Terry Pratchett Quotes

I must have books everywhere. They're the soul of a room-they reveal the taste, the interests, and the secrets of whoever lives there.

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

I am not reclusive. I just have a private life.

I'm very - I love talking about games, I love talking about movies and TV shows and love what I do at work. But after work, I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm super private. I stay home.

I like my space.

The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.

Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.

One day I shall write a little book of conduct myself, and I shall call it Social Problems of the Unsociable. And the root problem, beneath a hundred varying manifestions, is How to Escape. How to escape, that is, at those times, be they few or frequent, when you want to keep yourself to yourself.

I'm not reclusive at all. Just private.

I wished I could be alone in my room, with my books, away from these people.

The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on here silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufactured by writerly quills, one of her hands, one not absolutely needed to grip the little volume, might wander. The fear, in short, as one-handed reading. [p. 146]

I live by myself, which I love. In this industry, you're so often surrounded by people and busy and talking to people. It's kind of lovely when you get home to just chill out.

There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.

Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

People can think what they want to think, I don't go after people. I think most people I talk to, like me, are very quiet and keep to themselves, they maintain their lives.

No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house--on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she'd use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork.

I read a book twice as fast as anybody else. First, I read the beginning, and then I read the ending, and then I start in the middle and read toward whatever end I like best.

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

There is a logic [to my reading], but I can't define it. I like reading impulsively. I collect books, I have a lot of them, but most of them I have not read yet. I'll read them when they call me from the shelf.

Most of us have a "Do Not Disturb" sign around our necks.

I can't have a lot of people around me all the time. It really bugs me out that I have that many people. I need to be by myself.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

I've been living alone for so long, everything about me’s private. I’m surprised anyone’s able to understand a word I say.