Quotes by Terry Pratchett

They didnt know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because youve got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because youre alive, when you really shouldnt be.

You’d better tell me what you know, toad,” said Tiffany. “Miss Tick isn’t here. I am.”“Another world is colliding with this one,” said the toad. “There. Happy now? That’s what Miss Tick thinks. But it’s happening faster than she expected. All the monsters are coming back.”“Why?”“There’s no one to stop them.”There was silence for a moment.“There’s me,” said Tiffany.

Before you can kill the monster you have to say its name.

The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the, and I, and it, and so on, and theres a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.

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.

Thats the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mothers funeral, but you dont 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?

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably Doctor Who. What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

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.

Its not morbid to talk about death. Most people dont worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

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 cant so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?

I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimers as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimers its the best form of Alzheimers to have.

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. Im fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, its amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. Ive been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but its not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods they have not forgotten this.