Terry Pratchett

It was all very well going about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact was that the disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

— Colour of Magic

'But it'll kill him!' 'It could have been worse.' 'What?' 'It could have been us.'

— Colour of Magic

'Where do shadows come from? That's where the wind is blowing!'

— Colour of Magic

'You're your own worst enemy, Rincewind,' said the sword. Rincewind looked up at the grinning men. 'Bet?'

— Colour of Magic

The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal His gold teeth.

— Colour of Magic

This is to say: while it was true that they had just appeared in this particular set of dimensions, it was also true that they had been living in them all along. It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.

— Colour of Magic

I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED, I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY? 'I too cannot be cheated,' snapped Fate. SO I HAVE HEARD.

— Colour of Magic

And there were all the stars, looking remarkably like powered diamonds spilled on black velvet, the stars that lured and ultimately called the boldest towards them...

— Colour of Magic

The Disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailors who get funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

— The Light Fantastic

If the laws of action and reaction had anything to do with it, it should have flopped to the ground a few feet away. But no-one was listening to them.

— The Light Fantastic

'What shall we do?' said Twoflower. 'Panic?' said Rincewind hopefully.

— The Light Fantastic

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...

— The Light Fantastic

He wasn't good or evil or cruel or extreme in any way but one, which was that he had elevated greyness to the status of a fine art and cultivated a mind that was as bleak and pitiless and logical as the slopes of Hell.

— The Light Fantastic

'On whose authority?' demanded Wert. Trymon turned his grey eyes on him. 'Mine. I need no other.'

— The Light Fantastic

It was the sort of grin people use when they stare at your left ear and tell you in an urgent tone of voice that they are being spied on by secret agents from the next galaxy. It was not a grin to inspire confidence. More horrible grins had probably been seen, but only on the sort of grinner that is orange with black stripes, has a long tail and hangs around in jungles looking for victims to grin at.

— The Light Fantastic

THE DEATH OF A WARRIOR OR THE OLD MAN OR THE LITTLE CHILD, THIS I UNDERSTAND, AND I TAKE AWAY THE PAIN AND END THE SUFFERING. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS DEATH-OF-THE-MIND.

— The Light Fantastic

'Listen,' said Rincewind. 'It's all over, do you see? You can't put the spells back in the book, you can't unsay what's been said, you can't-' 'You can try!'

— The Light Fantastic

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

— The Light Fantastic

[...] she [Esk] was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so they don't apply to you.

— Equal Rites

[...] a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.

— Equal Rites

'You're wizards!' she [Esk] screamed. 'Bloody well wizz!'

— Equal Rites

the nasty little sound of a sword being unsheathed right behind one at just the point when one thought one had disposed of one's enemies [...] It was that kind of laugh.

— Equal Rites

Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals.

— Mort

'Does he have people put to death?' said Mort. SOMETIMES. THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU HAVE TO DO, WHEN YOU'RE A KING.

— Mort

He felt as if he'd been shipwrecked on the Titanic but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania.

— Mort

History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it.

— Mort

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns on it.

— Mort

'Everything will be all right. From History's point of view, that is. There really isn't any other.'

— Mort

'Pardon me for living, I'm sure.' NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.

— Mort

'You know the worst of it?' said Rincewind. 'Oook?' 'I don't even remember walking under a mirror.'

— Mort

He remembered the knowledge. He remembered feeling his mind as cold as ice and limitless as the night sky. He remembered being summoned into reluctant existence at the moment the first creature lived, in the certain knowledge that he would outlive life until the last being in the universe passed to its reward, when it would be his job, figuratively speaking, to put the chairs on the tables and turn all the lights off. He remembered the loneliness.

— Mort

NO. I CANNOT BE BIDDEN. I CANNOT BE FORCED. I WILL DO ONLY THAT WHICH I KNOW TO BE RIGHT.

— Mort

SOURCERERS MAKE THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY.

— Sourcery

NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE. SUCH TINKERING WITH DESTINY COULD MEAN THE DOWNFALL OF THE WORLD. THERE MUST BE A CHANCE, HOWEVER SMALL. THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY PROPHECY.

— Sourcery

The Drum jealously guarded its reputation as the most stylishly disreputable tavern in Ankh-Morpork and the big troll that now guarded the door carefully vetted customers for suitability in the way of black cloaks, glowing eyes, magic swords and so forth. Rincewind never found out what he did to the failures. Perhaps he ate them.

— Sourcery

'Why?' he [Rincewind] said. The world is going to end. 'What, again?'

— Sourcery

'What good is a candle at noonday?'

— Sourcery

The point about being killed by magic was that it was much more inventive than, say, steel; there were all sorts of interesting new ways to die, and he couldn't put out of his mind the shapes he'd seen, just for an instant, before the wash of octarine fire had mercifully engulfed them.

— Sourcery

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than soap, and much more difficult to find...

— Sourcery

'Nothing works against magic. Except stronger magic. And then the only thing that beats stronger magic is even stronger magic. And the next thing you know...' 'Phooey?'

— Sourcery

He [Rincewind] wondered how old the tower really was. Older than the University, certainly. Older than the city, which had formed about it like scree around a mountain. Maybe older than geography.

— Sourcery

'The gods,' he said. 'Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.'

— Sourcery

'It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.'

— Sourcery

'Is it heroic to die like this?' said Conina. 'I think it is,' he said, 'and when it comes to dying, there's only one opinion that matters.'

— Sourcery

Silence filled the University in the same way that air fills a hole. Night spread across the Disk like plum jam, or possibly blackberry preserve. But there would be a morning. There would always be another morning.

— Sourcery

It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religions is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

— Wyrd Sisters

On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of course. But mostly evil deeds.

— Wyrd Sisters

'Why don't I feel angry?' GLANDS, said Death shortly. ADRENALIN AND SO FORTH. AND EMOTIONS. YOU DON'T HAVE THEM. ALL YOU HAVE NOW IS THOUGHT.

— Wyrd Sisters

Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn't like its expression at all.

— Wyrd Sisters

Matters in hand. He'd put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He'd been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He'd tried to wash the blood off his hands. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn't have happened. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed till he screamed.

— Wyrd Sisters

'What ho, b'zugda-hiara.' (Footnote: A killing insult in Dwarfish. It means 'Lawn ornament'.)

— Wyrd Sisters

'I know my rights [...] Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and spunt. And acornage, every other year, and the right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common.'

— Wyrd Sisters

This man was clearly mad, but at the heart of his madness was a cold, dreadful sanity, a core of pure interstellar ice in the centre of the furnace. She'd thought him weak under a thin shell of strength, but it went a lot further than that. 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.

— Wyrd Sisters

Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.

— Wyrd Sisters

Footnote: The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

— Wyrd Sisters

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way around.

— Wyrd Sisters

'Witches just aren't like that,' said Magrat. 'We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.'

— Wyrd Sisters

'I cannot! He has been kindness itself to me!' 'And you can be Death itself to him.'

— Wyrd Sisters

The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. Footnote: Never trust a species that grins all the time. It's up to something.

— Pyramids

You Bastard was thinking: ...Delta squared. Thus, dimensional pressure k will result in a ninety-degree transformation in Chi(16/x/pu)t for a K-bundle of any three invariables. Or four minutes, plus or minus ten seconds... The camel looked down at the great pads of his feet. Let speed equal gallop.

— Pyramids

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

— Pyramids

'The trouble with my friend here is that he doesn't know the difference between a postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.'

— Pyramids

'What can I do? I'm only human,' he said aloud. Someone said, Not all of you.

— Pyramids

Chefet, Chefet, thought Dios. Maker of rings, weaver of metal. Now he's out of our heads, and see how his nails grow into claws...

— Pyramids

Everything that was magical was just a way of describing the world in words it couldn't ignore.

— Pyramids

'I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.' Screams, flames, people running for safety...

— Pyramids

'They were myths and they were real,' he said loudly. 'Both a wave and a particle.'

— Guards! Guards!

Thunder rolled... It is said that the gods play games with the fates of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are - who knows? Best not to speculate. Thunder rolled... It rolled a six.

— Guards! Guards!

Of course, there were various groups seeking his overthrow, and this was right and proper and the sign of a vigorous and healthy society. No-one could call him unreasonable about the matter. Why, hadn't he founded most of them himself? And what was so beautiful was the way they spent nearly all their time bickering with one another. Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvellous thing. Once you understood where its levers were.

— Guards! Guards!

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.

— Guards! Guards!

Knowledge equals power... (...) Power equals energy... People were stupid, sometimes. They thought 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. Energy equals matter... (...) Matter equals mass. And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-Space.

— Guards! Guards!

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

— Guards! Guards!

'You have the right to remain silent,' he [Carrot] said. 'You have the right not to injure yourself falling down the steps on the way to the cells. You have the right not to jump out of high windows. You do not have to say anything, you see, but anything you do say, well, I have to take it down and it might be used as evidence.'

— Guards! Guards!

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape - the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes - we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

— Guards! Guards!

'I warn you, dragon, the human spirit is-' They never found out what it was, or at least what he thought it was, although possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.

— Guards! Guards!

'Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself,' said the Patrician (...). 'The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.'

— Guards! Guards!

'Never trust a ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn't in the job.'

— Guards! Guards!

But of course there were the rules. Everyone knew there were rules. They just had to hope like Hell that the gods knew the rules, too.

— Guards! Guards!

He [Vimes]'d never felt really at home with swords, but a cleaver was a different matter. A cleaver had weight. It had purpose. A sword might have a certain nobility about it, unless it was the one belonging for example to Nobby, which relied on rust to hold it together, but what a cleaver had was a tremendous ability to cut things up.

— Guards! Guards!

'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,' said the man [Vetinari]. 'You are wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'

— Guards! Guards!

IT WOULD BE A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE, said Death. EXACTLY A MILLION TO ONE CHANCE. 'Oh,' said the Bursar, intensely relieved. 'Oh dear. What a shame.'

— Eric

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 between terrorists and freedom fighters.

— Eric

'There's something not right about this,' said Rincewind. 'What's that?' said the parrot. 'Everything.'

— Eric

Forever was over. All the sands had fallen. The great race between entropy and energy had been run, and the favourite had been the winner after all. Perhaps he ought to sharpen the blade again? No. Not much point, really.

— Eric

'It's always a good thing to let a few tales spread, you know. Pour encouragy le-poor encoura-to make everyone sit up and damn well take notice.'

— Eric

Reality is a curve. That's not the problem. The problem is that there isn't as much as there should be. According to some of the more mystical texts in the stacks of the library of Unseen University - (...) - at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things.

— Moving Pictures

'You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?' said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. 'It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never born in a time when it is possible to find out.'

