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It would be hard to be deader without special training. -- Terry Pratchett
homesickness rose up inside Rincewind like a late-night prawn biriani, -- Terry Pratchett
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them. -- Terry Pratchett
So the fire and its subsequent flood, wich destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors'problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story. -- Terry Pratchett
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living. -- Terry Pratchett
Death stared at her. He'd never before experienced an unsatisfied customer. He was at a loss. Finally he gave up. BEGONE, YOU BLACK AND MIDNIGHT HAG, he said. The -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly... and other things ending in olly. -- Terry Pratchett
Stars is easy, people is hard. -- Terry Pratchett
Then there's those wizards on it, who must all be gifted hydrophobes - " "You mean they hate water?" said Twoflower. "No, that wouldn't work," said Rincewind. "Hate is an attracting force, just like love. They really loathe it, the very idea of it revolts them. -- Terry Pratchett
You know, after a woman's raised a family and so on, she wants to start living her own life. -- Terry Pratchett
People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked. -- Terry Pratchett
Heinrich had a reputation locally for cunning, but Ankh-Morpork had overtaken cunning a thousand years ago, had sped past devious, had left artful far behind, and had now, by a roundabout route, arrived at straightforward. -- Terry Pratchett
I would like to apologize to the relatives of the fan who gave me 29 books to sign in Odyssey 7, Manchester. I'm a little twitchy towards the end of a day of signing and did not mean to kill and eat him. -- Terry Pratchett
Practically impossible. There are plenty of other useful books. But you start with Brewer's. -- Terry Pratchett
Lot of damn mixin' things up and saying, hey, what'll happen if we add a drop of the yellow stuff, and then goin' around without yer eyebrows for a fortnight. -- Terry Pratchett
Perhaps that's why men did it. You didn't do it to save duchesses, or countries. You killed the enemy to stop him killing your mates, that they in turn might save you ... -- Terry Pratchett
Genua had once controlled the river
mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy
because it was done by the city government, and therefore sound economics
and perfectly all right -- Terry Pratchett
Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people. -- Terry Pratchett
Bee there Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng -- Terry Pratchett
Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'. -- Terry Pratchett
The apothecary's name was Owlglass. He hummed to himself as he worked in his back room. He'd found a new type of blue fluff, which he was grinding down. It was probably good for curing something. He'd have to try it out on people until he found out what. -- Terry Pratchett
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. -- Terry Pratchett
Oh, I daresay they're all very well as decoration, somethin' nice to look at while you're workin', somethin' for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin' people when life is on the edge. Even people you don't like. Stars is easy, people is hard. -- Terry Pratchett
This somewhat surprised Dodger; no one had offered him a prayer before, as far as he could recall. The idea that he might have one was, on this chilly night, a welcome warmth. Cuddling that to his bosom, he led Onan up the longs stairs to bed. -- Terry Pratchett
She was almost there. She could feel the weight of herself, the ponderousness of her body, the distant memories of the dawn of time when rock was molten and free. For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to have balconies. -- Terry Pratchett
Do you know where 'policeman' comes from, sir? ... 'Polis' used to mean 'city', said Carrot. That's what policeman means: 'a man for the city'. Not many people knew that. The word 'polite' comes from 'polis', too. It used to mean the proper behaviour from someone living in a city. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes had believed all his life that the Watch were called coppers because they carried copper badges, but no, said Carrot, it comes from the old word cappere, to capture. -- Terry Pratchett
Oh dear, here were go again, thought Vimes. Why did I wait until I was married to become strangely attractive to powerful women? Why didn't it happen to me when I was sixteen? I could have done with it then. He -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a Clean Floor strategy
that eluded him at the moment. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes took a deep breath. It was such a relief to be right, even though you knew you'd only got there by trying every possible way to be wrong. "Ah." he said. -- Terry Pratchett
I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual! -- Terry Pratchett
Do you realize we're very probably seeing something that no one has seen for centuries?"
"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" shouted Vimes. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes' glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronised Observation Team. -- Terry Pratchett
What are your duties?" said Vimes. "To Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, And Seriously Prod Buttock, Sir," said Dorfl. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes hung up the tube. Trolls with a message. It was unlikely to be an invitation to a literary lunch. -- Terry Pratchett
Yeah, all right, but everyone knows they torture people," mumbled Sam.
"Do they?" said Vimes. "Then why doesn't anyone do anything about it?"
"'cos they torture people. -- Terry Pratchett
Well, we decided to have a bite, so I sent Nobby out to the baker's, see, and, well, we fought the prisoner ought to have something to eat . . .' 'Yes?' said Vimes encouragingly. 'Well, when Nobby asked him if he wanted his figgin toasted, he just give a scream and ran off. -- Terry Pratchett
No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler? -- Terry Pratchett
Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight! -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erraticaly in all directions, that the chance of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. -- Terry Pratchett
They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today. -- Terry Pratchett
Fresh wounds," said Angua. "But one of them did shoot one of the other in the leg by accident."
"I think you'd better put in your report as -self inflicted- wounds while resisting arrest," said Vimes. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes's lack of interest in other people's children was limitless. -- Terry Pratchett
He quite liked the wizards. They didn't commit crimes. Not Vimes's type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn't Vimes's beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn't lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes. There -- Terry Pratchett
Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth, ting -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes groaned. That meant wizards. You got nothing but trouble with wizards. -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
What's the orbital velocity of the moon? -- Terry Pratchett
Then there's the way you krazak your G'ardrgh," said Corporal Littlebottom. "I won't even ask," said Vimes. "I'm afraid I can't explain in any case," said Cheery. -- Terry Pratchett
That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we'll never know. -- Terry Pratchett
Vetinari drummed his fingers on the table. "What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?" "I'd tell you a downright lie, sir." "Then I will not do so," said Vetinari, smiling faintly. -- Terry Pratchett
A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. -- Terry Pratchett
The horsemen came closer.
Vimes was not good at horsemen. Something in him resented being addressed by anyone eight feet above the ground. He didn't like the sensation of being looked at by nostrils. -- Terry Pratchett
I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'
If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth? -- Terry Pratchett
We need to borrow your boat," said Vimes.
"Bugger off!"
"I'm choosing to believe that was a salty nautical expression meaning 'Why, certainly,'" said Vimes. -- Terry Pratchett
Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!" He hesitated, and then shrugged. "And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent." The -- Terry Pratchett
Anyway, Angua seemed to have taken this case personally. She always had a soft spot for the underdog.
So did Vimes. You had to. Not because they were pure or noble, because they weren't. You had to be on the side of underdogs because they weren't overdogs. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes had found Old Stoneface's journal in the Unseen University library. The man had been hard no doubt about that. But they were hard times. He'd written: "In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the Old Lies." But the old lies had won in the end. -- Terry Pratchett
Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands. -- Terry Pratchett
There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey ... -- Terry Pratchett
It's political, sir. Apparently he wants a return to the values and traditions that made the city great, sir."
"Does he _know_ what those values and traditions _were_?" said Vimes, aghast. -- Terry Pratchett
What did I tell you about Mister Safety Catch?' said Vimes weakly.
