I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn’t matter. You said, ‚That’s an American‘ because there’s a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

But, you know, it’s still a drag to get your picture taken when you’re eating a sandwich. It’s a downer.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

When you have good friends you’ve been around, every time they talk, you don’t give them your full attention. You don’t look them in the eye and stop. Half the time, you’re listening, half the time, you are ignoring them.

If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it’s the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone’s talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false ‚intelligence‘ and selected ‚leaks.‘

Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It’s become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.

I’ve always regretted that I never was able to talk openly with my parents, especially with my father. I’ve heard and read so many things about my family that I can no longer believe anything; every relative I question has a completely different story from the last.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

I always keep my guard up with guys and I guess that can get in the way sometimes. I can make them go through hell.

The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.

If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

I think we basically saw that the messaging space is bigger than we’d initially realized, and that the use cases that WhatsApp and Messenger have are more different than we had thought originally.

It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

I don’t like magic – but I have been known to make guys disappear.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

If you can talk, you can write.

Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.