnowsKindIdeasReasonEvilKnow HowScientistGood And EvilEmbarrassingLaboratory Book:The subtle knife Source: The subtle knife
“Gradually, at various points in our childhoods, we discover different forms of conviction. There's the rock-hard certainty of personal experience ("I put my finger in the fire and it hurt,"), which is probably the earliest kind we learn. Then there's the logically convincing, which we probably come to first through maths, in the context of Pythagoras's theorem or something similar, and which, if we first encounter it at exactly the right moment, bursts on our minds like sunrise with the whole universe playing a great chord of C Major.” IfsMindFirstsKindDifferentHardWholeMomentsFormScienceUniverseHurtFireChildhoodRocksMajorsLogicOur ChildrenFingersVariousConvictionMathCertaintyEncountersSunriseIt HurtsConvincingChordsPersonal ExperiencesTheoremsRight Moment Author:Philip Pullman