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend,' recited Detritus, saluting. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes was already lost. Oh, there was the sun, but that was just a direction. He could feel it on the side of his face.
And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids. -- Terry Pratchett
That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people. -- Terry Pratchett
A Duke couldn't have the arse hanging out of his trousers when meeting foreign diplomats. Actually even plain old Sam Vimes never had the arse hanging out of his trousers, either, but no one would have actually started a war if he had. -- Terry Pratchett
There's lots of people will help you with alcohol business, but there's no one out there arranging little meetings where you can stand up and say, 'My name is Sam Vimes and I'm a really suspicious bastard. -- Terry Pratchett
He always says that,' muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. 'He knows I don't like being married to a duchess.'
'I thought you and Lady Sybil-'
'Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'It's just the duchess bit I don't like. -- Terry Pratchett
Pray you never face a good man, Vimes thought. He'll kill you with hardly a word. -- Terry Pratchett
Mr Vimes," said Mrs Winkings, "ve cannot help but notice that you still haf not employed any of our members in the Vatch ... "
Say 'Watch', why don't you? Vimes thought. I know you can. Let the twenty-third letter of the alphabet enter your life. -- Terry Pratchett
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that? -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother. -- Terry Pratchett
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting. -- Terry Pratchett
I notice it says on your tray, 'Dibbler Enterprises, Est,'" said Vimes. "Shouldn't it say when you were established? -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes hated and despised the privileges of rank, but they had this to be said for them: at least they meant that you could hate and despise them in comfort. -- Terry Pratchett
Shut up sergeant. You're a free troll. That's an order
Sam Vimes -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes thought for a moment and said, 'Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big
-- Terry Pratchett
Vimes could never get a handle on politics, which was full of traps for honest men. -- Terry Pratchett
Yes, thought Vimes. That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means "private law." Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it. Well, -- Terry Pratchett
Gods, it felt good. Hot water was civilization. Vimes could feel the stiffness in his muscles melting away in the warmth. -- Terry Pratchett
I believe you vere an alcoholic, Sir Samuel."
"No," said Vimes, completely taken aback, "I was a drunk. You have to be richer than I was to
be an alcoholic. -- Terry Pratchett
Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believed in ice
i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn't the world for it. -- Terry Pratchett
The bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes.
The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice. -- Terry Pratchett
You just put that sword away, sir, please," said the voice of Lance-Constable Vimes.
"You will not shoot me, you young idiot. That would be murder," said the captain calmly.
"Not where I'm aiming, sir. -- Terry Pratchett
Well, that's society for you, I'm afraid," said Carrot. "Everything is dumped on the people below until you find someone who's prepared to eat it. That's what Mr. Vimes says. -- Terry Pratchett
And power is a game of smoke and mirrors,' said her ladyship, reaching for the wine. 'Oddly enough, Commander Vimes reminds me of that nearly every day. No civil police force could hold out against an irate and resolute population. The trick is not to let them realize that. Yes? -- Terry Pratchett
Yes, yes, yes, said Vimes, who could recognize the verbal foot getting ready to stick itself in the aural door. -- Terry Pratchett
History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders. -- Terry Pratchett
There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn't be Sam Vimes anymore. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes' meeting with the Patrician ended as all such meetings did, with the guest going away in possession of an unfocused yet very nagging suspicion that he'd only just escaped with his life. -- Terry Pratchett
Everyone wants something from Vimes, even though I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell, I'm probably a spoon. -- Terry Pratchett
And now, because of a song, Vimes, a simple piece of music, Vimes, soft as a breath, stranger than a mountain, some very powerful states have agreed to work together to heal the problems of another autonomous state and, almost as collateral, turn some animals into people at a stroke. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants. -- Terry Pratchett
And Sam Vimes thought: Why is Young Sam's nursery full of farmyard animals anyway? Why are his books full of moo-cows and baa-lambs? He is growing up in the city. He will only see them on a plate! They go sizzle! -- Terry Pratchett
But we don't do things like that!" said Vimes. "You can't go around arresting the Thieves' Guild. I mean, we'd be at it all day! -- Terry Pratchett
Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'. -- Terry Pratchett
The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as a Portable Gas Lighter. -- Terry Pratchett
The other two entered the room. Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay.
"My squad," he mumbled.
"Fine body of men," said Lady Ramkin. "The good old rank and file, eh?"
"The rank, anyway," said Vimes. -- Terry Pratchett
Someone broke from the scrum and, punching and kicking, staggered towards the Klatchian goal.
"Isn't that man your butler?" said Ahmed.
"Yes."
"One of your soldiers said he bit a man's nose off."
Vimes shrugged. "He's got a very pointed look if I don't use the sugar tongs, I know that. -- Terry Pratchett
I assure you I will not kill you," said Inigo.
"I know that," said Vimes. "But will you try? -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes nodded glumly. It was amazing how many people were prepared to do business with a man they'd met in a pub. -- Terry Pratchett
Well, the news has got around. The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to ... yes, a ball."
"Well, that's a lot of ... "
"Don't you dare, Sam. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes relaxed a little. Detritus's intelligence wasn't too bad for a troll, falling somewhere between a cuttlefish and a line-dancer, but you could rely on him not to let it slow him down. Detritus -- Terry Pratchett
It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he'd decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby. -- Terry Pratchett
He could solve this, Vimes told himself. Everything he needed was there, if only he asked the right questions and thought the right way. But -- Terry Pratchett
And then you rushed off afterward because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street." "Sweeney Jones," said Vimes. "Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving - -- Terry Pratchett
Everyone says it's going to be Snapcase at the palace. He listens to the people."
"Yeah, right," said Vimes. And I listen to the thunder. But I don't do anything about it. -- Terry Pratchett
I'm not a criminal madman,' said Vimes. ( ... )
'Never mind, you'll soon fit in,' said Lawn. -- Terry Pratchett
And now, Vimes thought, it ends. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes, on the other hand, was prepared to hit anything with anything. The point was that the opponent shouldn't get up again. Everything else was decoration. -- Terry Pratchett
Sometimes it's like watching a wasp land on a stinging nettle: someone's going to get stung and you don't care. -- Terry Pratchett
Vimes awoke with a noseful of camel. There are far worse awakenings, but not as many as you might think. -- Terry Pratchett
And who else could I send? Only Vimes could go to Uberwald. -- Terry Pratchett
It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing. -- Terry Pratchett
Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah. -- Terry Pratchett
He opened the box and took out the kitten. It stared at him with the normal mad amazement of kittens everywhere.
