Terry Pratchett Quotes

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

I have interviewed face-to-face, sitting beside me, over 19,000 people.

It always cracks me up when program directors or music directors or companies will say, 'Well, we did research, and we interviewed 25 people in our focus group, and this is what they said.' And I'm like, 'I've talked to 25 people in two hours! I talk to 50, 60, 70 people a night! Five or six days a week!'

The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.

I go to bars and restaurants, and I sit and I eavesdrop on people and I watch people in shopping centers and, you know, I read the newspapers and I talk to the Trenton cops, and I just get a lot of information that comes in that somehow turns into a book.

Surveys give us a way of finding out what people across the country are thinking.

I view my job more almost as a field biologist or anthropologist, where I'm collecting practices. I'm collecting techniques.

I've taken stuff from people, too. You know though, if you steal from one person, you're just a thief. But if you steal from everyone, that's research.

most people prefer to carry out the kinds of experiments that allow the scientist to feel that he is in full control of the situation rather than surrendering himself to the situation, as one must in studying human beings as they actually live.

What is said upon a subject is gathered from an hundred people.

Research is what drives me. When I get a script, I go to the real world and touch the real people.

For me myself, I feel it's always interesting gathering data. I have my team who do that. I think they feed me through specific things that I might find valuable.

While researching 'Horse Soldiers,' I conducted over 100 interviews in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, I walked and studied key sites that appear in the book. I was able to capture not only the Americans' point of view but the Afghans' as well.

I think sometimes people get distracted in interviews.

I can learn a lot from reading briefing books and talking to experts, but that pales in comparison to what I can learn from going out and talking to people about what they're actually experiencing and hearing about their ideas.

And also it's an ever-gathering process. If I pick up the Sporting News or some sports publication and there's an article on somebody and I think I might see that player, I will tear it out and put it in a file, and I have a looseleaf book so when we're going to play that particular team I take out all these clippings and things I pulled out, I go through them, highlight them, put them in the book.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

I'm supporting anything that we can do to find out how this stuff is happening.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

I have always felt that the only great thing about an interview is the questions that are asked.

It's a hard thing to explain to other people because it sounds very superficial and nepotistic, but doing the interview is actually a very deep, dream-fulfilling aspect of relationship.

People can come and see me, and I have the pleasure of being able to talk to them.

I like being able to just turn the microscope on a small number of people, get to know them, drop into their lives for a period of time.

A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know.