Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBEwas an English author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his Discworld series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971; after the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, he wrote two books a year on average. His 2011 Discworld novel Snuff was at the time of its release the third-fastest-selling hardback adult-readership novel since records began in the...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 April 1948
CityBeaconsfield, England
You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.
Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.
"Out of Print" is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged".
I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.
However, you do need rules. Driving on the left (or the right or, in parts of Europe, on the left and the right as the mood takes you) is a rule which works, since following it means you're more likely to reach your intended rather than your final destination.
The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people.
There's no point in killing an opponent... There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.
When you stand between two mirrors you're spread out among the images, your whole soul is pulled out thin, and somewhere in the distant images a dark part of you might get out and come looking for you, if you aren't careful.
The power of prayer and faith can heal and bring happiness. The real tragedy is that the people that are helped by this don't realize that this power is really coming from within.
Magic is just a way of saying 'I don't know.'
Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.
It's hard to be famous and alive.
There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job. I am, of course, delighted and honoured and, needless to say, flabbergasted.
In the world I live in, 'not worse' is nearly as good as 'better'.