— Moving Pictures

'How come you know all that stuff?' 'I ain't just a pretty face.' 'You aren't even a pretty face, Gaspode.'

— Moving Pictures

Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way to the pommel.

— Moving Pictures

'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.'

— Moving Pictures

'You don't think you've had enough, do you?' he said. I KNOW WHEN I'VE HAD ENOUGH. 'Everyone says that, though. I KNOW WHEN EVERYONE'S HAD ENOUGH.

— Moving Pictures

What was it they said about gods? They wouldn't exist if there weren't people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people's heads.

— Moving Pictures

'There has to be enough light,' he panted, 'to see the darkness.'

— Moving Pictures

THERE'S JUST ME, said Death. THE FINAL FRONTIER.

— Moving Pictures

Something wonderful, if you took the log view, was about to happen. If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to happen. It's like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It's the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly.

— Reaper Man

If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork the Shades would be represented by a shaft. In fact the Shades was remarkably like the aforesaid well-known astrological phenomenon: it had a certain strong attraction, no light escaped from it, and it could indeed become a gateway to another world. The next one.

— Reaper Man

'What is this thing, anyway?' said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. 'It's called a shovel', said the Senior Wrangler. 'I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.'

— Reaper Man

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

— Reaper Man

(...) IT IS NOT YET MIDNIGHT? 'I shouldn't think it's more than a quarter past eleven.' THEN WE HAVE THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR 'How can you be sure?' BECAUSE OF DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH.. THE KIND OF DEATH WHO POSES AGAINST THE SKYLINE AND GETS LIT UP BY LIGHTNING FLASHES, said Bill Door, disapprovingly, DOESN'T TURN UP AT FIVE-AND-TWENTY PAST ELEVEN IF HE CAN POSSIBLY TURN UP AT MIDNIGHT.

— Reaper Man

Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

— Reaper Man

'There's Mr Dibbler.' 'What's he selling this time?' 'I don't think he's trying to sell anything, Mr Poons.' 'It's that bad? Then we're probably in lots of trouble.'

— Reaper Man

The reaper does not listen to the harvest.

— Reaper Man

The new Death raised his cowl. There was no face there. There was not even a skull. Smoke curled formlessly between the robe and a golden crown. Bill Door raised himself on his elbows. A CROWN? His voice shook with rage. I NEVER WORE A CROWN! You never wanted to rule.

— Reaper Man

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

— Reaper Man

LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE... THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US. ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END ONE DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

— Reaper Man

Mirrors contain infinity. Infinity contains more things than you think. Everything, for a start. Including hunger. Because there's a million billion images, but only one soul to go around.

— Witches Abroad

Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.

— Witches Abroad

'And stars don't care what you wish, and magic don't make things better, and no-one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a fire.'

— Witches Abroad

In Genua, stories came to life. In Genua, someone set out to make dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams?

— Witches Abroad

The wages of sin is death, but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

— Witches Abroad

She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human.

— Witches Abroad

The trouble with witches is that they'll never run away from things they really hate. And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them's a mongoose.

— Witches Abroad

[...] what was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness. But half-way between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge... maybe then a witch could believe in the moon.

— Witches Abroad

'Good and bad is tricky, she [Esme] said. 'I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face.'

— Witches Abroad

For a very few, the sky's the limit. And, sometimes, not even that.

— Small Gods

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

— Small Gods

When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.

— Small Gods

'Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha. 'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.

— Small Gods

[...] the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and have to be led.

— Small Gods

'Winners never talk about glorious victories. That's because they're the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterwards. It's only the losers who have glorious victories.'

— Small Gods

'We get that in here some nights, when someone's had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether the gods exist. Next thing, there's a bolt of lightning through the door with a note wrapped round it saying, "Yes, we do" and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out.'

— Small Gods

'Life's like a beach. And then you die.'

— Small Gods

'We'll never make it alive!' CORRECT.

— Small Gods

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

— Small Gods

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

— Small Gods

'I think, if you want thousands, you've got to fight for one.'

— Small Gods

Stone circles were common enough everywhere in the mountains. Druids built them as weather computers, and since it was always cheaper to build a new 33-Megalith circle than to upgrade an old slow one, there were generally plenty of ancient ones around

— Lords and Ladies

...And sometimes there's a short cut. A door or a gate. Some standing stones. A tree cleft by lightning, a filing cabinet. Maybe just a spot onsome moorland somewhere... A place where THERE is very nearly HERE... If some people knew where such a spot was, if they had experience of what happens when here and there become entangled, then they might - if they knew how - mark such a spot with certain stones. In the hope that enough daft buggers would take it as awarning and keep away.

— Lords and Ladies

There used to be such simple directions, back in the days before they invented parallel universes - Up and Down, Right and Left, Backward and Forward, Past and Future... But normal directions don't work in the multiverse, which has far too many dimensions for anyone to find their way. So new ones have to be invented so that the way can be found. Like: East of the Sun, West of the Moon Or: Behind the North Wind. Or: At the Back of Beyond. Or: There and Back Again. Or: Beyond the Fields We Know.

— Lords and Ladies

'You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!'

— Lords and Ladies

The universe doesn't much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don't make any effort to catch them.

— Lords and Ladies

This wasn't a proper land. The sky was blue, not flaming with all the colours of the aurora. And time was passing. To a creature not born subject to time, it was a sensation not unakin to falling.

— Lords and Ladies

Footnote on the High Energy Magic building: It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of resons (lit: 'Thing-ies) or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.

— Lords and Ladies

(...) people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colourful, if you liked the colour of blood.

— Lords and Ladies

We only remembers that the elves sang. We forgets what it was they were singing about.

— Lords and Ladies

'The only reason we're still alive now is that we're more fun alive than dead,' said Granny's voice behind her.

— Lords and Ladies

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

— Lords and Ladies

'I don't like to ask them questions.' 'Why not?' 'They might give me answers. And then what would I do?'

— Lords and Ladies

'Oook?' 'I like to listen to a man who likes to talk! Whoops! Sawdust and treacle! Put that in your herring and smoke it!' 'I don't think he wants one,' said Ponder.

— Lords and Ladies

The cat turned and tried to find a place of safety in the suit's breastplate. He was beginning to doubt he'd make it through the knight.

— Lords and Ladies

Up the airy mountains, down the rushy glen... From ghosties and bogles and long-leggity beasties... My mother said I never should... We dare not go a-hunting for fear... And things that go bump... Play with the fairies in the wood...

— Lords and Ladies

'But look,' said Ponder, 'the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely.' 'Ook.' 'What did he say?' said the Bursar. 'I think he said, "Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody".'

— Lords and Ladies

Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.

— Lords and Ladies

'You make us want what we can't have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves.'

— Lords and Ladies

He [Edward d'Eath] could think in italics. Such people needed watching. Preferably from a safe distance.

— Men at Arms

'Sometimes there has to be a civil war, and sometimes, afterwards, it's best to pretend something didn't happen. Sometimes people have to do a job, and then they have to be forgotten.'

— Men at Arms

'There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad.' Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror. 'Gosh.'

— Men at Arms

'I thought dwarfs didn't believe in devils and demons and stuff like that.' 'That's true, but... we're not sure if they know.'

— Men at Arms

I'm on the path, he thought. I don't have to know where it leads. I just have to follow.

— Men at Arms

'There's a limit to the power of a spring, no matter how tightly one winds it.' 'Oh, yes. Yes. And you hope that if you wind a spring one way, all its energies will unwind the other way. And sometimes you have to wind the spring as tight as it will go,' said Vetinari,' and pray it doesn't break.'

— Men at Arms

'Where's the gritsucker? And the rock?' 'Ah,' said Vimes, 'you are referring to those representative members of our fellow sapient races who have chosen to throw in their lots with the people of this city?' 'I mean the dwarf and the troll,' said Quirke.

— Men at Arms

'I'll see you all tomorrow. If there is one.'

— Men at Arms

He glanced cautiously at the dancing shapes, which made weird and worrying shapes on the far wall - strange biped animals, eldritch underground things... Carrot sighed. 'Stop making shadow pictures, Detritus.'

— Men at Arms

He [Carrot] could lead armies, Angua thought. He really could. Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone's really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made an effort, and he believes that strongly it burns like a flame that is bigger than he is.

— Men at Arms

'An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two.'

— Men at Arms

'He's mad, isn't he?' 'No, mad's when you froth at the mouth,' said Gaspode. ' He's insane. That's when you froth at the brain.'

— Men at Arms

Personal isn't the same as important. What sort of person could think like that? And it dawned on him that while Ankh in the past had had its share of evil rulers, and simply bad rulers, it had never yet come under the heel of a good ruler. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all.

— Men at Arms

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening. Or what, for that matter.

— Soul Music

'And I suppose you know what sound is made by one hand clapping, do you?' said the holy man nastily. YES. CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP.

— Soul Music

'I'm a raven, aren't I?' it said. 'One of the few birds who speak. The first thing people say is, oh, you're a raven, go on, say the N word... If I had a penny for every time that's happened, I'd-'

— Soul Music

This was music that had not only escaped but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver. It was music that went down to the feet by way of the pelvis without paying a call on Mr. Brain.

— Soul Music

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

— Soul Music

TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD. I REMEMBER THAT. SO SHOULD YOU. Death still hadn't turned to face her. 'I don't see why we shouldn't change things if it makes the world better,' said Susan. HAH. 'Are you too scared to change the world?' Death turned. The very sight of his expression made Susan back away. He advanced slowly towards her. His voice, when it came, was a hiss. YOU SAY THAT TO ME? YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR PRETTY DRESS AND SAY THAT TO ME? YOU? YOU PRATTLE ON ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD? COULD YOU FIND THE COURAGE TO ACCEPT IT? TO KNOW WHAT MUST BE DONE AND DO IT, WHATEVER THE COST? IS THERE ONE HUMAN BEING ANYWHERE WHO KNOWS WHAT DUTY MEANS?

— Soul Music

'(...) And the Patrician has been ironical at me,' said Mr. Clete. 'I'm not having that again.'

— Soul Music

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

— Soul Music

'Who's that playing now, Mr. Dibbler?' '"And you".' 'Sorry, Mr. Dibbler?' 'Only they write it &U,' said Dibbler.

— Soul Music

It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.

— Soul Music

Never age. Never die. Live for ever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky. You will never grow old. They will never say you died.

— Soul Music

You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no , it has to be that way. Let me tell you how it has to be. This is how the legend goes.

— Soul Music

SOME SHADOWS ARE SO LONG, THEY ARRIVE BEFORE THE LIGHT.

— Soul Music

According to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.

