In my heart, I'm just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I'm not a rich man.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In 'The Colour of Magic' most of the city is set alight. It's a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams's 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.'

I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it's in the blood.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.

Something about writing needs a sort of distance not to be involved as a writer - just something that makes it easier to write. You have to make choices all the time - what to tell and what not to tell.

I've always had a foot in everything. As a kid, I was active in sports and theater. Now, I'm learning I have to focus a bit. I'm trying to get to next projects, like writing a screenplay. Once that comes together, I could put my mind to another book - maybe a fun kids' book.

I just can't afford to get bored, because if you've been blessed with a generous imagination, which a lot of actors have, to be engaged, to be stimulated, is to liberate your imagination.