I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS, said Death, putting it gently on the floor. -- Terry Pratchett
If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship. -- Terry Pratchett
I grew up expecting to see the first man land on the moon. It never occurred to me that I'd see the last one. We thought there'd be a moon base. -- Terry Pratchett
Joshua, cynicism is the only reasonable response to the antics of humanity. -- Terry Pratchett
It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course. -- Terry Pratchett
His rabbitty features looked unusually determined, as if a hamster had spotted a gap in its treadmill. -- Terry Pratchett
Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again. -- Terry Pratchett
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. -- Terry Pratchett
Power," growled the Supreme Grand Master, "does not come cheap. -- Terry Pratchett
Rincewind paused. In the deep canyons of his mind he thought he heard the distant rustle of ancient paper. -- Terry Pratchett
The walls were covered with graffiti and William passed the time correcting the spelling -- Terry Pratchett
I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, agreement or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no 'should -- Terry Pratchett
Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond. -- Terry Pratchett
The precise origins of the Mage Wars have been lost in the fogs of Time, but Disc philosophers agree that the First Men, shortly after their creation, understandably lost their temper. -- Terry Pratchett
ow do I know I can trust you?' said the urchin. 'I don't know,' said Ridcully. 'The subtle workings of the brain are a mystery to me, too. But I'm glad that is your belief. -- Terry Pratchett
I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling *sorry*! Or guilty! We never *regret* anything! Do you know what it feels like saying, 'Hello food, can you talk?' That's not how a cat is supposed to behave! -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn't bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. -- Terry Pratchett
You can't be loony and rich. You've got to be eccentric if you're rich. -- Terry Pratchett
Rincewind ignored this, because it was true. -- Terry Pratchett
We are armed with the truth. What can harm us if we are armed with the truth?' 'Well, a crossbow bolt can, e.g., go right through your eye and out the back of your head,' said Sergeant Colon. -- Terry Pratchett
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?
The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.
Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. -- Terry Pratchett
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
(Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate ... ) -- Terry Pratchett
It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room. -- Terry Pratchett
An' you told him what I said about a verbal contract not being worth the paper it's printed on? -- Terry Pratchett
Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl. -- Terry Pratchett
Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words. -- Terry Pratchett
You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right? -- Terry Pratchett
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be. -- Terry Pratchett
Things are different here, sir," said Carrot. "It wasn't until ten years ago they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier. -- Terry Pratchett
With the expression of one who knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. -- Terry Pratchett
I'm just capable of entertaining the fantastic idea that, in certain circumstances, Homo sapiens might actually be capable of thinking. It must be worth a go, since we've tried everything else. -- Terry Pratchett
YOU FEAR TO DIE?
It's not that I don't want ... I mean, I've always ... it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break ... -- Terry Pratchett
I nearly committed a terrible sin," said Brutha. "I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day."
"That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing," said Om. "Now cut the melon. -- Terry Pratchett
The Great God Om waxed wroth, or at least made a spirited attempt. There is a limit to the amount of wroth that can be waxed one inch from the ground, and he was right up against it. -- Terry Pratchett
Fair?" said the Sea Queen. She moved forward. Om felt her all around him.
"There's no such thing," she said. "Life's like a beach. And then you die. -- Terry Pratchett
There are a hundred pathways to Om. Unfortunately, I sometimes think someone left a rake lying across a lot of them. -- Terry Pratchett
Om helps those who help one another. -- Terry Pratchett
And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: Psst! -- Terry Pratchett
Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go. -- Terry Pratchett
Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist. -- Terry Pratchett
It was the Oats that read avidly and always remembered those passages which cast doubt on the literal truth of the Book of Om - and nudged him and said, if this isn't true, what can you believe? -- Terry Pratchett
He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways ... -- Terry Pratchett
I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense. -- Terry Pratchett
Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.
'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om. -- Terry Pratchett
This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them. -- Terry Pratchett
But what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed? -- Terry Pratchett
I never understood that story, anyway," said Nanny. "I mean, if I knew I'd got a heel that would kill me if someone stuck a spear in it, I'd go into battle wearing very heavy boots - -- Terry Pratchett
But all this business about kings and lords, it's against basic human dignity. We're all born equal. It makes me sick.'
'Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,' said Nobby.
'It's Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby. -- Terry Pratchett
I'd better say at the start that I don't actually believe in magic any more than I believe in astrology, because I'm a Taurean and we don't go in for all that weirdo occult stuff. -- Terry Pratchett
It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed."
"That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy. -- Terry Pratchett
And had a face like a bulldog licking vinegar off a thistle ... -- Terry Pratchett
We are history! everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. -- Terry Pratchett
People kept on talking about the true king of Ankh-Morpork, but history taught a cruel lesson. It said - often in words of blood - that the true king was the one who got crowned."
-- Terry Pratchett
And, just when you'd got out of the flower, and were feeling really proud of yourself, you'd look at the new, big, wide endless world around you. And eventually you'd notice that it had petals around the horizon. -- Terry Pratchett
If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes. -- Terry Pratchett
It was destined to be the most impressive kiss in the history of foreplay. The kiss lasted more than fifteen years. Not even frogs can manage that. -- Terry Pratchett
Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong ... But it might. -- Terry Pratchett
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues. -- Terry Pratchett
Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid. -- Terry Pratchett
It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17 % of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start ("She looks like a Winnifred to me"), and the as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag. -- Terry Pratchett
A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves. -- Terry Pratchett
That was the trouble with wizards, they had to make everything look difficult. All you really needed was willpower. And the Brethren had a lot of that. Small-minded and vitriolic willpower, yes, lousy with malignity maybe, but still powerful enough in its way ... -- Terry Pratchett
Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are ... well ... human beings. -- Terry Pratchett
Thus proving that dreams that come true are not always the right dreams. Does wearing a glass slipper lead to a comfortable life? If everything you touch turns into marshmallows, won't that make things a bit ... sticky? -- Terry Pratchett
It's simply that in every crowd there's a twerp. All any twerp needs to do is protest loud and long, and he or she will get attention from other twerps who'll go along for the ride
after all, if such people didn't exist, the Ricki Lake Show wouldn't have an audience. -- Terry Pratchett
Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo. -- Terry Pratchett
Death rode out, but found himself guiding the white horse down the track to the orchard. He stopped in front of one particular tree, and stared at it for some time. Eventually he said: LOOKS PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME. -- Terry Pratchett
We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh in the face of Death. Your affected air of craven cowardice does not fool me.
It fooled Rincewind. -- Terry Pratchett
We thought the fireworks were marvelous," said Mort. "And I expect they'll soon be able to rebuild the outer wall. -- Terry Pratchett
The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care? -- Terry Pratchett
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still. -- Terry Pratchett
If you invited a hedge wizard to a party, he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening. -- Terry Pratchett
There was a sigh from Death. Space he thought. That was the trouble. It was never like this on worlds with everlastingly cloudy skies. But once humans saw all that space, their brains expanded to try and fill it up. -- Terry Pratchett
I believe in reincarnation," [Bjorn] said.
I KNOW.
"I tried to live a good life. Does that help?"
THAT'S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE ... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION ... YOU'LL BE BJORN AGAIN. -- Terry Pratchett
IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO. -- Terry Pratchett
Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
'Yes. Yes, of course.'
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG. -- Terry Pratchett
SOD YOU, THEN, Death said. -- Terry Pratchett
HAVE YOU EVER BITTEN REDHOT ICE CUBE? THAT'S CURRY. -- Terry Pratchett
I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once. -- Terry Pratchett
My Lord ... what is Death like?" called the old man tremulously.
"When I have investigated it fully, I will let you know," came the faintest of modulations on the breeze.
"Yes," murmured the Loremaster. A thought struck him. "During daylight, please," he added. -- Terry Pratchett
You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?'
