564 Quotes by philip pullman

You are an enemy of the Church, Lee Scoresby. By their fruits shall ye know them.

He dared to do what men and women don’t even dare to think. And look what he’s done already: he’s torn open the sky, he’s opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?

You might not have more courage, but you should be ashamed to show less.

Imagination is a form of seeing.

She had been hurt too when they pulled apart; one day, perhaps, they’d be able to talk about it...

But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn’t be imagined without it.

Still, Fritz was an optimist, and Karl was a pessimist, and that makes all the difference in the world.

It might not be fair, but no one’s to blame.

We can control the future, my boy, just as we wind up the mechanism in a clock. Say to yourself: I will win that race – I will come first – and you wind up the future like clockwork. The world has no choice but to obey! Can the hands of that old clock in the corner decide to stop? Can the spring in your watch decide to wind itself up and run backward? No! They have no choice. And nor has the future, once you have wound it up.