Terry Pratchett Quotes

Young readers can sense when you're not addressing what's actually going on.

I like writing for children. It seems to me that most people underestimate their understanding and the strength of their feelings and in my books for them I try to put this right.

If it's not good enough for adults, it's not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books. And words.

We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.

Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.

Men are but children of a larger growth.

You’re not an adult at all - you're just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don't understand...

I think all presidents should have teenage girls before they become presidents. If you can handle those hormones, you can handle anything.

What I think of sometimes, as I read the new books - do kids really need to see such a seamy side of life? I'm in the minority, such an old woman, perhaps. I love the books that have given kids joy, that give them hope at the end. Sometimes it seems to me the books right now are very depressive.

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

To partly remain a child: that is to be really mature.

I'm wondering what to read next." Matilda said. "I've finished all the children's books.

Having children made me go down a road of serious introspection and self-examination. I think it's informed and hopefully enhanced my creativity.

Before my marriage, I didn’t think about all the obligations that were awaiting me. My experience has proved useful and I think that I have a natural propensity to feel compassion for people and their problems.

The usual run of children's books left me cold, and at the age of six I decided to write a book of my own. I managed the first line, 'I am a swallow.' Then I looked up and asked, 'How do you spell telephone wires?

There really is no difference in the actual writing or plotting. I choose to tell different stories for the younger reader and, of course, I would never put sex and extreme violence in a YA book. But writing for adults and children requires the same care and attention.

Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.

I think you can be mature without being grown-up. You can also be grown-up without being mentally mature. One of them is forced, while the other one is your choice.

I think what matures us is time, not necessarily our physical bodies. So I think she can probably change as much as human would in the timespan of the show. However, I do think as a human you reach a point where there's a certain amount of humility and acceptance of life and its consequences when you see your own body change and age, and the pounds come or the wrinkles come.

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics.

There are some things that are more appropriate to a children's than an adult book but there's a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway.

Dimitri: "Rose, I'm seven years older than you. In ten years, that won't mean so much, but for now, it's huge. I'm an adult. You're a child.” Rose: "You didn't seem to think I was a child when you were all over me.” - Rose Hathaway & Dimitri Belikov (Vampire Academy)

You just grow up and learn to think instead of just feel.

Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.