It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

A man’s character is his fate.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter’s school fees.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

I remember very little about writing the first series of ‚Hitchhiker’s.‘ It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Getting in and out of the car with the halo takes a bit of experience. I struggled initially, but after a few trial runs I was fine.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

Although designers continue to dream of ‚transparency‘ – technologies that just do their job without making their presence felt – both creators and audiences actually like technologies with ‚personality.‘

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, I guess.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‚adult‘ DW.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

I think I work much harder on the children’s books. I suppose I enjoy that. I find it interesting that although there are more than 30 books in the Discworld series, it is the four that were written for children which have won the awards. I’ve never been quite certain why this is.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

I’m not the most patient of people.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.