Philip Pullman

The arts are the only way of satisfying a very particular sort of hunger. If we’re lucky, we discover that hunger and the food that satisfies it at the same time, best of all when we’re young. I hate to think of anyone never discovering it, never knowing the longing and the fulfilment and the soul-deep ever-renewing delight which only music, or poetry, or dance, or drama, or painting can give, and the truths they teach us about ourselves. Every nation should make it a priority to surround its children with art of every kind; no-one, old or young, should suffer hunger of that kind.