He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.
Interpretation
The quote humorously suggests a stereotype about writers leading a lavish and carefree lifestyle.
Terry Pratchett, through this quote, pokes fun at the romanticized idea that writers live luxurious lives filled with indulgence, like drinking champagne in their dressing gowns. It captures the whimsical and often exaggerated perceptions of the writing profession, suggesting that there is more to the life of a writer than such ideals.
In practice
This quote could be used as a lighthearted joke at a literary gathering.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes. I spent the first healthy chunk of my career playing all-American, pleasant, average, nice people, so it's fun to have some complications there.
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
The English are busy folk; they have no time in which to be polite.
Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.
Secretly we're all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.
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