Comedic Authors

"(after describing all the negligent drivers he encountered that day)"So let's hope I was a quantum magnet for all bad luck on Earth and the rest of you are able to stay safe tonight as a result.""

"(referring to a broken sign displayed at a fireworks stand)"It says FIRE ORKS. And the arrow on this particular sign points down a twisting dirt road that is quickly engulfed in a darkened forest. I really need to get around to vandalizing that sign. Maybe adding something like "This way lies doom" to the bottom.""

"If you travel, do it smart. I need as many of you alive to buy as many things as possible. It's a cycle, you see, shaped like a pyramid."

"Sorry about the delay. We were having unholy connection problems of the damned. But things seem to be working fine now."

"This is the part where I tell you guys that my first car was a Corvette that I got for, like, half price or something and you all hate me forever."

"As you may have noticed, a hurricane didn't kill me yesterday. I will celebrate my continued life with some ice cream this afternoon."

"Typing up a detailed news post at this moment would not further the goals of my great society. Stay tuned for ideological update."

"I have, quite possibly, the most self-antagonistic brain of our generation. So when I really want to work on something, it goes into overdrive to think of other things that are really bitchin' to distract me. And if I change gears to work on that new shiny thing, it'll think of something even more bitchin' for the original thing or a wholly new project altogether. It's a wonder I manage to dress myself, really."

"Anyone got a few million they wanna invest?"

"[...]is there a contest between developers to see who can make the most irresistable game for Brian? I'm trying to get some work done here!"

"X-Men Legends 2, it would be so much easier to enjoy you if your characters would ever shut up."

"I'm so physically deficient that the act of sleep injures me. It's like I disprove evolution and intelligent design at once."

"The cops are after me, I'm on my way to join an organization of lunatics and bombers, I'm wired for sound, my necktie turns into a smokescreen, my handkerchief will make you throw up, my Diner's Club card explodes, I'm the leader of a subversive terrorist organization composed entirely of undercover federal agents, newspapers all over the country are saying I killed my girl, and I'm on my way to meet a twenty-five-year-old Nazi built like Bronco Nagurski. If relaxed means limp, don't worry about it. I'm relaxed. I'm relaxed all over."

"Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten."

"If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were."

"Throw out that fucking copy of Finnegans Wake you’re always carrying around and go read Donald E. Westlake. He’ll teach you everything you need to know about writing fiction."

"I've used pseudonyms for various reasons. In my earliest days I was writing too much, and needed to shift some of the product over to other front men. I've also done it to establish the different tones of the different writings: Stark doesn't write very much like Westlake at all."

"For me, the characters are part of the story, and come out of its development. I don't base them on people, or parts of people – the Frankenstein method. I base them on what I've noticed about the human race. … I cannot tell you how stories develop. I have an initial idea, and start telling myself the story, day by day."

"I was once — and only once — asked if I could have had a writing career without the movies. That stopped me, and I was very happy to have to think about it, and decide I knew the answer. Yes; not this career, but a career. Without movie money, either from writing screenplays or selling rights to novels, I could still have enough of a career that I could support myself and not have to work at some other job, but it would be, shall we say, a less lavish lifestyle."

"Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering."

"It was apparent ... that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong."

"Hispanics have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Come to that, the Irish and Italians and Jews also have a long tradition of defiance against authority. Thinking it over, everybody has a long tradition of defiance against authority. (Except the Germans, of course.)"

"Everybody in New York City is looking for something. Men are looking for women and women are looking for men. Down at the Trucks, men are looking for men, while at Barbara's and at the Lib women are looking for women. Lawyers' wives in front of Lord & Taylor are looking for taxis, and lawyers' wives' husbands down on Pine Street are looking for loopholes. The hookers in front of the Americana hotel are looking for johns, and the kids opening cab doors in front of the Port Authority are looking for tips. So are the riders on the Aqueduct Special. So are the cabbies, the bellboys, the waiters and the undercover narcs."

"I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong."

"Brian had all that day to figure out what was going on, and yet he didn't."

