Terry Pratchett
Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.Collection: Anger
I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.Collection: Medical
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?Collection: Family
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.Collection: Pet
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.Collection: Medical
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.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Good
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.Collection: Knowledge
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.Collection: Dad
Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Imagination
The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.Collection: Intelligence
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.Collection: Funny
Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.Collection: Trust
I don't believe in the war god of the Israelites. He's a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large.Collection: War
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.Collection: Truth
I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.Collection: Sympathy
If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Experience
It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.Collection: Death
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.Collection: History
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Alone
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.Collection: Dreams
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.Collection: Life
The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
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.
Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
Freedom without limits is just a word.
He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'
Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.
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.
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.
It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.
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.
It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.
I was a very keen reader of science fiction.
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.
The harder I work, the luckier I become.
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.
'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.
'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.
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.
Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
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.