Philip Pullman citáty
Philip Pullman
Datum narození: 19. říjen 1946
Další jména: Ֆիլիպ Պուլլման, فیلیپ پولمن
Philip Pullman je britský spisovatel fantasy a přední představitel britského ateismu.
Citáty Philip Pullman
„Podle mého názoru nejsou dětské knihy o nic méně hodnotné, než knihy pro dospělé. To je to, po čem jsem vždy toužil - stejný přístup, pokud jde o hodnocení dětské literatury a také stejnou šanci získat pozornost.“
2002
Zdroj: [Týden v Británii, bbc.co.uk, 2002-01-26, 2020-08-04, http://www.bbc.co.uk/czech/vikend/tyden020126.shtml]
„You cannot change what you are, only what you do.“
— Philip Pullman, kniha Northern Lights
Zdroj: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice
„I don’t suppose that was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in angels.“
— Philip Pullman, Jeho temné esence
Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan
His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000)
Kontext: They lay back, well fed and comfortable in the flower-scented night, and listened to Mary tell her story.
She began just before she first met Lyra, telling them about the work she was doing at the Dark Matter Research group, and the funding crisis. How much time she’d had to spend asking for money, and how little time there’d been left for research!
But Lyra’s coming had changed everything, and so quickly: within a matter of days she’d left her world altogether.
"I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program — that’s a set of instructions — to let the Shadows talk to me through the computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and — well…"
"If you were a scientist," said Will, "I don’t suppose that was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in angels."
"Ah, but I knew about them. I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all."
„People are too complicated to have simple labels.“
— Philip Pullman, kniha The Amber Spyglass
Zdroj: The Amber Spyglass
„Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs“
From the Q&A section (found July 2010) http://www.philip-pullman.com/q_a.asp?offset=60
Pullman's website
Kontext: If you're going to make a living at this business - more importantly, if you're going to write anything that will last - you have to realise that a lot of the time, you're going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs.
„His (C. S. Lewis's) work is not frivolous in the way that Tolkien is frivolous,“
Slate interview, 2015
Kontext: His (C. S. Lewis's) work is not frivolous in the way that Tolkien is frivolous, though it seems odd to call a novel of great intricacy and enormous popularity frivolous. I just don’t like the conclusions Lewis comes to, after all that analysis, the way he shuts children out from heaven, or whatever it is, on the grounds that the one girl is interested in boys. She’s a teenager! Ah, it’s terrible: Sex — can’t have that. And yet I respect Lewis more than I do Tolkien.
„All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.“
— Philip Pullman, Jeho temné esence
Zdroj: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Kontext: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
„All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning.“
— Philip Pullman, kniha Lyra's Oxford
Lyra's Oxford (2003)
Kontext: All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue.
Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read.
The story in this book is partly about that very process.
„They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant.“
— Philip Pullman, Jeho temné esence
Zdroj: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss
Kontext: If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task that's greater than you can imagine. A child... How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be.... There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time...."
He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.
"The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have anything like the knife; but now..."
"I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — "
"Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."
„I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, in psychological terms.“
Interview at Achuka Children's Books http://www.achuka.co.uk/archive/interviews/ppint.php
Kontext: I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, in psychological terms. I deal with matters that might normally be encountered in works of realism, such as adolescence, sexuality, and so on; and they are the main subject matter of the story — the fantasy (which, of course, is there: no-one but a fool would think I meant there is no fantasy in the books at all) is there to support and embody them, not for its own sake.