"New York doesn't exactly have neighborhoods, the way most cities do. What it has is closer to distinct and separate villages, some of them existing on different continents, some of them existing in different centuries, and many of them at war with one another. English is not the primary language in many of these villages, but the Roman alphabet does still have a slight edge."

"The August sun, God's blood-blister..."

"Eyes wide and blank as the buttons on a first Communion coat."

"What did Jesus Christ say to the Teamsters? 'Do nothing till I get back.'"

"In order to hold your faith intact be sure it's kept unsullied by fact."

"परिस्थिति हा अश्रूंचा कारखाना आहे!."

"In his writings, Pu Lu has said that he is afraid of taking a stand against the Government. This was much before the Shiv Sena-BJP Government came into power.... It may well be that he would have been deprived of government patronage - this is something that has happened to others. Or, that he would have been subjected to physical attacks. Yet, the progressives have labelled the present government as fascist, and the previous governments as democratic."

"झाले ! म्हणजे प्रश्नातून सुटका नाही. माझीच नव्हे, कुणाचीच नाही! मग जगणे म्हणजे नुसते श्वासोच्छ्वास घेणे की लक्ष लक्ष प्रश्नांच्या उत्तरांमागून धावणे? शेवटी प्रश्न म्हणजे तरी काय आणि उत्तर म्हणजे तरी काय? हादेखील एक प्रश्नच. मी त्या प्रश्नचिन्हाकडेच निरखून पाहतो. आणि युरेका! त्या प्रश्नचिन्हातच माझे उत्तर कसल्याशा सांकेतिक भाषेत दडवले आहे हे मला ठाऊक नव्हते. प्रश्नचिन्हाच्या त्या आकड्याखालीच शून्य हे त्याचे उत्तरही असते. विरामिचन्हे इतकी विचारपूर्वक बनवली असतील याची मला कल्पना नव्हती!"

"शेवटी काय हो, आपण पत्त्याच्या नावाचे धनी, मजकुराचा मालक निराळाच."

"जगात काय बोलत आहात ह्यापेक्षा कोण बोलत आहात ह्याला जास्त महत्त्व आहे."

"प्रयास हा प्रतिभेचा प्राणवायू आहे."

"लग्नापुर्वी शी न लूक्ड सो … लुकडी!"

"मी लंडन मध्ये हमाली करून वजनी पाउंड घटवून चलनी पाउंड कमवावेत, असही सुचवण्यात आलं."

""I will not feel sorry for myself for contracting Alzheimer's, I will make Alzheimer's sorry for catching me!" Interview with BBC Radio 5 Live regarding Terry's Alzheimer's diagnosis"

"Tolkien's dead. J. K. Rowling said no. Philip Pullman couldn't make it. Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett."

"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. This is in fact true. It's called living."

"I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else."

""I know it's a very human thing to say 'Is there anything I can do', but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry." - after announcing his Alzheimer's diagnosis."

""I don't mind authority, but not authoritarian authority. After all, the bus driver is allowed to be the boss of the bus. But if he's bad at driving, he's not going to be a bus driver anymore." Interview with Cory Doctorow"

"So what shall I make of the voice that spoke to me recently as I was scuttling around getting ready for yet another spell on a chat-show sofa? More accurately, it was a memory of a voice in my head, and it told me that everything was OK and things were happening as they should. For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from? Me, actually — the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it's what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2. It's that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn't require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds. I don't think I've found God, but I may have seen where gods come from."

"Belief was never mentioned at home, but right actions were taught by daily example. Possibly because of this, I have never disliked religion. I think it has some purpose in our evolution. I don't have much truck with the "religion is the cause of most of our wars" school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God. I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet."

"I don't believe. I never have, not in big beards in the sky."

"As a boy I had a clear image of the Almighty: He had a tail coat and pinstriped trousers, black, slicked-down hair and an aquiline nose. On the whole, I was probably a rather strange child, and I wonder what my life might have been like if I'd met a decent theologian when I was nine."

"I asked a teacher what the opposite of a miracle was and she, without thinking, I assume, said it was an act of God. You shouldn't say something like that to the kind of kid who will grow up to be a writer; we have long memories."

"Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again."