Terry Pratchett Quotes

Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.

It's an unfair world, Child. Be glad you have friends.

And people think she killed him?" said Miss Tick. She sighed. "They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or somet

The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.

But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.”“Sir?”“It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.”“Sir?”“That’s practically zen.

She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.

(...) perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.

Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.

And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress.

The reaper does not listen to the harvest.

Have a chocolate-covered raisin,” he said.“They look like rat droppings,” said the Chair.The Dean peered at them in the gloom.“So that’s it,” he said. “The bag fell on the floor a minute ago, and I thought there seemed rather a lot.

If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light, He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern.

I just think the world ought to be more sort of organized.''That's just fantasy,' said Twoflower.'I know. That's the trouble.' Rincewind sighed again.

Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.

The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.

It's not lying when you do it to officers!

Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?

But she’s going to have a lot of problems."THAT’S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I’M TOLD. I WOULDN’T KNOW, OF COURSE."What about reincarnation?"Death hesitated.YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME."I’ve heard that some people do it all the time."YOU’VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU’VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU’VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT."It’s bad?"YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT.

Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.

A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example.""And what do they think? Against it, are they?""It is not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.""Nope.""Pardon?"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.""It's a lot more complicated than that--""No it ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.""Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-""But they Starts with thinking about people as things…

I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.

Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do.

Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.

The purr is very important. It's the purr that does it every time. It's the purr that makes up for the Things Under the Bed, the occasional pungency, the 4 a.m. yowl. Other creatures went in for big teeth, long legs or over-active brains, while cats just settled for a noise that tells the world they're feeling happy.

I'm not a lady, I'm a witch.

The end of times?" said Nanny. "Look, Tiff, Esme tol' me to say, if you want to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don't mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories - they're there to be cherished.

He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.

No,' she said. 'No, I don't reckon that's what I do now. Are you watchin', Mrs Gogol? Are you watchin' real close?' Her gaze travelled the room and rested for just a fraction of a second on Magrat. Then she reached over, carefully, and thrust her arm up to the elbow into the burning torch. And the doll in Erzulie Gogol's hands burst into flame. It went on blazing even after the witch had screamed and dropped it on to the floor. It went on burning until Nanny Ogg ambled over with a jug of fruit juice from the buffet, whistling between her teeth, and put it out. Granny withdrew her hand. It was unscathed.

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn't even notice them.

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain . . . pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy.

There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.

In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

Yes, she'd made a mistake... but she wasn't going to be bullied. You couldn't let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people's watercolors.

It’s bad enough barging into Guild property, but we’ll get into really serious trouble if we shoot anyone. Lord Vetinari won’t stop at sarcasm. He might use’ - Colon swallowed - ‘irony.

Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.

The public thinks big, sensible, measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things

Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.

It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…

Right!""Right!""You can get there!""I can get there!""You're a natural at counting to two!""I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!""If you can count to two, you can count to anything!""If I can count to two, I can count to anything!""And then the world is your mollusc!""My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

Juliet's version of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say it was erratic, past all understanding and was seldom seen.

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

When you break rules, break 'em good and hard

He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And them Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five.

Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There's a conflict of dominant personalities. There's a group of ringleaders without a ring. There's the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is 'Don't do what you will, do what I say.' The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can't avoid it.

The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

There’s no point in believing in things that exist.

Where do you think they've gone?' he said.'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.''Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.''But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.'Most people seem to manage,' she said.She reached across the table and touched his hand.

Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out.