The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.
Philip PullmanRead
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?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the challenges of choosing a narrative perspective in storytelling.
Philip Pullman expresses the struggle of determining the narrative point of view at the beginning of a story, highlighting how this decision can significantly shape the reader's experience and understanding of the narrative. This fundamental question underscores the importance of perspective in storytelling, where the choice of narration influences the connection between the story and its audience.
Themes
StorytellingNarrativePerspectiveWritingArt
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, you might use this quote to discuss the importance of narrative perspective.
More from Philip Pullman
All quotes →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.
Philip PullmanRead
To get the best out of life here ...Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it.
Philip PullmanRead
People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.
Philip PullmanRead
I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.
Philip PullmanRead
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Philip PullmanRead
Similar quotes
I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.
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The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
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The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they're making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.
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A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.
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Right from the beginning, I always strived to capture everything I saw as completely as possible.
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