Philip Pullman Quotes

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

All I ever wanted to do is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

My dream remains to inform and entertain through fiction in the form of novels and movies that compete in the marketplace of ideas.

I don't think we'll ever lose the desire for people to tell stories or to hear stories or to be entrapped in a beautiful story.

When I set out to write 'Sanctus,' all I wanted to do was craft a piece of high quality entertainment.

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

If a fantasy, if a story can help you feel something, I think that's really cool.

I love the magic of stories and the power of stories.

I can't tell a story just by deciding to tell a story, do it in a didactic way. I need to have my own emotion, to feel, 'Wow, there is something I can discover, I can create.'

I really like doing puppetry; I'm not sure if it will find its way into 'Big Bang,' but it always does seem to find its way into a lot of things.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

I love using my imagination. I love writing about animals.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

A book can be wonderful and powerful and accessible and artful all at the same time.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

I try and make little stories. Whether it's with a pencil or with bits of records, it's really the same thing.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.