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" I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular. "

Philip Pullman

Listen

Great

Jazz

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" I don't like it when I see my books sold cheaply. "

" If a nation allows its literary culture to die, it's a sign that it doesn't fundamentally care. "

" What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism. "

" Education and health were always matters of charity. You educated children and you helped the sick because they were good things to do, not because you were going to make money out of them. If you let the money-making principle, the profit-seeking motive, anywhere near education and health, things go bad. "

" I write in pen because it works. A fountain pen is no good for writing in the way I do because I'd have to decide, each time I stopped, how long I was likely to stop for in order to know whether or not to put the cap on. But I never know. So instead, I use a ballpoint - a Montblanc, to be precise - the most comfortably balanced pen I've ever found. "

" The arts are beyond price; they're beyond value. They're of incalculable worth in what it means to be a human being. "

" Possibly because I earn my living as a writer of fiction and possibly because it's just the sensible thing to do, I like to pay attention to everything I come across, including things that evoke the uncanny or the mysterious. "

" I like every individual editor, designer, marketing and publicity person I deal with, but I don't like what publishers, corporately, are doing to the ecology of the book world. It's damaging, and it should change. "

" Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it. "

Philip Pullman

You

Without

" The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele. "

" Authors are not a special case, deserving of more sympathy than many other groups. We are a particular case of a general degradation of the quality of life, and we are not going to stop pointing it out, because we speak for many other groups as well. "

" It should be a firmly established part of the curriculum that children should visit theatres and concert halls. "

" And before I'd got to the end of the first paragraph, I'd come up slap bang against a fundamental problem that still troubles me today whenever I begin a story, and it's this: where am I telling it from? "

Philip Pullman

End

First

" I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief. "

" I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction! "

" I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. "

Philip Pullman

Passionate

Education

" One handy piece of equipment, which I recommend to any writer of fiction, is a set of Myriorama cards. I consult them frequently. "

" That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old. "

" Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit. "

" I love the way ravens fly; they are the most acrobatic and daring birds. "

" One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you. "

" If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day. "

" For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim. "

" My parents tolerated me reading comics because they knew I was also reading 'proper' books, too. "

Philip Pullman

Because

Parents

" Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. "

" Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature. "

" Every government secretary of state or minister should jolly well go to the theatre, go to a concert, go to an art gallery, go to a museum, become somehow interested in these things. If they're not interested, they shouldn't be in government, full stop. "

" True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility. "

" Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it. "

" For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence. "