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON. -- Terry Pratchett
In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper. -- Terry Pratchett
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. -- Terry Pratchett
You got no soul, Cap'n," he said. "When a stranger comes into the city under the thrall of the dragon and challenges it with a glittery sword, weeell, there's only one outcome, ain't there? It's probably destiny. -- Terry Pratchett
It's probably a miracle of existence." "Like pickles," said the Bursar, happily. Even the Fresh Starters went blank. -- Terry Pratchett
Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, 'It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?' -- Terry Pratchett
As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick. -- Terry Pratchett
The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, "What about me?" and you can just hear the universe replying, "Well, what about you?" -- Terry Pratchett
You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where "traditional values" meant "hang someone." He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer. -- Terry Pratchett
Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course. -- Terry Pratchett
Nude women are only Art if there's an urn in it," said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: "Or a plinth. Both is best, o'course. It's a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it's Art and okay to look at. -- Terry Pratchett
She had a vague idea that "decadent" had something to do with not opening the curtains all day. -- Terry Pratchett
In thirty seconds you will wake up," said Aziraphale, to the entranced ex-nun. "And you will have had a lovely dream about whatever you like best, and - "
"Yes, yes, fine," sighed Crowley. "Now can we go? -- Terry Pratchett
What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.
Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head. -- Terry Pratchett
He may be deaf and a little hard of thinking, but elderly wizards have very well-trained survival instincts, and they know that when a tall figure in a black robe and the latest in agricultural handtools starts looking thoughtfully at you it is time to act fast. -- Terry Pratchett
Hrun the Barbarian, who was practilly an academic by Hub standards in that he could think without moving his lips. -- Terry Pratchett
YOU ARE NOT AFRAID?
'Not yet. But, er ... which way to the egress, please?'
There was a pause. Then Death said, in a puzzled voice: ISN'T THAT A FEMALE EAGLE? -- Terry Pratchett
I heard where it's a misery wrapped in an enema. -- Terry Pratchett
And never resist a perfect moment. -- Terry Pratchett
Courting is always difficult when the one being courted has an elderly female relative in the house; they tend to mutter or cackle or bum cigarettes or, in the worst cases, get out the family photograph album, an act of aggression in the sex war which ought to be banned by a Geneva Convention. -- Terry Pratchett
Here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don't know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round. -- Terry Pratchett
Everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.
(in Thief of Time) -- Terry Pratchett
Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me. -- Terry Pratchett
I know it's not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!"
"My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow ... "
"Is that so? Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig! -- Terry Pratchett
In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart ... well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better. -- Terry Pratchett
He knew how she felt. It was the way he felt himself, sometimes, if he woke in the small hours, at three a.m., a time when the world seemed empty and stripped of comforting illusion. A time when you knew you were a mote, transient and fragile in a vast universe, a candle flame in an empty hall. -- Terry Pratchett
You're wondering if I really would slit your throat. To tell the truth, I don't know either, but think of the fun we could have finding out. -- Terry Pratchett
The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish. -- Terry Pratchett
People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then. And what they need most of all is nothing much happening. And -- Terry Pratchett
Their thought processes can largely be represented by "="."" You see it = you eat it. -- Terry Pratchett
What have I told you about trying to sound ingratiatingly cute, Twyla?" she said. The little girl said, "You said I mustn't. You said that exaggerated lisping is a hanging offense and I only do it to get attention. -- Terry Pratchett
It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King. -- Terry Pratchett
Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that. -- Terry Pratchett
The captain glared at him. The sergeant put on the poker face that has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower-ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach. -- Terry Pratchett
Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead. -- Terry Pratchett
He looked personable enough, not exactly a great thinker, but definitely the kind of profile you wouldn't mind seeing on your small change. -- Terry Pratchett
There was a much smaller room on the other side. It was merely the size of, say, a cathedral. And it was lined floor to ceiling with more hourglasses that Susan could just see dimly in the light from the big room. She stepped inside and snapped her fingers. -- Terry Pratchett
Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice. -- Terry Pratchett
The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. -- Terry Pratchett
Vitoller always waved his arms when he spoke; if you tied his hands behind his back he would be dumb. -- Terry Pratchett
The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it. -- Terry Pratchett
The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available. -- Terry Pratchett
Your gods are trivial constructs. Easy to dismiss. Animistic fantasies or mammalian wish complexes. You are lost children longing for papa, and casting his image into the sky. -- Terry Pratchett
Nanny Ogg gave this the same consideration as would a nuclear physicist who'd just been told that someone was banging two bits of sub-critical uranium together to keep warm. -- Terry Pratchett
Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen. -- Terry Pratchett
The only hat worth wearing was the one you made for yourself, not one you bought, not one you were given. Your own hat, for your own head. Your own future, not someone else's. -- Terry Pratchett
Don't be ridiculous, man," said Ridcully, "there's no such thing as dwarf smuggling."
"Yeah? Then what's that you've got there?"
"I'm a giant," said Casanunda.
"Giants are a lot bigger."
"I've been ill. -- Terry Pratchett
Nanny Ogg appreciated fine wine in her very own way. It would never have occurred to Casanunda that anyone would top up white wine with port merely because she'd reached the end of the bottle. -- Terry Pratchett
Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley. -- Terry Pratchett
The barbarian chieftain said: "What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?" This is the sort of thing you're supposed to say to maintain steppecred in barbarian circles. -- Terry Pratchett
You know, sometimes I envy you. It must be nice to be a wolf. Just for a while." "It has its drawbacks." Like fleas, she thought, as they locked up the museum. And the food. And the constant nagging feeling that you should be wearing three bras at once. -- Terry Pratchett
He didn't administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower. -- Terry Pratchett
The sun set, which is everyday magic... -- Terry Pratchett
Well? Children sometimes steal. Beat them a little, and they stop stealing. Basic education -- Terry Pratchett
But a girl starting out in life might well say to herself: 'Is this it? You worked hard and denied yourself things and what you got at the end was hard work and self-denial? -- Terry Pratchett
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact. -- Terry Pratchett
It was all a lot to take. You start the day and it's just another day and here you are, having mercifully not ended up as a highwayman, sitting in another city with nothing more than the clothes you're standing up in, not knowing what is going to happen next.
