Philip Pullman

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book.

People are too complicated to have simple labels.

All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.

As Jane Austen might have put it: It is a truth universally acknowledged that young protagonists in search of adventure must ditch their parents.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.