Philip Pullman Quotes

I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper.

I write everything with fountain pens. I don't know why. I've done it since I was bar mitzvahed. I was given a fountain pen, a Parker fountain pen, and I loved it, and I've never liked writing anything with pencils or ball-points.

I use a ball pen because fountain pens are clumsy, and I get ink all over my fingers by the time I finish with it.

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

I always have a good pen with me.

First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95.... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper.

Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.

A pen connects you to the paper. It definitely matters.

My writing regimen is not very regimented. I tend to be a binge writer, working sometimes in the morning and sometimes all night. When I get going I like to hunch over the keyboard until I feel totally played out.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.

I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.

I still write in long hand. I type like a chimpanzee.

I tend to write in the mornings.

I have to write a first draft with a fountain pen before I type it up as a second.

I write by hand and then transfer the text onto the computer. I like the process of actually having a pen in my hand. Things flow more easily for me that way.

I do not go down and sit in front of the computer and make myself write; that's not my style.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I've never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.

I had a little portable typewriter. I call it my Harlem Literary Fellowship.

I like to write. Prolific is part of who I am.

I feel more comfortable each time I sit down to write, but I'm determined to get better and better.

Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.

My father was prolific when it came to writing: day-timers, journals. He wrote on pieces of loose-leaf paper that he held on to, and he wrote in spiral notebooks.

Without a pen in my hand I can't think.