And we don't often get any wading birds in the River Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface. Terry Pratchett More Quotes by Terry Pratchett More Quotes From Terry Pratchett Theres no stink more sorrorful than the stink of wet, burnt paper. It means: the end. Terry Pratchett stink paper mean And never resist a perfect moment. Terry Pratchett perfect-moments moments perfect In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. Terry Pratchett wine real believe Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already. Terry Pratchett melting men war 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 reading writing book Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean. Terry Pratchett mean people thinking He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba. Terry Pratchett elba lace rose There's that lovely thing for the first month or two of writing a new book: OK, I don't know what that character's going to do, but we'll find out later. After about three or four months you come to that bit where you've got to put some plot in before it's too late, and you have to go back and start inserting plot, and, ooh, I've left out the literature, OK, lets put some in. Terry Pratchett writing character book The key to winning, as always, was looking as if you had every right, nay, duty to be where you were. It helped if you could also suggest in every line of your body that no one else had any rights to be doing anything, anywhere, whatsoever. Terry Pratchett keys rights winning As far as I'm concerned, I'm a writer who's writing books, and therefore, I don't want to die. You'd miss the end of the book, wouldn't you? You can't die with an unfinished book. Terry Pratchett missing writing book If you get the characters right you've done sometimes nearly half the work. I sometimes find I get the characters right then the characters will often help me write the book - not what they look like that's not very important - what people look like is not about their character. You have to describe the shape they leave in the world, how they react to things, what effect they have on people and you do that by telling their story. Terry Pratchett writing character book The Librarian considered matters for a while. So…a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be. Terry Pratchett dwarves reading book No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk. Terry Pratchett drunk insane hero It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them. Terry Pratchett geography forever lost The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one that looks as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more stairways than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. Terry Pratchett bad-day truth book Evil in general does not sleep, and therefore doesn't see why anyone else should. Terry Pratchett evil doe sleep The most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendents not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships, or being patronised by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it. Terry Pratchett intelligent animal funny Mr. Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a wrench. Terry Pratchett wrenches lines people The brain works fast when it thinks it’s about to be cut in half. Terry Pratchett cutting brain thinking I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree. Terry Pratchett journey writing book
