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"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."
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Exlpore more Criticism quotes
"When I see the promotion of nighttime street lighting to the masses, I realize the great level of incompetence that is present in governments, human health and the biological effects of light."
"The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot."
"At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you."
"People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize."
"For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker."
"There is no such thing as constructive criticism. There is constructive advice, constructive guidance, constructive counsel, encouragement, suggestion, and instruction. Criticism, however, is not constructive but a destructive means of faultfinding that cripples all parties involved. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise."
"There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism."
"It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep."
"Plenty of people will think you're crazy, no matter what you do. Don't let that stop you from finding the people who think you're incredible-the ones who need to hear your voice, because it reminds them of their own. Your tribe. They're out there. Don't let your critics interfere with your search for them."
Explore more quotes by Philip Pullman
"Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is."
"The Specters feast as vampires feast on blood, but the Specters' food is attention. A conscious and informed interest in the world. The immaturity of children is less attractive to them."
"I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites."
"One moment several things are possible, the next moment only one happens, and the rest don't exist. Except that other worlds have sprung into being, on which the did happen."
"I'm working on another Lyra book right now " it's called The Book of Dust.'It's going very well and it will be finished when I write the words 'The End'."
"But suppose your dA mon settles in a shape you don't like?Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dA mon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.But it didn't seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up."
"We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong... We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn't? What if it's-'She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good..."
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