“The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic. Consider the nature of what happens when we read a book - and I mean, of course, a work of literature, not an instruction manual or a textbook - in private, unsupervised, un-spied-on, alone. It isn't like a lecture: it's like a conversation. There's a back-and-forthness about it. The book proposes, the reader questions, the book responds, the reader considers. We bring our own preconceptions and expectations, our own intellectual qualities, and our limitations, too, our own previous experiences of reading, our own temperament, our own hopes and fears, our own personality to the encounter.” ReadingLiteratureBooksPersonalityWords Author:Philip Pullman
“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.” WritingReadingFreedom Of Speech Author:Philip Pullman
“We shouldn't be afraid of the obvious, because stories are about life, and life is full of obvious things like food and sleep and love and courage which you don't stop needing just because you're a good reader.” LoveLifeWritingReadingSleepCourageFoodObvious Book:Dæmon Voices Source: Dæmon Voices
“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
“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.” WorldWholeReadingStuffLaughingGeniusUsualTeenageAngstVery DeepUnderstand MeTeenage AngstNobody Understands Me Author: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?” IfsKnowsFeelsShouldWritingBookHappensReadingAsksBitsNovelConvincedFractionsDon't TrustScenery Author:Philip Pullman
“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.” ReadingPayAttentionMessagesHappeningsShadowResponding Book:The subtle knife Source: The subtle knife
“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!” YearsThreeReadingLiteratureViewsFictionStudyImportanceBritishPoint Of ViewThree YearsEducation SystemOxfordStudying Literature Author:Philip Pullman
“Writing is tyranny ... but reading is democracy.” WritingReadingDemocracyTyranny Author:Philip Pullman