Which, in a way, was exciting. -- Terry Pratchett
The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day. -- Terry Pratchett
Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters if that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself. -- Terry Pratchett
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along. -- Terry Pratchett
I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers. -- Terry Pratchett
Fascism may be good at making the trains run on time, but you wouldn't like some of the destinations. -- Terry Pratchett
Captain Quirke looked around the Watch room with the air of one who was doing the scenery a favour by looking at it. -- Terry Pratchett
I bet you don't have to be Spanish to be the Spanish Inquisition," said Adam. "I bet it's like Scottish eggs or American hamburgers. It just has to look Spanish. We've just got to make it look Spanish. Then everyone would know it's the Spanish Inquisition. -- Terry Pratchett
The house even imitated human houses. Death had created a bedroom for himself, despite the fact that he never slept. If he really picked things up from humans, had he tried insanity? It was very popular, after all. -- Terry Pratchett
as self-centered as a tornado, -- Terry Pratchett
Most people develop their social conscience when young, during that brief period between leaving school and deciding that injustice isn't necessarily all bad, and -- Terry Pratchett
If you must know, he said 'my goodness me, a walking potato -- Terry Pratchett
It was one of the most ancient terrors, the one that meant that no sooner had mankind learned to walk on two legs than it dropped to its knees. -- Terry Pratchett
Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do. -- Terry Pratchett
You'll get into dreadful trouble and it won't be my fault. You are bad people. -- Terry Pratchett
I read the best works of some of the best satirists, and indeed best writers from the beginning of the Victorian era to about the 1960s. If you want to be a blacksmith, you go and watch the blacksmith working, and you work out what the blacksmith does. -- Terry Pratchett
I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides. -- Terry Pratchett
Are you sure you're allowed to do this?" she said. "No! I'm not! I won't know until after I've done it! That's why I've got to do it! Then I'll know! -- Terry Pratchett
I often don't know where my Luggage is, that's what being a tourist is all about. -- Terry Pratchett
He couldn't see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn't. And there was never an apple, in Adam's opinion, that wasn't worth the trouble you got into for eating it. -- Terry Pratchett
Ultimately, there is the freedom to take the consequences. -- Terry Pratchett
She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing. -- Terry Pratchett
The city was under the rule of sourcery ... martial lore. -- Terry Pratchett
It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse. -- Terry Pratchett
Mind you," said Ponder, "the universe does have a rhythm. Day and night, light and dark, life and death - " "Chicken soup and croutons," said Ridcully. "Well, not evert metaphor bears close examination". -- Terry Pratchett
Death looked up angirly, and found himself staring into eyes that were black as the inside of a cat and full of distant stars that had no counterpart among the familiar constellations of the realtime universe. -- Terry Pratchett
Time and space were, from Death's point of view, merely things that he'd heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not. -- Terry Pratchett
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are. -- Terry Pratchett
If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone's wallets. -- Terry Pratchett
I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet! -- Terry Pratchett
Of the three things that most people know about the horse, the third is that, over a short distance, it can't run as fast as a man. As Rincewind had learned to his advantage, it has more legs to sort out. -- Terry Pratchett
Mr. Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a wrench. -- Terry Pratchett
He wasn't sure he liked everything that was happening, but a lot of it was "cultural," apparently, and you couldn't object to that, so he didn't. "Cultural" sort of solved problems by explaining that they weren't really there. -- Terry Pratchett
I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. -- Terry Pratchett
There was once a caustic comment from someone suggesting I was breeding a new race. Fans from different countries have married, amazing things like that. I've been to some of the weddings. I went to one here the other day, a pagan ceremony. -- Terry Pratchett
Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students. -- Terry Pratchett
Rain don't fall on a with if she doesn't want it to, although personally I prefer to get wet and be thankful."
"Thankful for what?" said Tiffany.
"That I'll get dry later. -- Terry Pratchett
One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking. -- Terry Pratchett
Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. She -- Terry Pratchett
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. -- Terry Pratchett
Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom. -- Terry Pratchett
It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers. -- Terry Pratchett
Escapism isn't good or bad of itself. What is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to. I write from experience, since in my case I escaped to the idea that books could be really enjoyable, an aspect of reading that teachers had not hitherto suggested. -- Terry Pratchett
Somehow the events set the seal on the day. It became a broken crockery day, a day of people getting under each other's feet and being peevish. Esk's mother dropped a jug that had belonged to her grandmother -- Terry Pratchett
But, it was a funny thing: every day something happened that was important enough to be on the front page of the newspaper. She'd never bought it and seen a little sign that said 'Not much happened yesterday, sorry about that'. -- Terry Pratchett
If you don't dare to think you might, you won't. -- Terry Pratchett
Certainly I have no faith in Jehovah, although I think it quite likely that Jesus Christ, as a preacher and a wise man, did indeed exist. -- Terry Pratchett
I have no fear of death whatsoever. I suspect that few people do, what they all fear is what might happen in the years or months before death. -- Terry Pratchett
He never pays attention, he always knows the answer, and he can never tell you how he knows. We can't keep thrashing him. He is a bad example to the other pupils. There's no educating a smart boy. -- Terry Pratchett
SCIENCE: a way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it's wrong. -- Terry Pratchett
The cigar made its traverse from one side of Harry King to the other. He was known to dote on his daughters, who he felt had rather suffered from having a father who needed to take two baths just to get dirty. -- Terry Pratchett
Gossiping's part of witchcraft,' said Tiffany. 'They're checking to see if they've gone batty yet. -- Terry Pratchett
It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. -- Terry Pratchett
No one likes a poor thief. -- Terry Pratchett
The trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only to easy to imagine ... -- Terry Pratchett
A screaming vampire is always the centre of attention. -- Terry Pratchett
Look at it like this, it's not that we're making life, we're simply giving life a place to live. -- Terry Pratchett
Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma. -- Terry Pratchett
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield. -- Terry Pratchett
THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY -- Terry Pratchett
They want dancing girls! They want thrills! They want elephants! They want people falling off roofs! They want dreams! The world is full of little people with big dreams! -- Terry Pratchett
Blessings be on this house, Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house. -- Terry Pratchett
There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn't rule the world. They're called Witches and Wizards. -- Terry Pratchett
On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil, on the whole. On nights such as this, witches are abroad. Well, not actually abroad. They don't like the food and you can't trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs. -- Terry Pratchett
Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot. -- Terry Pratchett
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all. -- Terry Pratchett
No! That's not the way! This is not the time! Hold it back! Tame it! Don't waste it! Send it back! It'll come when you call! -- Terry Pratchett
Esme said no because, she wasted time wishing for thinges instead of working out how to make them happen. What -- Terry Pratchett
I like hats. They give me something to do with my head. -- Terry Pratchett
Sun's coming up," he announced. "Don't remember eating that," muttered Chidder. -- Terry Pratchett
Mr Pin lit a cigar. Smoking was his one vice. at least, it was his only vice that he thought of as a vice. The others were just job skills. -- Terry Pratchett
He could hear his granny speaking. "No one's too poor to buy soap." Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride. -- Terry Pratchett
I think it does Discworld good if I don't write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system. -- Terry Pratchett
It had to be Death. No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue. -- Terry Pratchett
Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't hit them with a shovel! -- Terry Pratchett
Odd thing, ain't it ... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls." "That's mob rule! -- Terry Pratchett
Your excellency, if you persist in this attitude a complaint will go to your Lord Vetinari!"
"He does so look forward to them. -- Terry Pratchett
You fight a war to change the world, and it changes into a world with no place in it for you, the fighter. Those who fight for the bright future are not always, by nature, well fitted to live in it. -- Terry Pratchett
The trouble was, the trolls up in the plaza probably weren't bad trolls, and the dwarfs down in the square probably weren't bad dwarfs, either. People who probably weren't bad could kill you. -- Terry Pratchett
And now the birds were singing overhead, and there was a soft rustling in the undergrowth, and all the sounds of the forest that showed that life was still being lived blended with the souls of the dead in a woodland requiem.
The whole forest now sang for Granny Weatherwax. -- Terry Pratchett
Its like people care more abput their pride than about what's correct, about the truth. -- Terry Pratchett
The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame. -- Terry Pratchett
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. -- Terry Pratchett
The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell". -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
Now there's a power," he said. "Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!"
