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" 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

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

" It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one. "

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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'. "

" The thing is, 'Discworld' had been going on for a very long time, and I've written children's books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I'd do is I'd franchise it to myself. "

" Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent. "

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" You can't die with an unfinished book. "

" 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. "

" By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. "

" I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I've got Alzheimer's. "

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

Terry Pratchett

Hands

Always

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

Terry Pratchett

Mean

See

" I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is. "

" It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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

" 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.' "