What is magic? Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted into the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions. Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.

His family moved to Bridgwater Somerset briefly in 1957 following which he passed his eleven plus exam in 1959 earning him a place in John Hampden Grammar School. He was made an adjunct Professor in the School of English at Trinity College Dublin in 2010 with a role in postgraduate education in creative writing and popular literature. Pratchett's first novel The Carpet People was publiTerry Pratchettd in 1971 and since his first Discworld novel (The Colour of Magic) was publiTerry Pratchettd in 1983 he has written two books a year on average.

His latest Discworld book Snuff was at the time of its release the third-fastest-selling hardback adult-audience novel since records began in the United Kingdom selling 55000 copies in the first three days. Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett OBE (born 28 April 1948) is an English author of fantasy novels especially comical works. In December 2007 Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease.