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" I don't believe in the war god of the Israelites. He's a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large. "
Terry Pratchett
God
Golden
Golden Rule
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" I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'. "
Terry Pratchett
Tell
Book
Myself
" There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books. "
Terry Pratchett
You
Money
Writing
" 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. "
Terry Pratchett
Through
See
Humanity
" The 'New Testament', now, I quite liked. Jesus had a lot of good things to say, and as for his father, he must have been highly thought of by the community to work with wood - a material that couldn't have been widely available in Palestine. "
Terry Pratchett
Father
Good
Thought
" 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
Think
Men
Boat
" Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?' "
Terry Pratchett
Motto
Best
Mule
" In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper. "
Terry Pratchett
Art
Book
Character
" 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
City
Think
Start
" This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic. "
Terry Pratchett
Fast Lane
Fast
Lane
" I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I'd lay my cards down on that, and say that it's that that I'm trying to do. "
Terry Pratchett
Humanity
Voice
Understanding
" 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. Who was it said - one of the famous lady novelists - 'unhappy is the family that contains an author'? "
Terry Pratchett
Family
Thoughts
Mother
" The harder I work, the luckier I become. "
Terry Pratchett
Become
Harder
Luckier
" Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. "
Terry Pratchett
Sometimes
Than
Better
" Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.' "
Terry Pratchett
You
Know
Me
" 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
Writing
Stupid
People
" I know three people who have got better after a brain tumour. I haven't heard of anyone who's got better from Alzheimer's. "
Terry Pratchett
Got
Brain
Three
" 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
Professional
I Can
Grow
" 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
You
Me
Wife
" I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me. "
Terry Pratchett
Glad
Genre
Got
" 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. "
Terry Pratchett
Run
Body
Dead
" I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it. "
Terry Pratchett
Thinking
Box
Evidence
" Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am. "
Terry Pratchett
I Am
Library
Me
" I've got wide tastes, but I don't like jazz. "
Terry Pratchett
Like
Jazz
Wide
" If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother. "
Terry Pratchett
Fun
Why
Really
" 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
People
Child
Life
" 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
Hell
Rage
People
" I read the 'Old Testament' all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read 'The Origin Of Species', hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense. "
Terry Pratchett
Bed
Way
Time
" If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit. "
Terry Pratchett
Reading
Start
History
" I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me. "
Terry Pratchett
Mean
More
See
" I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I've got Alzheimer's. "
Terry Pratchett
Best
Stand Up
Think