Tim Pratt Quotes

Puns are the E. coli of humor,

the counters and center island were crammed with mason jars and novelty saltshakers and cookie jars in the shapes of cats, blimps, pumpkins, frogs, robots, potbellied demons, and other things.

Sure, movies can be a way to hide from life, but shit, sometimes you NEED to hide from life, to see a better life on the screen, to know life can be better than it is, or to see a worse life and realize how good you have it. Movies taught me not to settle for less.

Everything is somebody's fetish.

But you know me-I'm an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I've never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much.

Hi there," he said. "I hear you need to see a man about a frog.

I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though.

Family lore says I was named after the song 'Timothy' by The Buoys, a lovely little ditty about three guys who get trapped in a cave-in and resort to cannibalism; they eat Timothy.

I like plans. They create a comforting illusion of sanity and order.

Contrails. Also helicopters. Skydivers. Basically everything

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

Marla cursed--though her profanities we less destructive than Rondeau's, they were more heartfelt.

When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr.

Stories are really important to people and can really change the way they understand, and even live, their lives. As such, I don't agree much with people who say, 'Calm down, it's just a story.'

we went over to one of my favorite pizza places for a few slices of deep-dish, which Trey appallingly did not appreciate: "This isn't pizza. This is basically lasagna with no noodles.

Marla had always been better at tearing things apart, at least in a physical level (though she liked to think she was good at building more theoretical things, like the complex structure of loyalty, fear, and obligation that kept things running back home).

Full value for your soul wouldn't get you a cup of coffee at a convenience store.

Life is full of borders. Some of them, once crossed, can never be crossed again in the other direction. But there are new countries to discover across every one.

I didn't grow up on any sort of border; more in the middle of nowhere, in rural eastern North Carolina.

All water has been everywhere, Bekah. What flows from your faucet was once frozen inside a glacier, and squeezed by unimaginable pressures at the bottom of the deepest sea, and rippling in a lightless lake in a cavern no living thing has ever touched. Also, it has almost certainly been inside a dinosaur. All water is one water, and all water remembers the past.

Drake always thinks the glass is half full. Me, I think the glass is half full of poison.

Summoning up the images in my imagination was easy. Getting them out of my head and onto the canvas was harder. The hardest thing. Sometimes, I thought, the impossible thing. Often, I thought, the only worthwhile thing.

B looked down the shaft, at a metal ladder and darkness beyond. "Me first?"
Of course. You're the apprentice, so you always go first into the unknown. If anyone's going to be eaten by a grue, it should be you."
Tough job. But at least the hours are terrible.

I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer.

lost much. The thought of my body's chirality

A body is a body." Viscarro shrugged his bony shoulders. "Dead, alive, alive, dead. I fail to see the importance of the distinction."
Yeah? So you'd just as soon fuck a living person as a dead one? What's the point of the distinction? Oh, right-one's normal, and one's called necrophilia."
Viscarro sighed. "Touche, I suppose.

Once, my writing-avoidance behavior involved me mixing up a cleaning concoction and getting some ancient stains out of the carpet. My wife liked that one.

I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go.