Terry Pratchett Quotes
English - Author April 28, 1948 - March 12, 2015


In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
Terry Pratchett

It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.
Terry Pratchett

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.
Terry Pratchett

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
Terry Pratchett

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
Terry Pratchett

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In 'The Colour of Magic' most of the city is set alight. It's a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams's 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.'
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

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
Terry Pratchett

I'm a fantasy writer, called a fantasy writer. But there's very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in 'I Shall Wear Midnight,' which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they're practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don't fall off. And you try not to use them too often.
Terry Pratchett

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.
Terry Pratchett

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

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

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I'm fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it's amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.
Terry Pratchett

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
Terry Pratchett

'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.
Terry Pratchett

'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.
Terry Pratchett

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.
Terry Pratchett

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Terry Pratchett

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.
Terry Pratchett

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.
Terry Pratchett

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.
Terry Pratchett

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Terry Pratchett

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.
Terry Pratchett

When you're all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.
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've always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.
Terry Pratchett

Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.
Terry Pratchett

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
Terry Pratchett

You have to have really wide reading habits and pay attention to the news and just everything that's going on in the world: you need to. If you get this right, then the writing is a piece of cake.
Terry Pratchett

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.
Terry Pratchett

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.
Terry Pratchett

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.
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

You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I'm not writing 'The A-Team' - if there's a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal.
Terry Pratchett

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Terry Pratchett

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Terry Pratchett

The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?
Terry Pratchett

I've got wide tastes, but I don't like jazz.
Terry Pratchett

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

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
Terry Pratchett

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
Terry Pratchett

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.
Terry Pratchett

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
Terry Pratchett

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It's when you go backwards through the 'begats' and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, 'Hang on, that's a big punishment for eating one lousy apple... There's a human-rights issue.'
Terry Pratchett

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.
Terry Pratchett

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.
Terry Pratchett

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
Terry Pratchett

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer's you are an old fart. That's how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.
Terry Pratchett

You can't die with an unfinished book.
Terry Pratchett

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.
Terry Pratchett

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.
Terry Pratchett

The harder I work, the luckier I become.
Terry Pratchett

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.
Terry Pratchett

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
Terry Pratchett

In my heart, I'm just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I'm not a rich man.
Terry Pratchett

My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.
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

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's.
Terry Pratchett

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
Terry Pratchett

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
Terry Pratchett

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

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.
Terry Pratchett

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me.
Terry Pratchett

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
Terry Pratchett

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.
Terry Pratchett

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
Terry Pratchett

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don't know how to do it, and wouldn't be any good at it if I did, so I'm going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.
Terry Pratchett

You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.
Terry Pratchett

If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother.
Terry Pratchett