The Unnamed Boat surged forward.
"Is it? It's not my dream," said Didactylos. "I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters. -- Terry Pratchett
I feel like a million dollars don't you? ... Good, Lets go get some. -- Terry Pratchett
Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences. -- Terry Pratchett
he was whisked away from the lines of passengers and led along corridors with the politeness you might observe when dealing with a politician belonging to a country that had nuclear weapons and a carefree approach to their deployment. -- Terry Pratchett
It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong. -- Terry Pratchett
There's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre -- Terry Pratchett
I want to speak to you, Lobsang. Not to a voice in the air. A face I can punch. -- Terry Pratchett
There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were ... what was the word ... deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style. -- Terry Pratchett
The SoLid DoVes," Polly read. "Yeah, well, these ladies weren't hired for their spelling," said Jackrum, pushing open the flap of the tent of ill repute. Inside -- Terry Pratchett
Then it is about sex," said Polly flatly. "It's a folk song, it starts with 'twas,' it takes place in May, QED, it's about sex. Is a milkmaid involved? I bet she is. -- Terry Pratchett
When they're laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas. -- Terry Pratchett
Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect. -- Terry Pratchett
The money ... will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully.
'Imps,' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations. -- Terry Pratchett
Your Brain on drugs is a terrible sight, but Mr Tulip was living proof of the fact that so was Your Brain on a a cocktail of horse liniment, sherbet, and powdered water-retention pills. -- Terry Pratchett
When you're all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang. -- Terry Pratchett
Same with gorillas. Whoops, they say, sky gone all red, stars crashing to ground, what they putting in the bananas these days? -- Terry Pratchett
He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday. -- Terry Pratchett
What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up? -- Terry Pratchett
Woss the matter with you?" asked Big Ted, irritably. "Go on. Press 'D.' Elvis Presley died in 1976."
I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM. -- Terry Pratchett
This is the room where the future pours into the past via the pinch of now. -- Terry Pratchett
A guard was sitting on it, smoking a cigarette. He was black. Newt always felt guilty in the presence of black Americans, in case they blamed him for two hundred years of slave trading. -- Terry Pratchett
Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four. -- Terry Pratchett
Gentlemen, please," said the Patrician. He shook his head. "Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war. -- Terry Pratchett
The characters are the plot. What they do and say and the things that happen to them are, in a sense, what the plot is. You can't take character and plot apart from each other, really. -- Terry Pratchett
I wouldn't say I'm the best," she said, "but I can't think of anyone better, I have to say. -- Terry Pratchett
The queen appeared as innocent as one of those mountains which smoke a little, and then one day end up causing a whole civilization to become an art installation -- Terry Pratchett
My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books. -- Terry Pratchett
Have you heard the saying 'The reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel'? -- Terry Pratchett
He'd experienced the lovely warm feeling of a bad job well done. -- Terry Pratchett
Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed. -- Terry Pratchett
Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the God of Evolution beaming so happily as the cockroach stirred. -- Terry Pratchett
People aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances. -- Terry Pratchett
He said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there. -- Terry Pratchett
Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it. -- Terry Pratchett
Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynaecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall. -- Terry Pratchett
My name is immaterial,' she said.
That's a pretty name,' said Rincewind. -- Terry Pratchett
What, playing with cards?" "It's a special kind of playing," said Twoflower. "It's called - " he hesitated. Language wasn't his strong point. "In your language it's called a thing you put across a river, for example," he concluded, "I think. -- Terry Pratchett
RIGHT, he said, PESTILENCE, OPEN ANOTHER PACK OF CARDS. I'M GOING TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME, FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING OF COURSE. Rincewind grabbed Twoflower and pulled -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
No," said the shopkeeper, "not really. I always say home is where you hang your hat." "Um, no," said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. "Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is - -- Terry Pratchett
Twoflower didn't just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew
he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears. -- Terry Pratchett
Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!"
"Can't we do anything about it?"
"No!"
"Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly. -- Terry Pratchett
I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it. Then -- Terry Pratchett
But what do you want to sacrifice us for?" asked Twoflower. "You hardly know us!" "That's rather the point, isn't it? It's not very good manners to sacrifice a friend. -- Terry Pratchett
Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on as it turned a corner. -- Terry Pratchett
I bought it in a shop," said Twoflower defensively. "I said I wanted a traveling trunk." "That's what you got, all right," said Rincewind. "It's very loyal," said Twoflower. "Oh yes," agreed Rincewind. "If loyalty is what you look for in a suitcase. -- Terry Pratchett
Don't worry," said Swires. "The old witch hasn't been seen for years. They say she was done up good and proper by a couple of young tearaways." "Kids of today," commented Rincewind. "I blame the parents," said Twoflower. -- Terry Pratchett
He looked like someone who smelled like someone who lived in a mushroom, and that bothered Twoflower. -- Terry Pratchett
But if you must know, your moon here is rather more powerful than the ones around my own world."
"The moon?" said Twoflower. "I don't under-"
"If I've got to spell it out," said the troll, testily, "I'm suffering from chronic tides. -- Terry Pratchett
He'sh mad?"
"Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money."
"Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric. -- Terry Pratchett
It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. -- Terry Pratchett
The dark organ music filled the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be Cantate and Fugue for someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals. -- Terry Pratchett
I often thought that everyone has their, you know, natural age. -- Terry Pratchett
It was never easy being a witch. Oh, the broomstick was great, but to be a witch you needed to be sensible, so sensible that sometimes it hurt. You dealt with the reality - not what people wanted. -- Terry Pratchett
Several times Rincewind noticed hydrophobes - their ingrained expressions of self-revulsion at their own bodily fluids - were distinctive -- Terry Pratchett
She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for. -- Terry Pratchett
When I rule the city, the Supreme Grand Master said to himself, there is going to be none of this. I shall form a new secret society of keen-minded and intelligent men, although not too intelligent of course, not too intelligent. -- Terry Pratchett
The new day is a great big fish! -- Terry Pratchett
Oh, yes, sir. And the Soul Cake Duck. And the Sandman. And Death. -- Terry Pratchett
The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up. -- Terry Pratchett
Wanna see how creepy I can be?"
-Mr Teatime -- Terry Pratchett
Goats did have names for themselves, she well knew: there was 'goat who is my kid,' 'goat who is my mother,' 'goat who is herd leader,' and half a dozen other names not least of which was 'goat who is this goat. -- Terry Pratchett
I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer's as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer's it's the best form of Alzheimer's to have. -- Terry Pratchett
Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide. -- Terry Pratchett
People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant. -- Terry Pratchett
Death knew that to tinker with the fate of one individual could destroy the whole world. He knew this. The knowledge was built into him.
