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
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.
The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really.
You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.
Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.
There's a door.Where does it go?It stays where it is, I think.
I would like a question answered today," said Tiffany. "Provided it's not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs," said the man. "No, "said Tiffany patiently. "It's about zoology." "Zoology eh? That's a big word, isn't it." "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.
The Quantum Weather Butterfly ( Papilio Tempestae ) is an undistinguished yellow color, its outstanding feature is its ability to create weather. This presumably began as a survival trait, since even an extremely hungry bird would find itself inconvenienced by a nasty localized tornado ( usually about 6 inches across ). From there it possibly became a secondary sexual characteristic, like the plumage of birds. Look at *me*, the male says, flapping his wings lazily in the canopy of the rain forest. I may be an undistinguished yellow color but in a fortnight's time, a thousand miles away, Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos. This is the butterfly of the storm
Now the melting pot was full of lumps again.
The place looked as though it had been visited by Gengiz Cohen (footnote: hence the term "wholesale destruction")
The thing about witchcraft," said Mistress Weatherwax, "is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.