— Interesting Times

He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

— Interesting Times

'They're the cream!' Rincewind sighed. 'Cohen, they're the cheese.'

— Interesting Times

'Luck is my middle name,' said Rincewind, indistinctly. 'Mind you, my first name is Bad.'

— Interesting Times

'Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavour!'

— Interesting Times

'It's a lovely morning, lads,' he said. 'I feel like a million dollars. Don't you?' There was a murmur of reluctant agreement. 'Good,' said Cohen. 'Let's go and get some.'

— Interesting Times

'I'll tell you this!' shouted Rincewind. 'I'd rather trust me than history! Oh, shit, did I just say that?'

— Interesting Times

'Pcharn'kov!' Footnote: 'Your feet shall be cut off and be buried several yards from your body so your ghost won't walk.'

— Interesting Times

'They say that whoever pays the piper calls the tune.' 'But, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy, 'whoever holds a knife to the piper's throat writes the symphony.'

— Interesting Times

'It must have been Fate that brought you here,' said Twoflower. 'Yes, it's the sort of thing he likes to do,' said Rincewind.

— Interesting Times

'Have you lost your senses?' 'Yes, but I may have found some better ones.'

— Interesting Times

'I don't see why everyone depends on me. I'm not dependable. Even I don't depend on me, and I'm me.'

— Interesting Times

'If you sow dragons' teeth, you should get dragons. Not fighting skeletons. What did it say on the packet?' 'I don't know! The myth never said anything about them coming in a packet!' 'Should have said "Comes up Dragons" on the packet.'

— Interesting Times

'I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our brains.' 'Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains.' 'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle. 'There's got to be a better way than fighting,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work.'

— Interesting Times

'You know me,' said Rincewind. 'Just when I'm getting a grip on something Fate comes along and jumps on my fingers.'

— Interesting Times

'Oh, I never play to win.' She smiled. 'But I do play not to lose.'

— Interesting Times

'Now what?' it said. IT'S UP TO YOU. IT'S ALWAYS UP TO YOU.

— Maskerade

Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely The Opera Ghost

— Maskerade

FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT IS VERY HIGH. Death looked down at his cards, and then up into Granny's steady, blue-eyed gaze. Neither moved for some time. Then Death laid the hand on the table. I LOSE, he said. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES.

— Maskerade

It was where the city kept all those things it occasionally needed but was uneasy about, like the Watch-house, the theatres, the prison and the publishers. It was the place for all those things which might go off bang in unexpected ways.

— Maskerade

Looking into Granny's eyes was like looking into a mirror. What you saw looking back at you was yourself, and there was no hiding place.

— Maskerade

...he'd moved like music, like someone dancing to a rhythm inside his head. And his face for a moment in the moonlight was the skull of an angel...

— Maskerade

'It's still a lie. Like the lie about masks.' 'What lie about masks?' 'The way people say they hide faces.' 'They do hide faces,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Only the one on the outside.'

— Maskerade

'What's the first thing you'd take out of a burning house?' 'I reckon I'd take Greebo. 'Cos that shows I've got a warm and considerate nature.' - Gytha "Nanny" Ogg, a witch 'What would you like me to take, madam?' - Mr Salzella, a... no, I won't! 'The fire.' - Walter Plinge 'Who set fire to it?' - an undercover policeman

— Maskerade

'It's easy to hold everything in common when no one's got anything.'

— Maskerade

'But you ain't part of it, are you?' said Granny conversationally. 'You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?'

— Maskerade

People who would not believe a High Priest if he said the sky was blue, and was able to produce signed affidavits to this effect from his white-haired old mother and three Vestal virgins, would trust just about anything whispered darkly behind their hand by a complete stranger.

— Maskerade

'There's a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness. I bet you could do just what you liked, behind a mask...?'

— Maskerade

'Oh, them as makes the endings don't get them,' said Granny.

— Maskerade

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

— Feet of Clay

Slab: Jus' say 'AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH'.

— Feet of Clay

Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate...

— Feet of Clay

It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the real effort.

— Feet of Clay

'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.'

— Feet of Clay

Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

— Feet of Clay

History had wanted surgery. Sometimes Dr Chopper is the only surgeon to hand. There's something final about an axe.

— Feet of Clay

'In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the old Lies.'

— Feet of Clay

No one heard the cry that came back from the dead skull, because there was no mouth to utter it and not even a mind to guide it, but it screamed out into the night: CLAY OF MY CLAY, THOU SHALT NOT KILL! THOU SHALT NOT DIE!

— Feet of Clay

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.

— Feet of Clay

'They've given us the answers,' he [Carrot] said. 'Perhaps we can find out what the questions should have been.'

— Feet of Clay

'Vetinari isn't mad.' 'Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.'

— Feet of Clay

'I like the sound of that,' said Mrs Palm. 'I like the echoes,' said Dr Downey.

— Feet of Clay

A lot of people and the smell of sausages meant a performance of the street theatre that was life in Ankh-Morpork.

— Feet of Clay

"He raised his hammer defiantly and opened his mouth to say, "Oh, yeah?" but stopped, because just by his ear he heard a growl. It was quite low and soft, but it had a complex little waveform which went straight down into a little knobbly bit in his spinal column where it pressed an ancient button marked Primal Terror."

— Feet of Clay

You couldn't say, 'I had orders.' You couldn't say, 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. ... Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not.

— Feet of Clay

'It's time to-' 'Prod buttock, sir?' said Carrot, hurriedly. 'Close,' said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, 'but no cigar.'

— Feet of Clay

'Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!'

— Feet of Clay

WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN

— Feet of Clay

'That's blasphemy,' said the vampire. He gasped as Vimes shot him a glance like sunlight. 'That's what people say when the voiceless speak.'

— Feet of Clay

'Tell me, sir Samuel, do you know the phrase "Quis custodiet isos custodes?"? (...) It means "Who guards the guards themselves?" (...) Who watches the Watch?'

— Feet of Clay

'Somewhere, A Crime Is Happening,' said Dorfl.

— Feet of Clay

Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.

— Hogfather

The omnipotent eyesight of various supernatural entities is often remarked upon. It is said that they can see the fall of every sparrow. And this may be true. But there is only one who is always there when it hits the ground.

— Hogfather

'Never say die, master. That's our motto, eh?' I CAN'T SAY IT'S EVER REALLY BEEN MINE.

— Hogfather

It wasn't that her [Susan's] parents didn't believe in such things. They didn't need to believe in them. They knew they existed. They just wished they didn't.

— Hogfather

'Yeah, well, I didn't sign up for world domination,' said Medium Dave. 'That sort of thing gets you into trouble.'

— Hogfather

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

— Hogfather

'Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get.'

— Hogfather

You only had to look into Teatime's mismatched eyes to know one thing, which was this: if Teatime wanted to find you he would not look everywhere. He'd look in only one place, which would be the place where you were hiding.

— Hogfather

AUDITORS OF REALITY. THEY THINK OF LIFE AS A STAIN ON THE UNIVERSE. A PESTILENCE. MESSY. GETTING IN THE WAY. 'In the way of what?' THE EFFICIENT RUNNING OF THE UNIVERSE.

— Hogfather

'I'm not a thief, madam. But if I were, I would be the kind that steals fire from the gods.' 'We've already got fire.' 'There must be an upgrade by now.'

— Hogfather

Worlds of belief, she [Susan] thought. Just like oysters. A little piece of shit gets in and then a pearl grows around it.

— Hogfather

' I really should talk to him, sir. He's had a near-death experience!' 'We all do. It's called living.'

— Hogfather

YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

— Hogfather

'Why are our people going out there?' said Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild. 'Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and... additional wealth in a new land,' said Lord Vetinari. 'What's in it for the Klatchians?' said Lord Downey. 'Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing,' said Lord Vetinari. [...] The Patrician looked down again at his notes. 'Oh, I do beg your pardon,' he said. 'I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order.

— Jingo

'Can't argue with the truth, sir.' 'In my experience, Vimes, you can argue with anything.'

— Jingo

'Detectoring is like gambling,' said Vimes, putting down the clove. 'The secret is to know the winner in advance.'

— Jingo

'And trust no-- Trust practically no-one. All right? Except trustworthy people.'

— Jingo

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

— Jingo

'I'm just going to kick some arse dear' 'Oh, good. Just be sure you wrap up well, then.'

— Jingo

'My strength is like the strength of ten because my heart is pure,' said Carrot. 'Really? Well, there's eleven of them.'

— Jingo

Someone's behind this. Someone wants to see a war. [...] I've got to remember that. This isn't a war. This is a crime.

— Jingo

'It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country,' he read. 'This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.'

— Jingo

'We'll all be killed.' 'Think of it as the lesser of two evils.' 'What's the other one?' Vimes drew his sword. 'Me.'

— Jingo

The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not.

— Jingo

'And I promise you this,' he [Carrot] shouted, 'if we succeed, no-one will remember. And if we fail, no one will forget!'

— Jingo

'A man like that could inspire a handful of broken men to conquer a country.' 'Fine. Just so long as he does it on his day off.'

— Jingo

All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.

— The Last Continent

Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the champion with a thousand faces. He'd refrained from commenting.

— The Last Continent

'When you've been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you'll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition, it's best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.'

— The Last Continent

There are many reasons for being friends with someone. The fact that he's pointing a deadly weapon at you is among the top four.

— The Last Continent

'Begone From This Place Or I Will Smite Thee!' he [the god] commanded. 'Why?'

— The Last Continent

Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.

— The Last Continent

When treading water in a circle of sharks, a wizard will always consider other wizards to be the most immediate danger.

— The Last Continent

One of the most basic rules of survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.

— The Last Continent

The ability to ask question like 'Where am I and who is the "I" that is asking?' is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.

— The Last Continent

Supposing there was justice for all, after all? For every unheeded beggar, every harsh word, every neglected duty, every slight... every choice... Because that was the point, wasn't it? You had to choose. You might be right, you might be wrong, but you had to choose, knowing that the rightness or wrongness might never be clear or even that you were deciding between two sorts of wrong, that there was no right anywhere. And always, always, you did it by yourself. You were the one there, on the edge, watching and listening. Never any tears, never any apology, never any regrets... You saved all that up in a way that could be used when needed.

— Carpe Jugulum

She'd always tried to face towards the light. She'd always tried to face towards the light. But the harder you stared into the brightness the harsher it burned into you until, at last, the temptation picked you up and bid you turn around to see how long, rich, strong and dark, streaming away behind you, your shadow had become-

— Carpe Jugulum

Vampires are [...] by nature as co-operative as sharks. Vampyres are just the same, the only real difference being that they can't spell properly.

— Carpe Jugulum

'People need vampires,' she [Granny] said. 'They helps 'em remember what stakes and garlic are for.'

