Terry Pratchett Quotes

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Terry Pratchett

Profession : Author

Birth : April 28, 1948

You can't die with an unfinished book.

Terry Pratchett

I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

Terry Pratchett

No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Terry Pratchett

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

Terry Pratchett

The bravest person I've ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.

Terry Pratchett

I think it does Discworld good if I don't write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

Terry Pratchett

I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'

Terry Pratchett

I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.

Terry Pratchett

'Discworld' is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

Terry Pratchett

There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. I've been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony.

Terry Pratchett

I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

Terry Pratchett

An author writes a book, and that's the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

Terry Pratchett

I like being a writer.

Terry Pratchett

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Terry Pratchett

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

Terry Pratchett

For an author, the nice characters aren't much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They're doing it for themselves.

Terry Pratchett

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

Terry Pratchett

In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words - that's how long a novel is.

Terry Pratchett

I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it's in the blood.

Terry Pratchett

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it's just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

Terry Pratchett