The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile.
Philip PullmanRead
Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote describes an idealized view of love as playful and passionate rather than hopeless and obsessive.
Philip Pullman reflects on the nature of love, suggesting that true love should embody qualities such as playfulness, passion, and intelligence, contrasting it with the despairing nature of obsessive love. He implies that a healthy relationship is dynamic and engaging, filled with joy and a hint of danger, rather than being consumed by hopelessness.
Themes
LovePassionPlayfulnessIntelligenceRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
In a romantic relationship discussion, one might reference this quote to highlight the ideal qualities of love.
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
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Alan WattsRead
Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.
Miroslav VolfRead
My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now--to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.
Alice McdermottRead
Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.
Mother TeresaRead
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
Emily BronteRead
She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars.
Maggie StiefvaterRead