— Carpe Jugulum

'Ah... I see that the new traffic division is having the desired effect.' He indicated a large pile of paper. 'I am getting any amount of complaints from the Carters' and Drovers' Guild. Well done. Do pass on my thanks to sergeant Colin and his team.' 'I will, sir.' 'I see in one day they clamped seventeen carts, ten horses, eighteen oxen and one duck.' 'It was parked illegally, sir.'

— The Fifth Elephant

He was Igor, son of Igor, nephew of several Igors, brother of Igors and cousin of more Igors than he could remember without checking up in his diary. Igors did not change a winning formula. {Footnote: Especially if it was green, and bubbled.}

— The Fifth Elephant

Knowledge, information, power, words... fluing through the air, invisible... And suddenly the world was tap-dancing on quicksand. In that case, the prize went to the best dancer.

— The Fifth Elephant

What would be the point of cyphering messages that ery clever enemies couldn't break? You'd end up not knowing what they thought you thought they were thinking...

— The Fifth Elephant

All Hell hadn't been let loose. It was merely Detritus. But from a few feet away you couldn't tell the difference.

— The Fifth Elephant

'They come back to the mountains to die,' said the King. 'They live in Ankh-Morpork.'

— The Fifth Elephant

'Are you Death?' IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.

— The Fifth Elephant

IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINITY PRINCIPLE. 'What's that?' I'M NOT SURE.

— The Fifth Elephant

ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS 'DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION'? 'But I don't usually see you!'

— The Fifth Elephant

The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb.

— The Fifth Elephant

If you [Carrot] were dice, you'd always roll sixes. And the dice don't roll themselves. If it wasn't against everything he wanted to be true about the world, Vimes might just then have believed in destiny controlling people. And gods help the other people who were around when a big destiny was alive in the world, bending every poor bugger around itself...

— The Fifth Elephant

It was not, it could not be real. But in the roaring air he knew that it was, for all who needed to believe, and in a belief so strong that truth was not the same as fact... he knew that for now, and yesterday, and tomorrow, both the thing, and the whole of the thing.

— The Fifth Elephant

All he [Vimes] knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.

— The Fifth Elephant

The world is made of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Suprise.

— The Truth

Good old Dame Fortune. You can _depend_ on her.

— The Truth

'Do you know what they call a sausage-in-a-bun in Quirm?' 'No?' said Mr Tulip 'They called it le sausage-in-le-bun.' 'What, in a --ing foreign language? You're --ing kidding!'

— The Truth

"A thousand years ago we thought the world was a bowl. Five hundred years ago we knew it was a globe. Today we know it is flat and round carried through space on the back of a turtle. Don't you wonder what shape it will turn out to be tomorrow?" [Lord Vetinari]

— The Truth

WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of potato. SQUEAK, he said. Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY *ME*, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.

— The Truth

Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent of the inspector with a clipboard. It is unaccounted for because it is doing the accounting for the rest of it. Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.

— The Thief of Time

They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell. And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn't have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.

— The Thief of Time

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.

An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment when boundary conditions apply - between life and death, light and dark, good and evil and, most dangerously of all, today and tomorrow.

— The Thief of Time

Here are people who know that there is no steel, only the idea of steel. Footnote: But they still use forks, or, at least, the idea of forks. There may, as the philosopher says, be no spoon, although this begs the question of why there is the idea of soup.

— The Thief of Time

'Things either exist or they don't,' said Jeremy. 'I am very clear about that. I have medicine.'

— The Thief of Time

'Dojo! What is Rule One?' Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus: 'Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!'

— The Thief of Time

In the words of one of the founding Igors: 'We belong dead? Ecthcuthe me? Where doeth it thay "we"?'

— The Thief of Time

The Auditors avoided death by never going so far as to get a life

— The Thief of Time

'Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questiona and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?' Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: 'A fish!' And Clodpool went away, satisfied.

— The Thief of Time

Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthsiastic amateur who'd never looked at a real sunset. This was one of those sunrises. It was the kind of sunrise a man looks at and says, 'No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink.' Nevertheless, it was beautiful.

— The Thief of Time

I have seen galaxies die. I have watched atoms dance. But until I had the dark behind the eyes, I didn't know the death from the dance.

— The Thief of Time

Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness. If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella.

— CIX Pratchett Conference

The calender of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

— Wyrd Sisters

Until an unfortunate axe incident, Gloria had been captain of the school basketball team.

— Soul Music

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.

— Interesting Times

If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"

— Men at Arms

From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.

— Men at Arms

The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.

— Soul Music

"Scum," said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, "you've bought a leopard, haven't you?"

— Soul Music

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."

— Soul Music

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.

— Men at Arms

After the stampede the artist Three Solid Frogs got to his feet, retrieved his brush from his nostril, pulled his easel out of a tree, and tried to think placid thoughts.

— Interesting Times

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

— Men at Arms

A true beanie should have a propellor on the top.

— alt.fan.pratchett

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

— Interesting Times

++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.

— Interesting Times

"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad."

— Interesting Times

Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in life?" very quickly lacked both.

— Interesting Times

"Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum."

— Interesting Times

The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one.

— Interesting Times

"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 one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!"

— Rincewind gives a speech on politics., Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh."

— Magic armour is not all it's cracked up to be., Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human.

— Men at Arms

"Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact."

— Lord Rust describing Edward d'Eath, Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.

— Men at Arms

He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it.

— The Life and Times of Corporal Nobbs, Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage."

— Gaspode, of course, Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.

— Men at Arms

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.

— Men at Arms

Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.

— Men at Arms

The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension.

— Men at Arms

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

— Men at Arms

Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.

— Men at Arms

The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard.

— Men at Arms

"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them."

— The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson, Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

- BIG FIDO? - "Yes?" - HEEL.

— Men at Arms

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.

— Soul Music

The question seldom addressed is *where* Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.

— Soul Music

People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too.

— Soul Music

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants *really quickly*.

— Soul Music

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

— Soul Music

SNH, SNH, SNH.

— Soul Music

Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian's hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery.

— Soul Music

They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.

— Soul Music

The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species 'female' but have never expected to get this close to one.

— Soul Music

"I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way, Yo!"

— Soul Music

The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn't work, however, got broken.

— Soul Music

"What duck?"

— Soul Music

There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks.

— Soul Music

"Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say."

— Soul Music

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and *I'm* me.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get *angry* when they lose a cow.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I have to admit that I drive past Bridgwater quite regularly. And fast.

— alt.fan.pratchett

What you have here is an example of that well known phenomenon, A Bookshop Assistance Who Knows Buggerall But Won't Admit It (probably some kind of arts graduate).

— alt.fan.pratchett

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

— alt.fan.pratchett

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remainds perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

— alt.fan.pratchett

"Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs."

— Susan, the ultimate sensible governess, Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

— Hogfather

In Reading [England] there is this thing called the IDR, short for "Inner Distribution Road", which is bureaucratese for "Big thing that cost a lot of money and relieves traffic problems, provided all your traffic wants to orbit the town centre permanently". It's a 2-3 lane dual carriageway that goes round the town centre. It has lots of roundabouts, an overhead section, a couple of spare motorway-like exits (that's British motorways -- y'know, the roundabout with the main road going under it), and a thing called the Watlington Street Gyratory, where you have to get in lane for your intended destination about three years and two corners before you get there *with no signposting*. I used to cycle along it every day to get to school, before I fell off at 35 mph. [Kids! Don't try this at home!] I know it well. I believe it is impossible to leave Reading heading west.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

— alt.fan.pratchett

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

— Hogfather

That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"

— alt.fan.pratchett

"Out of Print" is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged".

— alt.fan.pratchett

- "DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY IT FOR FUN?" - "Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I'm only an amateur, I'm afraid" - "BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS!"

— The joys of bridge, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as "slightly foxed", although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had beed badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

— Ah, but has it been hedgehogged?, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overhelming majority of citizens. [footnote: The overhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit]

— Sourcery

There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life. "Erm," he said, "excuse me..."

— Sourcery

"Bingeley bingeley beep!"

— Feet of Clay

"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"

— Guards! Guards!

Bigmac wasn't an athlete. If there was an Olympic Sick Note event, he would've won the 100 metres I've Got Asthma, the half marathon Lurk in the Changing Rooms, and the freestyle Got to Go to the Doctor.

— Johnny and the Bomb

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpock. Well *technically* they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

— Eric

There was a polite beeping from the Thing. "You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier." Masklin turned wearily to the others. "All right, own up. Who broke it?"

— Wings

Beyond the top of the sky was the place the Thing had called the universe. It contained -- according to the Thing -- everything and nothing. And there was very little everything and more nothing than anyone could imagine.

— Wings

He was always at a loss when people acted like this. When machines went funny you just oiled them or prodded them or, if nothing else worked, hit them with a hammer. Nomes didn't respond well to this treatment.

— Diggers

"Nah," he said, eventually. "I've looked at the colours on flowers. They're definitely built-in."

— Diggers

- "Outside! What's it like?" - "Well -- It's sort of big"

— Truckers

The Store was having its last sale. It was holding a Grand Final Clearance of specially selected sparks, and flames to suit every pocket.

— Truckers

No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

One day, if he could master GCSE maths and reliably pick up a soldering iron by the end that wasn't hot, he was going to be a Big Man in computers.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

— Sourcery

The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as "Oook".

— Men at Arms

- "It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!" - "It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant." - "You see?"

— Men at Arms

The maze was so small that people got lost looking *for* it.

— Bloody Stupid Johnson at his finest, Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people.

— Witches Abroad

"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."

— Small Gods

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

— Mort

Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.

— Mort

"It's a god-eat-god world."

— Small Gods

[...] Vimes's grin was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top.

— Jingo

"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo."

— Jingo

She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They *said* they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows.

— Jingo

The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.

— Sourcery

The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that had to be the 57th strangest. [footnote: he had a tidy mind]

— Moving Pictures

Death was Nature's way of telling you to slow down.

— Strata

AFPer: We've missed you, did you miss us? TP: Yes, but I think I have time to reload. :-)

— Terry returns to a.f.p. after a temporary absence., Terry Pratchett and an AFPer, alt.fan.pratchett

- "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade hopefully. - I WOULDN'T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.

— Mort

- "Pardon me for living, I'm sure." - NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.

— Mort

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

— Wyrd Sisters

...He hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.

— Feet of Clay

"There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."

— Wyrd Sisters

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.

— Mort

Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.

— Witches Abroad

"I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked," said Johnny reproachfully. "Doubtless it had a map," said the Captain.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. "It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."

— Reaper Man

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 tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Woof bloody woof."

— Gaspode the Wonder Dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright collar around his neck with the word "PONGO" on it. Someone was going to suffer for this.

