Philip Pullman

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'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.

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.

The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele.

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

Everyone in the book's ecology, starting with the author and including the publisher, the distributor, the booksellers, the libraries, and ending up with the reader, should benefit from a healthy book trade.

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

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

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

Comics are a wonderful form. You can do so much with it.

I tried writing out a plot with the second or third novel I wrote, and it was so boring, so desperately boring.

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.

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

Theatre is one of those things that children will love if they're helped to get there to see it. No child will find his or her own way to the theatre.

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

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.

You're lacking a human dimension of some sort if you're not interested in the arts.

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.

Trying to understand superstition rationally is like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet.

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

I have a desk that I can raise or lower according to the state of my aching back. Sometimes I stand at it, and sometimes I have it high up to write at and sometimes a bit lower to type.

The best sort of activity is one that combines mental effort with sensuous delight. That's why I love drawing.

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.

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.

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