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" If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble. "
Terry Pratchett
Past
Dead
Government
Related Quotes:
" 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
Cake
Writing
World
" Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?' "
Terry Pratchett
Motto
Best
Mule
" Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care. "
Terry Pratchett
Prove
Care
Me
" 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
Two
Alzheimer
Knowing
" 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
" 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
" 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
Always
Waiting
Darkness
" I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did. "
Terry Pratchett
Sympathy
Go
University
" 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
" It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one. "
Terry Pratchett
Useful
Go
Out
" When you're all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang. "
Terry Pratchett
Singing
Together
You
" Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW. "
Terry Pratchett
Now
Books
Money
" I am a great fan of science, but I cannot do a quadratic equation. "
Terry Pratchett
Fan
Cannot
Great
" 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
Past
Living
Die
" Tolkien is eminently filmable, I think. 'The Lord of the Rings' is intensely... landscaped. But 'Discworld' is about dialogue, which is one reason why it might be hard to film. "
Terry Pratchett
Reason
Why
Think
" If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother. "
Terry Pratchett
Fun
Why
Really
" Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government. "
Terry Pratchett
Wonderful
Government
Angry
" Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom. "
Terry Pratchett
Die
Beginning
You
" I don't think about the end game. I've got lots to occupy my mind. It's the rage that keeps me going. "
Terry Pratchett
Game
End
Mind
" 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
" Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds. "
Terry Pratchett
Last
Never
Complicated
" 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
Want
Know
You
" 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
" What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference. "
Terry Pratchett
Know
You
Yesterday
" You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. "
Terry Pratchett
Meaningful
Give
You
" 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
Think
You
Minds
" '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
See
Know
Serious
" Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect. "
Terry Pratchett
Perfect
Nothing
Going
" My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots. "
Terry Pratchett
Drive
End
Know
" I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me. "
Terry Pratchett
Mean
More
See