— The Librarian travels incognito, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

"When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!"

— The Last Continent

"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."

— Small Gods

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."

— Small Gods

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

— Jingo

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."

— We meet Dydactylos the philosopher, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. *Crabs* thought he walked sideways.

— Small Gods

"Oook!"

"Oook?"

"Kneel and deliver!"

— Casanunda, the worlds smallest lover turns highwaydwarf, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

No-one would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently by intelligences greater than Man's, or at least much nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinised and studied as a man with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar menu outside Harga's House of Ribs...

— Moving Pictures

"The knuckles! The horrible knuckles!"

— The Light Fantastic

I was thinking of 'duh?' in the sense of 'a sentence containing several words more than three letters long, and possibly requiring general knowledge or a sense of history that extends past last Tuesday, has been used in my presense.'

— alt.fan.pratchett

"Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily. "I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.

— The joys of working undercover, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

"'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm. "All by himself?" said the captain. "No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other.

— Making Friends and Hitting People, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

It's a small step for a man, but a giant leap for nomekind.

— Truckers

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.

— Discworld wildlife, Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant "idiot".

— The Colour of Magic

Oh, come *on*. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.

— alt.fan.pratchett

'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Well, they asked me in February, and I said it was coming out in November. When they asked in March, I said it was coming out in November. In April I pointed out that November, in fact, was going to be when the next book came out. In May, when asked on many occasions about when Maskerade was coming out, I said November. In November, it will be published. The same November all the way through, too.

— So Terry, when is 'Maskerade' coming out, then?, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.

— The goddess with the nice earrings , Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

"But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you've read too many books?"

— Carpe Jugulum

- "We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience" - "But the point is... the point is... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you."

— Stop being so negative, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match.

— Witches Abroad

People didn't hit you over the head with farmhouses back home.

— Nanny Ogg gets homesick, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because -- what with trolls and dwarfs and so on -- speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

— Witches Abroad

Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards.

— Home Pragmatics, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

"Emberella," thought Magrat. "I'm fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain."

— Witches Abroad

Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue.

— Witches Abroad

Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down. "You're a dwarf," she said.

— Nanny Ogg meets Casanunda, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours *preferred* explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you.

— Moving Pictures

"Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig h'an't noticed they're gone!"

— Genuine pig portion packages, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Bognor has always meant to me the quintessential English seaside experience (before all this global warming stuff): driving in the rain to get there, walking around in the rain looking for something to do when you're there, and driving home in the rain again...

— alt.fan.pratchett

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...

— alt.fan.pratchett

The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first.

— Middle management explained, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.

— Moving Pictures

Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next.

— Moving Pictures

"If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter."

— Popcorn comes to the Discworld, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Students?" barked the Archchancellor. "Yes, Master. You know? They're the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we're a *university*? They come with the whole thing, like rats --"

— Moving Pictures

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.

— Moving Pictures

And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat *anything*.

— A fact McDonalds knows about as well, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"The thing is that Mr. Dibbler can even sell sausages to people who have bought them off him *before*."

— Now *that's* marketing, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

- "You pay for it before you eat it? What happens if it's dreadful?" - "That's why."

— Moving Pictures

"One minute I'm just another rabbit and happy about it, next minute *whazaam*, 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?'"

— Moving Pictures

Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely The Opera Ghost

— Maskerade

"I'm a cat person, myself," she said, vaguely. A low-level voice said: "Yeah? Yeah? Wash in your own spit, do you?"

— It's a dog's life, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Why's it called Ming?" said the Archchancellor, on cue. The Bursar tapped the pot. It went *ming*.

— Discworld archeology revealed, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

- "I thought swords had to be straight." - "Perhaps they start out straight and go bendy with use. A lot of things do."

— Odour-eaters, right? Yeah, she means odour-eaters., Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes..."

— Moving Pictures

People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.

— Moving Pictures

"He's in love," said Gaspode. "It's very tricky." "Yeah, I know how it is," said the cat sympathetically. "People throwing old boots and things at you."

— Moving Pictures

"In a word -- im-possible!" "That's two words," said Dibbler.

— Moving Pictures

"I'm vice-president of Throwing Out People Mr Dibbler Doesn't like the Face of."

— Moving Pictures

- "It looks worse than you can imagine!" - "I can imagine some pretty bad things!" - "That's why I said *worse*!"

— Moving Pictures

Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.

— Eric

Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, "Where's my clean socks?", no-one answers.

— Eric

"Nac mac Feegle wha hae!"

— Carpe Jugulum

In Ghat they believe in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about *what* they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back.

— Carpe Jugulum

Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow *cool*. Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes" were there for a purpose.

— Carpe Jugulum

It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realized long ago that everything was steadily getting worse and, having a terrible little-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was.

— Eric

"These people were not only cheering, they were throwing flowers and hats. The hats were made of stone, but the thought was there."

— Life among the primitive Discworld tribes, Terry Pratchett, Eric

While working his way along a wall he came to a huge door, which artistically portrayed a group of prisoners apparently being given a complete medical check-up [footnote: From a distance it did, anyway. Close to, no].

— Rincewind visits the Tezumen tribe, Terry Pratchett, Eric

- "There's a door" - "Where does it go?" - "It stays where it is, I think."

— Eric

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occured to him.

— alt.fan.pratchett

The trouble is that things *never* get better, they just stay the same, only more so.

— Eric

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."

— Jingo

"*Veni, vici*...Vetinari."

— Jingo

- "So we're surrounded by absolutely nothing. There's a word for it. It's what you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up." - "Yes. I think it's called the bill."

— Eric

- "What're quantum mechanics?" - "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."

— Eric

No one was avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away.

— Reaper Man

"Dock-a-loodle-fod!"

— Dyslexic roosters are a sad sight, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water's fresh and drinkable, and *in all that time* never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.

— Reaper Man

He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat.

— Reaper Man

DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.

— Dirty Death, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

— Reaper Man

It is traditional, when loading wire trolleys, to put the most fragile items at the bottom.

— Reaper Man

No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

— Reaper Man

"Woof?"

— Moving Pictures

"Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said 'miaow'."

— Our hero meets Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Worlds only harmonica-playing dog. Tuppence."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Seems I can't get me 'ead down these days without rescuin' people or foilin' robbers or sunnink."

— It's a wonder dog's life, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"How's he in the mysterious senses department?"

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Walk a mile on these paws and call me a liar."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Woof. In tones of low menace."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"There's nothin' wrong with bein' a son of a bitch."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I thought it was going to be bucket-of-water time myself."

— Gaspode's way of saying "I'm sorry, was I intruding?", Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I can explain it in Dog, but you only listen in Human."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I mean are we talking Thicko City here or what?"

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I wouldn't give it to a dog, and I *am* one."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

I'm referred to, I see, as 'the biggest banker in modern publishing'. Now *there's* a line that needed the celebrated Guardian proof-reading.

— alt.fan.pratchett

"Does that look like ten per cent to you, Victor?"

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas.

— Jingo

"'Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy'", she read out loud. "'Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel...'"

— Jingo

"One o'clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!"

— The Dis-organizer, Terry Pratchett, Jingo

"... Percy the Pup here with a cold nose, bright eyes, glossy coat and the brains of a stunned herring."

— Gaspode the wonder dog on 'Laddie', Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Maybe you should loosen her clothing or something."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I could send you a bone with a file in it, only you'd eat it."

— Moving Pictures

"Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"If gharstely creatures from before the Dawna Time starts wavin' at you from under your bed, jus' you don't come complainin' to me,"

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"Idiot I may be, but tied up I ain't."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"ER...HO. HO. HO."

— Death makes a career move , Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."

— Hogfather

Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.

— Hogfather

"Did you check the list?" YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH?

— He's gonna find out... , Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I always thought Detritus would be good at: "I bet you're wondrin' how many time I fired dis crossbow--"

— alt.fan.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.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I reckon that Stonehege was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

— Terry defending his solution to the Monty Hall problem., Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

"And Howondaland Smith, Balrog Hunter, practic'ly eats the dark for his tea."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat.

— Maskerade

People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.

— Maskerade

He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.

— Maskerade

She'd even given herself a middle initial - X - which stood for "someone who has a cool and exciting middle name".

— Maskerade

"Messin' around with girls in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it."

— Gaspode gives Victor some practical advice, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

- "I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons," said the Archchancellor coldly. "I suppose you're not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?" - "Of course not!" snapped Ponder, "I don't even know what he looked like. He died before I was born." - "Ah-*hah*!"

— The faculty members of Unseen University discuss time travel, Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

In the fetid fleapit of Rincewind's brain the projectionist of memory put on reel two. Recollection began to flicker.

— The Last Continent

"Growl, growl."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I can bite your leg if you like."

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

"I expect I've saved the day, right?"

— Gaspode the wonder dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

I MUST SAY THESE ARE VERY GOOD BISCUITS. HOW DO THEY GET THE BITS OF CHOCOLATE IN?

— Death has a snack, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people.

— Lords and Ladies

Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.

— Lords and Ladies

I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. Death grinned hopefully.

— Lords and Ladies

Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.

— Lords and Ladies

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu-- was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

— Lords and Ladies

The thing about iron is that you generally don't have to think fast in dealing with it.

— Lords and Ladies

Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.

— Lords and Ladies

The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin although, in accordance with the rules of universal humour, he still had his hat on.

— Lords and Ladies

For Magrat, stepping into a man's bedroom was like an explorer stepping on to that part of the map marked Here Be Dragons.

— Lords and Ladies

"I wants your body, Mrs Ogg."

— Casanunda makes his move, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

"I know she's in there," said Verence, holding his crown in his hands in the famous Ai-Senor-Mexican-Bandits-Have-Raided-Our-Village position.

— Lords and Ladies

In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

— Schrodinger's Moggy explained, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

— Lords and Ladies

"Serve 'em right for not inviting me to their weddings."

— Ridcully contemplates the Trousers of Time, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution.

— The Last Continent

One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

— Small Gods

History, contrary to popular theories, *is* kings and dates and battles.

— Small Gods

And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!"

— Small Gods

Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.

— Small Gods

"There's very good eating on one of these, you know."

— Eyeing the tortoise for tea, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course."

— Small Gods

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.

— Small Gods

The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks.

— Small Gods

"Ah. Philosophy," said Om.

— Small Gods

"Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."

— Small Gods

PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'.

— The Last Continent

"Nulli Sheilae sanguineae"

— The Last Continent

SQUEAK.

— The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

— Small Gods

"Eureka," he said. "Going to have a bath then?"

— Philosophy in action, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

— Small Gods

"Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?"

— Small Gods

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.

— Death on symbolic last games, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?"

— Pyramids

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

— Pyramids

"You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say."

