Philip Pullman Quotes

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.

Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.

I love novels, and I read them more than anything, but stories cut in sharp and hard and are able to reveal things in a different way: they're highly charged, a slightly newer form, and inherently more contemporary.

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest.

Every story we remember is a novel. Novels make things more universal.

Make the customer the hero of your brand's story.

Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.

I'm much more drawn to fiction, to short stories, and to plays, than I am to diarists.

Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals

Disney is a huge presence when it comes to fairy tales because he’s made of them such brilliant artifacts in terms of movie-making. But it’s very hard to ignore what he’s done to them. I'm not interested in denigrating Disney or even commenting on him very much. I'm more interested in seeing what I can do with the stories myself.

Comics are stories; they're like novels or anything else. So the first thing you have to do is become a good storyteller.

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

I do write a lot of prose. It's not disciplined enough yet that it's actually become stories, or short stories. The idea of writing a novel seems impossible.

I've been transformed by stories, and I think that storytelling is definitely sacred. I take it very seriously because my life has been changed, whether it was a movie, a play, a piece of writing, poetry, a painting.

Every story teaches me how to write it. Unfortunately, it doesn't teach me how to write the next one.

In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.

I mostly write short stories. They are best written in a continuous creative process. You have a feel of immediacy.

Tales of heroes end in bliss.

Novels are to love as fairy tales to dreams.

I'm with the Grimms on this: stories for young and old. You can't characterize them any better than that.

Alright, all right," I said. "What if I tell you a story, instead?" Highlanders loved stories, and Jamie was no exception. "Oh, aye, " he said, sounding much happier. "What sort of story is it?

Novels are more difficult simply because they are longer and require more juggling, but short stories are closer to perfection, if you can get the language right.

We're all just big kids. That's all we are. We are artistes. We grew up wanting to be part of the fantasy of the fairy tales and the stories.