25 Quotes by philip pullman about Writing

  • Author philip pullman
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    The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.

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  • Author philip pullman
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    Besides, if you want to write something perfect, write a haiku. Anything longer is bound to have a few passages that don't work as well as they might.

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  • Author philip pullman
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    When you write a story you're not trying to prove anything or demonstrate the merits of this case or the flaws in that. At its simplest, what you're doing is making up some interesting events, putting them in the best order to show the connections between them and recounting them as clearly as you can.

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  • Author philip pullman
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    I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

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  • Author philip pullman
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    What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose

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  • Author philip pullman
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    Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, "Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I'll write Ulysses."

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  • Author philip pullman
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    If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.

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