To Bill Door, he realised, it was so much horse elbows. -- Terry Pratchett
Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it were something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you. -- Terry Pratchett
She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter followed summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears of course, but they were for those who were left. Those who had gone on did not need them. -- Terry Pratchett
You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing. -- Terry Pratchett
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life. -- Terry Pratchett
You needed at least three witches for a coven. Two witches was just an argument. -- Terry Pratchett
A horse's skull always looks scary, even if someone has put lipstick on it. -- Terry Pratchett
You may be interested to know that we've just broken the sound barrier!" "All right, own up. Who broke it? -- Terry Pratchett
There is a phrase "neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring." This thing was all of them, plus some other bits of beasts unknown to science or nightmare or even kebab. There was certainly some red, and a lot of flapping, and Nutt was sure he caught a glimpse of an enormous sandal ... -- Terry Pratchett
Nutt was young and as such did not have that reverence for age that is had by, mostly, the aged. -- Terry Pratchett
10165Twelve people lievd under the Misbegot Bridge and in a life of luxury, although luxury is not hard to achieve when you define it as something to eat at least once a day and especially when you have such a broad definition of something to eat. -- Terry Pratchett
Granny Weatherwax was not a good loser. From her point of view, losing was something that happened to other people. -- Terry Pratchett
Nobby would nick anything and dodge anything, but he wasn't bad. You could trust him with your life, although you'd be daft to trust him with a dollar. -- Terry Pratchett
A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say, 'Do not do this' in the hope that it'll work, but if it doesn't, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. -- Terry Pratchett
Look out! He's got a daisy! -- Terry Pratchett
First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these ... sometimes led her to walk into doors. -- Terry Pratchett
Creatures which, lacking mankind's superior brain power, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame, and instead tried to find someone to eat. -- Terry Pratchett
Just to keep the bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death. -- Terry Pratchett
Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse. -- Terry Pratchett
The face you wear in a battlefield should be a solemn one until the time when things are cleaned up and the real world drips its way in. -- Terry Pratchett
Come on if you think you're hard enough, -- Terry Pratchett
Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do. -- Terry Pratchett
Arch, giggling women and braying young men who'd been at the back of the line when the chins were handed out. -- Terry Pratchett
One of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well, we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged, either. -- Terry Pratchett
The Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. -- Terry Pratchett
Everyone's thinking these days. I think there's a good deal too much of this thinking, that's what I think. We never thought about thinking when I was a lad. We'd never get anything done if we thought first. -- Terry Pratchett
Everywhere I look, I see something holy. -- Terry Pratchett
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated "proper financial control" with the counting of paper clips. Even senior wizards had to produce a pencil stub to him before they were allowed a new one out of the locked cupboard below his desk. -- Terry Pratchett
The day had, in fact, reached that gentle point when it was too late for housebreaking and too early for burglary. -- Terry Pratchett
Amazin'.' he said again. 'He just looks as though he's thinking, right?'
'Er ... yes.'
'But he's not actually thinking?'
'Er ... no.'
'So ... he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?'
'Er ... yes.'
Just like everyone else, then really,' said Ridcully -- Terry Pratchett
The last one had been that of his father, who'd died happy in the knowledge that his son was maintaining -- Terry Pratchett
The barricade was taking some while to dismantle. Chair legs and planks and bedsteads and doors and baulks of timber had settled into a tangled mass. Since every piece belonged to someone, and Ankh-Morpork people care about that sort of thing, it was being dismantled by collective argument. -- Terry Pratchett
A camel in distress isn't a shy creature. It doesn't hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn't phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn't mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn't know what angst is. -- Terry Pratchett
It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes. -- Terry Pratchett
I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it's so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling. -- Terry Pratchett
He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine ... -- Terry Pratchett
it seemed to Igor that trouble hit Mr. Lipwig like a big wave hitting a flotilla of ducks. Afterward, there was no wave but there was still a lot of duck. "It -- Terry Pratchett
She was never likely to say out loud, "I wish that I could marry a handsome prince," but knowing that if you did you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest, and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as best man definitely made you watch what you said. -- Terry Pratchett
You run away a lot," said one of the voices. "That is good. You are a survivor." "Survivor? I've nearly been killed dozens of times!" "Exactly. -- Terry Pratchett
From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. -- Terry Pratchett
It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying. -- Terry Pratchett
It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline. -- Terry Pratchett
The silence sucked his speech away. -- Terry Pratchett
Granny looked up at the zombie. He was - or, technically, had been - a tall, handsome man. He still was, only now he looked like someone who had walked through a room full of cobwebs.
'What's your name, dead man?' she said. -- Terry Pratchett
But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available. -- Terry Pratchett
A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course. -- Terry Pratchett
If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice. -- Terry Pratchett
Mind how ye go, hag o' hags. Ye'll be sore missed. -- Terry Pratchett
The dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there'll be another one along in a minute. -- Terry Pratchett
Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? -- Terry Pratchett
If you were away from home, you had to use a phone attached by a wire to the wall. It was terrible. -- Terry Pratchett
students, eh, you can love them or hate them, but you're not allowed to hit them with a shovel -- Terry Pratchett
You could trust numbers, except perhaps for pi, but he was working on that in his spare time and it was bound to give in sooner or later. -- Terry Pratchett
One of us says, "I don't know how to deal with this tricky bit of plot"; the other one listens and says, "The solution, Grasshopper, is in the way you state the problem. Fancy a coffee? -- Terry Pratchett
Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. -- Terry Pratchett
After all, my young Dodger, what exactly are you? A stalwart young man, plucky and brave and apparently without fear? Or, possibly, I suggest, a street urchin with a surfeit of animal cunning and the luck of Beelzebub himself. -- Terry Pratchett
And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. -- Terry Pratchett
Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu, the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene. Each was met with polite incomprehension. In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man's face split into a delighted grin. -- Terry Pratchett
Making money isn't something to be ashamed of. There's a feeling now that if you have money you must have got it by some kind of shady dealing or being an MP. -- Terry Pratchett
I'm sure the Bursar would not agree with those figures," said the Senior Wrangler sourly.
"That is so,' said Ponder, "but I'm afraid that is because he regards the decimal point as a nuisance. -- Terry Pratchett
A dichotomy,' said the Bursar helpfully. 'Oh, I don't think surgery is involved. -- Terry Pratchett
This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here. -- Terry Pratchett
Bursar?"
"Yes, Archchancellor?"
"You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?"
"Me? No, Archchancellor."
"Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head. -- Terry Pratchett
Willow bark," said the Bursar. "That's a good idea," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "It's an analgesic." "Really? Well, possibly, though it's probably better to give it to him by mouth, -- Terry Pratchett
Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters. -- Terry Pratchett
It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.* -- Terry Pratchett
In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds. -- Terry Pratchett
This is Masher,' said Feeney. 'His father was a wild boar, his mother was surprised. -- Terry Pratchett
He waited patiently until the uproar had died away. It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'. -- Terry Pratchett
his father was right about one thing, at least, when he'd said that lies could run around the world before the truth could get its boots on. And it was amazing how people wanted to believe them. -- Terry Pratchett
Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about," said the voice of Maurice. "They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them. -- Terry Pratchett
My father always said, he said, Do not peddle in the affairs of wizards ... -- Terry Pratchett
What does "worth" mean ... ? It means that you leave the world a better place than when you found it. -- Terry Pratchett
In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'. -- Terry Pratchett
And Magrat was sick all night just at the thought of it and had the dire rear. -- Terry Pratchett
The wizards chatted with the forced jolliness of people who see one another all day and are now seeing one another all evening. In -- Terry Pratchett
Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear? -- Terry Pratchett
We've never needed one before!' 'I think perhaps you have needed one, you just haven't used one, -- Terry Pratchett
Colon has always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't. -- Terry Pratchett
It's very rare that I ever go and research a particular subject. Mostly I do serendipitous research, I read stuff, things spinning out of the page. -- Terry Pratchett
That's what I learned at university: to be me, just what I am, and not worry about it. That knowledge is an invisible magical staff, all by itself. -- Terry Pratchett
She was in the middle of a city [Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.] at the time. -- Terry Pratchett
It was always cheaper to build a new 33-MegaLith circle than upgrade an old slow one. -- Terry Pratchett
But William felt in his bones that you couldn't run a city on the basis of what the Watch liked. The Watch would probably like it if everyone spent their time indoors, with their hands on the table where people could see them. -- Terry Pratchett
Well, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?
