Terry Pratchett Quotes

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

I prefer writing originals.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

If you are interested in writing, get out and live your life! Do a lot. See a lot. Keep your eyes and ears open. Pay attention to the different ways people speak. Read lots of different kinds of books. And then try writing in different voices and styles - don't be afraid to experiment.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

I tell my writing students that everything is material; just pay attention.

I think writers are observers and watchers. We always have our ears open and eyes open, so I might see something in everyday life that inspires me. And I think that's probably more than anything else. Everyday life is where I get my inspiration.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me.

For a writer it's a dream to sit and watch people as close as possible.

I write 'by the seat of my pants.' I love to do research. I am inspired by contemporary writers and contemporary events. I live in the real world.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

I was totally absorbed in the real world, the politics, the history, the news, and I just couldn't find my way into the fictional world... When I finally could return to writing the novel, it was in fits and starts.

There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of using family and friends in stories. Which is why it takes me longer than something else. Because you make them up out of nothing. Doing that is harder.

With me, writing is 60% imagination, 30% people you know and 10% you don't know where it comes from.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

Authors like reading. Go figure. So it's not surprising that we sometimes bog down in the research stage of new writing projects.

When I read good stories, I want to write good stories too.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.