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

— Crowley listens to his favourite rock group, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

He'd been particularly pleased with Manchester.

— Crowley contemplating his achievements, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Humans suffering from a conflict of signals aren't the best people to be holding guns, especially when they've just witnessed a natural childbirth, which definitely looked an un-American way of bringing new citizens into the world.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Of course he was all in favour of Armageddon in *general* terms.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"

— Crowley the demon and Aziraphale the angel in conversation, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

On those occasions when the angel managed to get his mind into the twentieth century, it always gravitated to 1950.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Art thou a witch, *viva espana*?"

— The Spanish Inquisition (Tadfield version) in action, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen had been shot 25 minutes after setting foot in France.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

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

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Currently there's five machines permanently networked here. They *all* contain the serious core stuff. A couple of the machines are pensioned off 486s, with little other value now. Plus there's two Jaz drives in the building and the portable also carries a fair amount of stuff. Plus every Friday a man comes around and carves all the new stuff onto stone slabs and buries them in the garden... I think I'm okay.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don't know how to do it, and wouldn't be any good at it if I did, so I'm going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be *me*, of course...

— Terry learns Naomi Campbell has written a book., Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"?" he said.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Jesus won't cut you off before you're through With him you won't never get a crossed line, And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemised He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life. The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference He's in at any hour, day or night And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll-free He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life."

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

- "ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL." - "Yeah?" - "JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE." - "Ngk," said Crowley.

— Crowley in conversation with his superiors, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.

— Carpe Jugulum

"I name you ... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!"

— Carpe Jugulum

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.

— The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. *I* TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

— Feet of Clay

Slab: Jus' say "AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH"

— Detritus' war on drugs, Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

— Feet of Clay

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

— Feet of Clay

Thud. Thud. Thud. Splat.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Did any of them kids have some space alien with a face like a friendly turd in a bike basket?"

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

Wobbler had written an actual computer game like this once. It was called "Journey to Alpha Centauri". It was a screen with some dots on it. Because, he said, it happened in *real time*, which no-one had ever heard of until computers. He'd seen on TV that it took three thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri. He had written it so that if anyone kept their computer on for three thousand years, they'd be rewarded by a little dot appearing in the middle of the screen, and then a message saying, "Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home."

— Only You Can Save Mankind

Wobbler thought that California was where good people went when they died.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

If Not You, Who Else?

— Only You Can Save Mankind

"We got a talk about it at school. There's lots of stuff most girls can't do, but you've got to pretend they can, so that more of them will."

— Sexism explained, Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind

Bigmac's brother was reliably believed to be in the job of moving video recorders around in an informal way.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

He microwaved himself something called a Pour-On Genuine Creole Lasagne, which said it served four portions. It did if you were dwarfs.

— Only You Can Save Mankind

On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say "Um".

— Only You Can Save Mankind

"Stuck? You're an *alien*," said Johnny. "Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact."

— Only You Can Save Mankind

"If we find a cat I'm going to kick it!"

— Only You Can Save Mankind

"Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits?"

— Economics explained, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic

She wanted a HOLIDAY in Australia, she said, and if I turned it into work she'd hit me -- so I gave in, because I did not want to be beaten about the Bush.

— alt.fan.pratchett

If I *heeded* all the advice I've had over the years, I've have written 18 books about Rincewind.

— alt.fan.pratchett

AFPer: Can anyone PLEASE tell me the "rules" and "regulations" of headology?? It just seems to me that it's an area which is not properly defined, that's all. TP: Ah. It appears you have discovered Rule 1.

— Terry Pratchett and an AFPer, alt.fan.pratchett

I WAS AT A PARTY, he added, a shade reproachfully.

— Death is summoned by the Wizards, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split-window Morris Minor.

— Equal Rites

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere."

— Mort

"When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry."

— Mort

"I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because -- well, June 12th was quite nice, and..."

— Wyrd Sisters

"Ibid you already know."

— More Discworld philosophers, Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC.

— The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

"Pour encourjay lays ortras."

— Guards! Guards!

"This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off."

— Captain Vimes addresses a band of rioters, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

"Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little."

— Victor's resume, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE?

— Death talks to the Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns.

— Reaper Man

"Bonsai!"

— Reaper Man

Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb -- they're often *students*, for heaven's sake.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Death isn't on line. If he was, there would be a sudden drop in the death rate. Although it'd be interesting to see if he'd post things like: DON'T YOU THINK I SOUND LIKE JAMES EARL JONES?

— alt.fan.pratchett

The net software here did its meltdown trick again at the weekend (it happens about once every six months -- if only everything was as reliable as WordPerfect 4.2, which only chews up a novel about once every two or three years...)

— alt.fan.pratchett

I'd like to stand up for the rights of people who put everything on their burger -- chutney, mustard, pickle, mustard pickle, tomato sauce... It is common knowledge in my family that I can't tell the difference between a veggie burger and a meat one, because the ratio of burger to pickles is so high.

— alt.fan.pratchett

"Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week," said the low priest.

— Life in the Temple of Offler, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

'They can ta'k our live but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now *there's* a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...

— Braveheart , Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

"You know," said Windle, "it's a wonderful afterlife."

— Reaper Man

- "'S called the Vieux River." - "Yes?" - "Know what that means?" - "No." - "The Old (Masculine) River," said Nanny. - "Yes?" - "Words have sex in foreign parts," said Nanny hopefully.

— Witches Abroad

The sky spun again as Marco turned the ship so that 'down' was where long tradition had always put it, in the region of the feet.

— Strata

"Go on, do Deformed Rabbit... it's my favourite."

— Shadow puppets are so cute, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting *donkeys* in a play!"

— Lords and Ladies

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They are not all that subtle."

— Lords and Ladies

- "The other humans around it are trying to explain to it what a planet is." - "Doesn't it know?" - "Many humans don't. Mistervicepresident is one of them."

— Wings

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir *instantaneously*. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

— Mort

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

— Death addresses his new apprentice, Terry Pratchett, Mort

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.

— Mort

It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.

— Mort

"You're dead," he said. Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.

— Princess Keli in trouble, Terry Pratchett, Mort

The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.

— Death goes fishing, Terry Pratchett, Mort

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

— Discworld politics explained, Terry Pratchett, Mort

- I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD. - "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"

— Death consults a job broker, Terry Pratchett, Mort

- "Sodomy non sapiens," said Albert under his breath. - "What does that mean?" - "Means I'm buggered if I know."

— Mort and Albert are facing a problem, Terry Pratchett, Mort

Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much -- in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all -- but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.

— Princess Keli prepares for her coronation, Terry Pratchett, Mort

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- " He stopped talking.

— Cutwell tries to reason with the Duke of Sto Helit, Terry Pratchett, Mort

"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."

— The Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse encounter unexpected difficulties, Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Mort isn't fashionable UK movie material -- there's no parts in it for Hugh or Emma, it's not set it Sheffield, and no one shoves drugs up their bum...

— alt.fan.pratchett

Too many people want to *have written*.

— alt.fan.pratchett

DW is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most 'refined' form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode 'Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot'.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, *then* is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

— alt.fan.pratchett

"There is nothing that can be in our way, for this is Jekub, that Laughs at Barriers, and says brrm-brrm."

— From the Book Of Nome, Jekub, Chap. 3, v. V, Terry Pratchett, Diggers

It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.

— Sourcery

"I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!" he hissed. "I'm afraid of grounds." "You mean heights," said Conina. "And stop being silly." "I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!"

— Sourcery

"Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?" said Dibbler. "He says he can't," said Victor. Dibbler hesitated. "Well," he said, "I suppose he should know."

— Dibbler meets Gaspode the Wonder Dog, Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander considered that gnolls didn't look any better inside than out. He hated their guts.

— Equal Rites

It became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice.

— Sourcery

A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.

— The Light Fantastic

"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?"

— Hogfather

"Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time."

— Bursar 1 - Hex 0 , Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.

— The Light Fantastic

- "What is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?" - "Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper."

— Cohen the Barbarian in conversation with Discworld nomads, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

The old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?" The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I."

— Rincewind and Twoflower take up broomstick flying, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves.

— Carpe Jugulum

One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either...

— Carpe Jugulum

Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he'd had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armour would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them.

— Carpe Jugulum

Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear. "You said you could fly one of these things!" "No I didn't; I just said *you* couldn't!"

— Rincewind and Twoflower attempt broomstick flying, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

"Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead."

— Apparently Terry nicked this from James Thurber. Still a good quote, though. (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic) The

"Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!" "No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I --" The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss.

— Cohen the Barbarian interrogates Rincewind, Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.

— The Light Fantastic

"Students made it long ago," said Rincewind. "Handy way in and out after lights out." "Ah," said Twoflower, "I *understand*. Over the wall and out to brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?" "Nearly right except for the singings and the poetry, yes," said Rincewind.

— The Light Fantastic

- "Pull me up, then," he hinted. - "I think that might be sort of difficult," grunted Twoflower. "I don't actually think I can do it, in fact." - "What are you holding on to, then?" - "You." - "I mean besides me." - "What do you mean, besides you?" said Twoflower.

— The Light Fantastic

- "If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply. - "There is an alternative, then." - "Out with it, man." - "You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there," said Twoflower. Dead silence from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, "That was sarcasm."

— The Light Fantastic

The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptiously looked very hard for one.

— Unseen University politics at work, Terry Pratchett, Eric

I HOPE WE ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY OF THIS 'FOUL FIEND' BUSINESS AGAIN.

— Death gets summoned by the college council, Terry Pratchett, Eric

There had been some desultory talk about putting up a statue to Rincewind but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the Roll of Honour, and finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed.

— Unseen University politics at work, Terry Pratchett, Eric

What your soldier wants-- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Up until now I'd always though RSI meant 'I hate my damn job'.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.

— Why summoning demons is a Bad Idea, Terry Pratchett, Eric

The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.

— Eric

"You mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses who subject all male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitative rites?" said Eric, his glasses beginning to fog.

— Eric

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

— Eric

You know what I'd really, really like? What I'd pay MONEY for? A ZX81 with a disc drive. I *understood* the ZX81. It was so easy to interface stuff to it.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disc, I overwrote it so's I couldn't get it back.

— alt.fan.pratchett

To get the walkthrough, you have to take the sponge from Nanny Ogg's pantry and stick it in the ear of the troll with the tutu, then take the lumps and put them in the pouch with the zombie's razor.

— alt.fan.pratchett

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

— Guards! Guards!

There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.

— The Elucidated Brethren see the light, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

— Guards! Guards!

*Glingleglingleglingle.*

— Hogfather

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.

— Guards! Guards!

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

— Carrot travels to Ankh-Morpork, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter [footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force].

