Terry Pratchett Quotes

Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child.

SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY? “I too cannot be cheated,” snapped Fate.

Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.

As a species, we are forever sticking our finger into the electric socket of the universe to see what will happen next.

Granddad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, education leaked out, like radioactivity.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble.

I became a journalist at 17. A few hours later, I saw my first dead body, which was somewhat... colourful. That's when I learned you can go on throwing up after you run out of things to throw up.

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things.

I've often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

You can't die with an unfinished book.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

I like being a writer.

When I was a kid, I read the science-fiction shelves, and I read the fantasy shelves.

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.

How do you get all those coins?" asked Mort. IN PAIRS.

The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.

The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying.

Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.

It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline.

Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face." (pp. 348-349)

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

You have so many sources to draw on when you're a fantasy writer.

I can't stand any music that requires its singers to be so dumb they wear their baseball caps backwards.

There are times when the best writing you can do is to go for a walk or drive, a long drive is ideal.

Everyone is reading what they like and that's a good thing.

The oldest fan letter I've had is from someone aged eighty-five.

I used to like reading and you read enough books and you overflow and then you start writing.

It's never a good idea to ask a man on a tight-rope how he keeps his balance: a) he would probably fall off and b) he probably doesn't know what the muscles are called in any case.

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

Who knows what the future holds.

I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do, it tends to be lightweight stuff.

It's a guilty secret of a lot of writers, as you get older you don't read as much fiction as you used to, mainly because it's like you are deconstructing it all the time.

Certainly the Americans want to buy rights, but have no idea what to do with them.

TV people in the UK... I'm getting on a lot better with them.

I'm interested in mythology generally, but India has no special place in my heart - although Hindu gods seem a lot more fun.

After you've been working fairly intensively on a novel for six months you never want to see the damn thing again.

Dark Fantasy is just another way of saying Horror.

People don't like to say comic so they say Graphic Novel, despite the fact that I don't think the true Graphic Novel has been written anywhere.

The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.

It's very rare that I ever go and research a particular subject. Mostly I do serendipitous research, I read stuff, things spinning out of the page.

It's actually true that I keep myself going by constantly promising myself that in response for the hard work I will be allowed to do some more hard work later on.

Certainly I have no faith in Jehovah, although I think it quite likely that Jesus Christ, as a preacher and a wise man, did indeed exist.

Sometimes you can think that 'I've had enough of wizards!' And sometimes fantasy is not just about wizards.

The author can always delve into his own personality and find aspects of himself with which he can dress his characters.