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I would advise budding writers some other kind of job, unless they think they're very, very lucky.

Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett
Age: 66 †
Born: 1948
Born: April 28
Died: 2015
Died: March 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Terence David John Terry Pratchett
Terence David John Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett
Lucky
Unless
Jobs
Kind
Would
Think
Budding
Thinking
Advise
Writers

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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I just rearrange words into a pleasing order for money.
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And gears, said Anathema. My bike didn't have gears. I'm sure my bike didn't have gears. Crowley leaned over to the angel. Oh lord, heal this bike, he whispered sarcastically. I'm sorry, I just got carried away, hissed Aziraphale.
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It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
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It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.
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It as true that normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well know fact. ... Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.
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These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.
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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
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He'd always known that the world was an interesting place, and his imagination had peopled it with pirates and bandits and spies and astronauts and similar. But he'd also had a nagging suspicion that, when you seriously got right down to it, they were all just things in books and didn't properly exist anymore.
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If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
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I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir' Ridcully sighed. 'Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?' 'Permission to go and find my mother?'
Terry Pratchett
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When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.
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But the purpose of the book is not the horror, it is horror's defeat.
Terry Pratchett
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The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.
Terry Pratchett
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Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything.
Terry Pratchett
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HOROSCOPE: Today is a good time for making new friends. A good deed may have unforeseen consequences. Don’t upset any druids. You will soon be going on a very strange journey. Your lucky food is small cucumbers. People pointing knives at you are probably up to no good. PS, we really mean it about the druids.
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Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.
Terry Pratchett
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The mountains of madness have many little plateau of sanity.
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Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
Terry Pratchett
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Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.
Terry Pratchett
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Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
Terry Pratchett