— Nobby takes Carrot for a drink in The Mended Drum, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

— The City Watch takes action, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.

— Guards! Guards!

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.

— Captain Vimes ponders his problems, Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

— Guards! Guards!

A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.

— Guards! Guards!

WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

— Death appeals to Azrael, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

The sergeant put on the poker face which 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.

— Eric

- "What shall I do?" - "Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother."

— Rincewind and Eric at the Beginning of Time, Terry Pratchett, Eric

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind."

— Something that Terry feels strongly about, because a similar quote also appears in "Reaper Man", Terry Pratchett, Eric

The Supreme Life President of Hell wrote: "What business are we in???" He thought for a bit, and then carefully wrote, underneath: "We are in the damnation business!!!"

— Eric

"'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.

— Wyrd Sisters

Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying "Mother". No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.

— Wyrd Sisters

"A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do," said Granny. "But right now he should go home."

— Wyrd Sisters

"I daresay," said Granny, pushing the Fool aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. "If anyone locked *me* in a dungeon, there'd be screams."

— Wyrd Sisters

"He didn't take any notice!" whispered Tomjon. "A born critic," said the dwarf.

— Discworld stage actors in conversation, Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

"What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and *writes* a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."

— Maskerade

"The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case..."

— Maskerade

Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows. [footnote: Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings.]

— Maskerade

"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

— Wyrd Sisters

"You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage."

— Witches Abroad

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."

— Crowley is a demon, in case you don't know, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

R. P. Tyler was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call *dramatic*. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."

— Armageddon delayed by technical difficulties, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk [...]"

— Feet of Clay

"...my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings."

— Agnes tells Christine about herself, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

— Maskerade

A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it anyway.

— Granny Weatherwax commits optimism, Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Dream on. British TV Is The Best In The World is on a par with the statement about how British Justice Is The Envy Of The World ("Hey, Miguel, how come *we* can't convict innocent people so quickly and expensively?")

— alt.fan.pratchett

You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy, humourless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.

— alt.fan.pratchett

- "There have been...accidents." - "What kind of accidents?" - "The kind of accidents you prefer to call...accidents."

— Maskerade

You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was *always* a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.

— Feet of Clay

"Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!"

— Feet of Clay

"Is that *you*?" said a female voice. It wasn't exactly an unpleasant one, but it had a sharp penetrating quality. It seemed to be saying that if you *weren't* you, then it was *your* fault. Johnny recognized it instantly. It was the voice of someone who dialled the wrong numbers and then complained that the phone was answered by people she didn't want to speak to.

— Johnny and the Bomb

I found while driving in Wyoming that wearing a stetson and driving a beat-up pickup meant you could go as fast as you like, while the police picked up Californian winnebagos that went one mph over 55. After all, they wanted to *bring* money into the state, not merely circulate it.

— alt.fan.pratchett

AFPer: Incidentally, do you have strong opinions about the meanings of "alternate" and "alternative"? TP: Yes. I think that pedants should be alternately ignored and flamed, unless there is a better alternative.

— Terry Pratchett and an AFPer, alt.fan.pratchett

"I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

- "Have you any last words?" - YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO. - "Well. Succinct, anyway."

— Death at the other end of the scythe, for once, Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

"While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe." Treatle nodded. "I hadn't looked at it like that," he said, "But you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance."

— Discworld scientists at work, Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.

— Discworld scientists at work, Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."

— Death is obviously not a dog person, Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my hands aren't even in the same time zone...

— alt.fan.pratchett

I always call it 'Tour Flu', because two or three weeks in hot bookshops with hundreds of people usually produces an ailment of some kind. Going on tour is like a box of rare diseases -- you never know what you're going to get.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option.

— Carpe Jugulum

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read "Endeavour to be the one inside" he'd rather lost heart.

— Carpe Jugulum

In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They 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.

— Wyrd Sisters

They may have been ugly. they may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.

— Meet the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions, Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

AIRPORTS: A place where people hurry up and wait.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

"I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels."

— Wings

Let's see, now... in HOGFATHER there are a number of stabbings, someone's killed by a man made of knives, someone's killed by the dark, and someone just been killed by a wardrobe. It's a book about the magic of childhood. You can tell.

— alt.fan.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.

— Hogfather

We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.

— Lord Downey reflects on Mister Teatime , Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled *backwards*. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru.

— Hogfather

Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high- speed mouse. That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them. The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a nome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen.

— Wings

And then there were the frogs. Very, very small frogs. They had such a tiny life cycle it still had trainer wheels on it.

— Wings

And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember [footnote: About three seconds. Frogs don't have good memories].

— Wings

"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up." "Why not?" said Gurder. "Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."

— The nomes discuss science, Terry Pratchett, Wings

CONCORDE: It goes twice as fast as a bullet and you get smoked salmon.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

It had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway places written on it were like magic -- Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printed in Hong Kong, Iceland...

— Wings

Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

— Feet of Clay

In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?

— Lord Vetinari reproves Vimes. , Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.

— Johnny and the Bomb

They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because frogs can't count beyond one. They saw lots of ones.

— Wings

They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at. Thinking isn't.

— Wings

It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought long and hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about the need to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge. In fact, what they thought was: "._._.mipmip._._.mipmip._._.mipmip".

— Wings

HOTELS: A place where TRAVELLING HUMANS are parked at night. Other humans bring them food, including the famous BACON, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICH. There are beds and towels and special things that rain on people to get them clean.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

- "Very clever idea, though." - "What is?" - "Asking the questions when people arrive. If anyone was coming here to do some subversive overthrowing, everyone'd be down on him like a pound of bricks as soon as he answered 'Yes'." - "It's a sneaky trick, isn't it," said Angalo, in an admiring tone of voice.

— The nomes encounter American customs regulations, Terry Pratchett, Wings

- "What's the human singing about, Thing?" said Masklin. - "It is a little difficult to follow. However, it appears that the singer wishes it to be known that he did something his way." - "Did what?" - "Insufficient data at this point. But whatever it was, he did it at a) each step along life's highway and b) not in a shy way..."

— Wings

FLORIDA (or FLORIDIA): A place where may be found ALLIGATORS, LONG-NECKED TURTLES and SPACE SHUTTLES. An interesting place which is warm and wet and there are geese. BACON, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICHES may be found here also. A lot more interesting than many other places. The shape when seen from the air is like a bit stuck on a bigger bit.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

SATELLITES: They are in SPACE and stay there by going so fast that they are never in one place enough to fall down. TELEVISIONS are bounced off them. They are part of SCIENCE.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

— Hogfather

+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

— Hogfather

"Millennium hand and shrimp."

— Hogfather

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 is wrong. There is a lot more Science than you think.

— From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri, Terry Pratchett, Wings

"All right," said Masklin. "But you're not to fly down low again and try to read the signposts. Every time you do that, humans rush into the streets and we get lots of shouting on the radio." "That's right." said the Thing. "People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street."

— Wings

"What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.

— Mort goes out for a drink, Terry Pratchett, Mort

"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a *what*?"

— Mort tastes scrumble for the first time, Terry Pratchett, Mort

In the Beginning It was a nice day.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

"Go ahead, bake my quiche"

— Magrat instructs the castle cook, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

— Lords and Ladies

He had the look of a lawn mower just after the grass had organised a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.

— Jingo

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. *No one* ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

— Jingo

Remember, A Dragon is For Life, Not Just for Hogswatchnight

— Motto of The Sunshine Home for Sick Dragons in Morphic Street, Please Leave Donations of Coal by Side Door., Terry Pratc

There have, in the course of decadent history, been many large wigs, often with build-in gewgaws to stop people having to look at boring hair all the time. There had been ones big enough to contain pet mice or clockwork ornaments. Mme Cupidor, mistress of Mad King Soup II, had one with a bird cage in it, but on special state occasions wore one containing a perpetual calendar, a floral clock and a take-away linguini shop.

— Lords and Ladies

The place looked as though it had been visited by Gengiz Cohen [footnote: hence the term "wholesale destruction"].

— Lords and Ladies

"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."

— The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress, Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.

— Pyramids

Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.

— Pyramids

"Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody."

— Even Nanny Ogg gets upset occasionally, Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable here that "all men spoke of his prowess" any bard who valued his life would add hastily "except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him."

— The Light Fantastic

On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...

— Wyrd Sisters

If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

- "You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?" - REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.

— Death in conversation with a biker, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty-foot-high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Crowley was in Hell's bad books. Not that Hell has any other kind.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time*.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother.

— alt.fan.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.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Sister Mary headed through the night-time hospital with the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness safely in her arms. She found a bassinet and laid him down in it. He gurgled. She gave him a tickle.

— The antichrist is born, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

A man threw himself through the window, a knife between his teeth, a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in one hand, a grenade in the other. "I glaim gis oteg in der gaing og der --" he paused. He tooke the knife out of his teeth and began again.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

- "Surely you have considered terrorist activity?" There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite *strong* terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."

— The BBC interviews a nuclear spokesperson, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

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 & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

... walking like a man carrying a thermos flask of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels grey-beards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the city of Wah-Shing-Ton", in SF B-movies.

— Crowley gets out the Holy Water, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in this reasoning.

— The Unadulterated Cat

Boot-faced cats aren't born but made, often because they've tried to outstare or occasionally rape a speeding car and have been repaired by a vet who just pulled all the bits together and stuck the stitches in where there was room.

— The Unadulterated Cat

Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. But they don't, so that's all right.

— The Unadulterated Cat

Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.

— alt.fan.pratchett

It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17 percent 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.

— The Unadulterated Cat

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.").

— Getting Real cats to take medication can be a problem, Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat

Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.

— The Unadulterated Cat

Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff on the environment, you're being chased and eaten by most of the planet's large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr.

— Why humans like cats, Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat

Thunder rolled. ... It rolled a six.

— Guards! Guards!

Granny's remedies, made from simple, honest, and generally nearly poisonous herbs and roots, were amazing things. After one dose of stomache-ache jollop, you made sure you never complained of stomach ache ever again. In its way, it was a sort of cure.

— No, not that Granny. The other one., Terry Pratchett, Truckers

"No, no, no, what you do is, you get a gnu, then you point it at the driver and someone says, 'Look out, he's got a gnu!' and you say, 'Take us where we want to go or I'll fire this gnu at you!'"

— "Host Age at 10,000 Feet", Nome style, Terry Pratchett, Truckers

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

— Diggers

- "Do you know, humans think the world was made by a sort of big human?" - "Get away?" - "It took a week." - "I expect it had some help, then,' said Dorcas.

— The Nomes discuss religion, Terry Pratchett, Diggers

- "But I don't *believe* in reincarnation!" he protested. - SQUEAK. - And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: Reincarnation believes in *you*.

