Philip Pullman Quotes


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.


Citations

Pullman, Philip. Daemon Voices: On Essays on Storytelling. David Fickling Books, 2017.

Related Quotes

Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman
  • Born: October 19, 1946
  • Nationality: British
  • Profession: Novelist

Sir Philip Pullman, CBE, FRSL is an English author of high-selling books, including the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and a 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". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.