I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself! -- Terry Pratchett
Why is it all Mr. Dibbler's films are set against the background of a world gone mad?" said the dwarf. Soll's eyes narrowed. "Because Mr. Dibbler," he growled, "is a very observant man." Dibbler -- Terry Pratchett
Those who are inclined to casual cruelty say that inside a fat girl is a thin girl and a lot of chocolate. -- Terry Pratchett
Polly had been washing up when she'd heard the men talking late one night, and it's a poor woman who can't eavesdrop while making a noise at the same time. -- Terry Pratchett
I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off. -- Terry Pratchett
We're a dying race," said Kwartz sadly, as the party set off under the stars. "Young Jasper's the only pebble in our tribe. We suffer from philosophy, you know. -- Terry Pratchett
What're you doing in Ankh-Morpork territorial waters, you camel-eating devil? -- Terry Pratchett
Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted advisor. -- Terry Pratchett
One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry. -- Terry Pratchett
Tiffany read the sign and smiled. "Aha," she said. There was nothing to knock on, so she added "Knock, knock" in a louder voice. A woman's voice from within said: "Who's there?" "Tiffany," said Tiffany. "Tiffany who?" said the voice. "Tiffany who isn't trying to make a joke. -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
Nanny Ogg was about to say: What? You mean not compliant and self-effacing like what you is, Esme? But she stopped herself. You didn't juggle matches in a fireworks factory. -- Terry Pratchett
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? -- Terry Pratchett
The black dress of the average witch was usually only theoretically black. In reality, it was often rather dusty, and quite possibly patched in the vicinity of the knees and somewhat ragged at the hem and, of course, very nearly worn through by frequent washings. It was what it was: working clothes. -- Terry Pratchett
An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door? -- Terry Pratchett
There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own. -- Terry Pratchett
Having a baby is the single mos joyous co-experience that two human beings can share, and he wasn't going to miss a second of it.
He got one of the Secret Service men to videotape it for him. -- Terry Pratchett
The Luggage said nothing, but louder this time. -- Terry Pratchett
The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one. -- Terry Pratchett
Words have always had the power to change the world. -- Terry Pratchett
It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one. -- Terry Pratchett
Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything ... -- Terry Pratchett
One minute I'm just another rabbit and happy about it, next minute whazzaam, I'm thinking. That's a major drawback if you're looking for happiness as a rabbit, let me tell you. You want grass and sex, not thoughts like What's it all about, when you get right down to it? -- Terry Pratchett
That's how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits. -- Terry Pratchett
Something like a small blue supernova flared for a moment in the depths of his eyesockets. It dawned on Mort that, with some embarrassment and complete lack of expertise, Death was trying to wink. -- Terry Pratchett
Royalty pollutes people's minds, boy. honest men start bowing and bobbing just because someone's granddad was a bigger murdering bastard than theirs was. -- Terry Pratchett
Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"
Mort thought for a moment.
"No," he said eventually, "what?"
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right. -- Terry Pratchett
I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro. -- Terry Pratchett
Next comes the realist phase ("After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top."). -- Terry Pratchett
There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine. -- Terry Pratchett
It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there. -- Terry Pratchett
Don't force me to draw my own conclusions. I do have a very big pencil. -- Terry Pratchett
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. -- Terry Pratchett
The crewman told Dan his name was Bosun Higgs, and Helen didn't believe that for a second. -- Terry Pratchett
No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles]. -- Terry Pratchett
It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum. -- Terry Pratchett
Silverfish looked down.
"Oh. Are you a dwarf?"
Cuddy gave him a blank stare.
"Are you a giant?" He said.
"Me? Of course not!"
"Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes. -- Terry Pratchett
On the other side of the curtain, children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside. Books -- Terry Pratchett
Universities are truly storehouses for knowledge: students arrive from school confident they know nearly everything, and they leave five years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? In the university, of course, where it is dried and stored. -- Terry Pratchett
There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn't any better. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It -- Terry Pratchett
Fascinating, said the Patrician, and went back to not listening to Dibbler. He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. -- Terry Pratchett
It was possible to find someone, somewhere, who objected to anything. -- Terry Pratchett
And on this dirty night there were appropriately dirty deeds that not even the rain could wash away. -- Terry Pratchett
It's amazing the things that seem a good idea at the time. -- Terry Pratchett
All the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"
"Yeah," said Rincewind. " ... Luters, I expect. -- Terry Pratchett
XXI. But Arnold Bros (est. 1905) said, This is the Sign I give you:
XXII. If You Do Not See What You Require, Please Ask.
From The Book of Nome, Regulations v. XXI-XXII -- Terry Pratchett
There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people. -- Terry Pratchett
Death was hereditary.
You got it from your ancestors. -- Terry Pratchett
She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. Amazingly, she'd apparently been able to keep this a secret from people. -- Terry Pratchett
The news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of innocents everywhere. -- Terry Pratchett
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. -- Terry Pratchett
I've never really liked the Yanks ... You can't trust people who pick up the ball all the time when they play football. -- Terry Pratchett
Yo, bitch," he said. "Vot vas that?" Gaspode reconsidered his strategy. "Hi, foxy ... er ... wolf lady," he tried. -- Terry Pratchett
You worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business. -- Terry Pratchett
...except at the time you hardly knew that it was bad because you only barely knew anything at all, but all the time there was something which was just possibly the germ of hope, the knowledge and belief that one day you might be more than you were now. -- Terry Pratchett
When you read, I'm sure you don't realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don't do that. -- Terry Pratchett
News is unusual things happening - And usual things happening [ ... ] But news is mainly what someone somewhere doesn't want you to put in the paper - Except that sometimes it isn't [ ... ] News, [ ... ] all depends. But you'll know it when you see it. -- Terry Pratchett
And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up. -- Terry Pratchett
Poor light," he said. "Three bloody years at f8, if you ask me. -- Terry Pratchett
In fact,' said Wonse, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice, 'before too long, if someone comes along and tells them that a dragon king is a bad idea, they'll kill him themselves. -- Terry Pratchett
Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. -- Terry Pratchett
Magrat bought occult jewelry as a sort of distraction from being Magrat. She had three large boxes of the stuff and was still exactly the same person. -- Terry Pratchett
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged. -- Terry Pratchett