Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‚How is the president?‘

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

The thing is, ‚Discworld‘ had been going on for a very long time, and I’ve written children’s books as well. Usually when people have a really big series they franchise it, which I thought is a bit of a no-no, so I thought what I’d do is I’d franchise it to myself.

One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second.

No man was ever wise by chance.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I sleep seven hours. If I go to bed at two, I wake up at nine. If I go to bed at midnight, I wake up at seven. I don’t wake up before – the house can fall apart, but I sleep for seven hours.

Touring is very routine. You get to the city, you go to the hotel, you got to be at the hotel by a certain time – it’s very routine. I’m not a very structured person, so when I get some structure, it’s cool; it’s good for me.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

I’m in this business to be creative – I’ll even diminish it and say to be a content provider.

I like to be creative.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

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.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

Imagination rules the world.

I’ve had quite a lot of luck with dreams. I’ve often awoken in the night with a phrase or even a whole song in my head.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

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.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

I like being a writer.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

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.

I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

I don’t see any boundaries between any of the art forms. I think they all inter-relate completely.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.