— Maskerade

It was done far more often than the audiences ever realized -- when singers had a sore throat, or had completely dried, or had turned up so drunk they could barely stand, or, in one notorious instance many years previously, had died in the interval and subsequently sung their famous aria by means of a broom-handle stuck up their back and their jaw operated with a piece of string.

— Maskerade

On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got *heard*, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics.

— Carpet politics are very similar to Discworld politics, Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People

"He's a man of few words, and he doesn't know what either of them mean," people said, but not when he was within hearing.

— The Carpet People

After you'd known Christine for any length of time, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way.

— Maskerade

"Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. 'There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely."

— Maskerade

- "Remember -- that which does not kill us can only make us stronger." - "And that which *does* kill us leaves us *dead*!"

— Carpe Jugulum

"My house is your house", his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, "although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually *give* you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion --" Owlglass was clearly having some trouble getting to the end of the sentence.

— Carpet philosophers at work, Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People

She'd stopped reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.

— Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Yabi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Yabi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered.

— Witches Abroad

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."

— Rincewind discussing Twoflower, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic

There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

— Pyramids

"They say there's dwarf mines under the Ramtops," she said inconsequentially. "My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise."

— Granny reflects on Esk's methods of lighting a fire., Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography"

— Guards! Guards!

"Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy."

— Small Gods

- "Therefore I will have dinner sent in," said the priest. "It will be roast chicken." - "I hate chicken." Dios smiled. "No sire. On wednesdays the King always enjoys chicken, sire."

— Pyramids

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Botswana is also the only country in the world with a colour in its flag meant to represent rain (a sort of blue-grey). Not many people know this.

— alt.fan.pratchett

1) I have never waved a hankie in anger 2) I do not peronally know any Morris dancers 3) But Morris dancing is kind of funny and weird at the same time.

— alt.fan.pratchett

"You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs anymore." said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons."

— Johnny and the Bomb

There are *no* inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however, there are alternate pasts.

— alt.fan.pratchett

One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Any town built by filling a mud hole with sawdust and proudly having a slug as a sort of civic totem is a town, one feels, where Rincewind would feel right at home.

— Terry looks forward to his visit to Seattle, USA., Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Somehow, trying to get Granny Weatherwax and 'panty raid' into the same sentence is beyond me.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I'm sure we can arrange an academic scholarship for Detritus. Troll cheerleaers would be nice: 'Two... four.... er.. many... lots'.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Experience has taught me that you feel better on a flight if you avoid chicken fat in plastic sauce.

— The joys of travelling the world by plane, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

No male had ever touched Agnes before, except perhaps to push her over and steal her sweets.

— Maskerade

The pre-luncheon drinks were going quite well, Mr Bucket thought. Everyone was making polite conversation and absolutely no one had been killed up to the present moment.

— Maskerade

I stroll along, talk, I sign books, people buy me drinks, I forget where my hotel is, I get lost and fall into some local body of water... done it hundreds of times.

— Going to a convention is fun!, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I've always thought the Patrician is a party animal. Can you imagine waking up next day and remembering all those witty things you said and did, and then realising that he was listening?

— alt.fan.pratchett

It's an old magical principle -- it's even filtered down into RPG systems -- that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be 'stored' -- in a staff, for example. No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course.

— alt.fan.pratchett

Take One ticket to New Orleans Take One cab to Bourbon Street Take steps to the counter of the all night frozen dacquiri shop. Take One Large Cupful.

— Terry's recipe for the Ultimate Banana Dacquiri, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

AFPer: Terry, what the heck was going on at the end of Strata? I've just re-read the ending *again* and come up with another possible explanation which takes the total number into double figures. TP: See? Other people would just have given you one or two. Amazing value, I think.

— alt.fan.pratchett

3) I don't sign parts of the body, even if they're still attached.

— From Terry's Rules of Book Signing, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's *American* editors.

— Setting the record straight, Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.

— alt.fan.pratchett

He didn't look mad, but they never did.

— Strata

*No-one* liked the Joshua N'Clement block. There were two schools of thought about what should be done with it. The people who lived there thought everyone should be taken out en then the block should be blown up, and the people who lived *near* the block just wanted it blown up.

— Johnny and the Dead

There was a new library in the Civic Centre. It was so new it didn't even have librarians. It had Assistant Information Officers.

— Johnny and the Dead

Johnny had seen films of American shopping malls. They must have different sorts of people in America, he'd thought. They all looked cool, all the girls were beautiful, and the place wasn't crowded with little kamikaze grandmothers.

— Johnny and the Dead

"You've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger."

— Johnny and the Dead

The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them.

— Johnny and the Dead

"I believe it's very hard to have fun in Iceland without fish being involved in some way."

— Looking for a good place to party, Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead

- "America?" said Mrs Liberty. "Won't we get scalped?" - "Good grief, no!" said William Stickers, who was a bit more up to date about the world. - "*Probably* not," said Mr Fletcher, who had been watching the news lately and was even more up to date than William Stickers.

— Still looking for a good place to party, Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead

Sergeant Comely was working on the general assumption that where you got lots of people gathered together, something illegal was bound to happen sooner or later.

— Johnny and the Dead

"I perceive a possibility of an immediate chronological sequence of events which includes a violence," said Three. He stepped back, "I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence."

— The Dark Side of the Sun

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

— Equal Rites

In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.

— Moving Pictures

Oh dear, I'm feeling political today. It's just that it's dawned on me that 'zero tolerance' only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.

— alt.fan.pratchett

I'm getting a lot of mail and email about FoC (I particularly liked the postcard which read 'We were *sure* it was the wallpaper, you bastard!!!!!'). I'm glad to say that most Baconians hared off after poissons rouge.

— alt.fan.pratchett

It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to "serve the community" by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways.

— Feet of Clay

It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and *guess who's back*? They returned more times than raw broccoli.

— Feet of Clay

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].

— Lords and Ladies

He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?

— Lords and Ladies

And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork.

— Lords and Ladies

It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'.

— Lords and Ladies

A heap of discarded garments by the bed suggested that Verence had mastered the art of hanging up clothes as practised by half the population of the world, and that he had equally had difficulty with the complex topological manoeuvres necessary to turn the socks the right way out.

— Lords and Ladies

Chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn't when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes.

— Lords and Ladies

It's not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy.

— Lords and Ladies

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

— Lords and Ladies

Mrs. Nugent was the Johnson's next door neighbour, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Madonna played at full volume at 3 a.m.

— Johnny and the Dead

"Why bother with such a big stone arch?" "It's just showing off. There's probably a sticker on the back saying 'My Other Grave Is A Porch'".

— Johnny and the Dead

Granddad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, education leaked out, like radioactivity.

— Johnny and the Dead

"Are you a physicist?" "Me? I don't know anything about science!" "Marvellous! Ideal qualification!"

— Johnny and the Dead

Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

— Johnny and the Dead

Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against any decent swordmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off.

— Witches Abroad

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

— Small Gods

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

— Small Gods

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

— Small Gods

The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.

— Small Gods

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

— Small Gods

Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.

— Small Gods

When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.

— Small Gods

"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.

— Small Gods

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

— Small Gods

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."

— Small Gods

"You're not one of us." "I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."

— Small Gods

Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armour plating.

— Small Gods

"All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."

— Small Gods

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

— Small Gods

"Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place."

— Small Gods

"Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!" "Yes, but perhaps he thought that you wanted it."

— Small Gods

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

— Small Gods

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

— Small Gods

"He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done *anything* with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."

— Small Gods

"You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."

— Small Gods

Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

— Small Gods

"All the other prophets came back with commandments!" "Where they get them?" "I ... suppose they made them up." "You get them from the same place."

— Small Gods

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.

— Small Gods

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

— Small Gods

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

— Small Gods

"Now we've got a truth to die for!" "No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

— Small Gods

YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

— Small Gods

"I used to think that *I* was stupid, and then I met philosophers."

— Small Gods

"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."

— Small Gods

"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."

— The many and varied advantages of philosophy, Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"The significant owl hoots in the night."

— Guards! Guards!

Mrs Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small.

— Reaper Man

Nanny could get a statue to cry on her shoulder and say what it really thought about pigeons.

— Maskerade

Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harrassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room.

— Maskerade

It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end.

— Maskerade

"All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is *bastards*."

— The Last Continent

They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past.

— The Last Continent

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.

— Local-body politics explained, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

"Baths is unhygienic," Granny declared. "You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that."

— Taking personal hygiene to new limits, Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualised as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled "Me, who does the telling" and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled "Everyone else".

— The Last Continent

"When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."

— Management slogan, Ridcully-style, Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all.

— The Last Continent

People whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be treated with patience, because it's usually not their fault they were reduced to getting their education from school.

— alt.books.pratchett

The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they were on the day they were baked. *Forged* was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close.

— The Fifth Elephant

You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?

— The Fifth Elephant

Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blur, really quite cheaply."

— The Fifth Elephant

There was no such thing as a dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work.

— The Fifth Elephant

He wasn't strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime (did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again?)

— The Fifth Elephant

He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all.

— The Fifth Elephant

It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase "people are people everywhere" had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren't virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it didn?t cost you anything.

— The Fifth Elephant

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

— The Fifth Elephant

As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small squad of not very efficient soldiers. For defence, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer.

— The Fifth Elephant

She moved like someone who had grown used to her body and, in general, looked like what Vimes had heard described as "a woman of a certain age." He'd never been quite certain what age that was.

— The Fifth Elephant

Her attitude to music was purely ballistic - just point your voice at the end of the verse and go for it.

— Maskerade

he'd twice failed to become Village Idiot through being overqualified.

— Maskerade

Her forehead wrinkled, as it tended to whenever she considered a question more complex than "What's your name?"

— Maskerade

There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was more of a crescendo - the long-drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don't have three hands, and ends with the roinroinroin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning round and round on the floor.

— Maskerade

"They said we should mount guards and they'd take steps." "To the nearest place of safety, no doubt."

— Maskerade

It's easy to hold everything in common when no-one's got anything.

— Maskerade

He counted to one on his fingers. Then he counted to two.

— Maskerade

"We're witches and we will pay our way by curing you of any irritating ailments you have." "I don't have any." "How many would you like?"

— Maskerade

He was considered by Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass to be something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelt right.

— Hogfather

The Quirmian philosopher Ventre put forward the suggestion that "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."

— Hogfather

To him breathing was an intellectual that had to be concentrated on. He could just manage one nostril at a time at the moment.

— Hogfather

Cats that had mastered every detail of feline existence except the location of the dirtbox.

— Hogfather

That statement is either so deep that it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend, or it is a load of absolute tosh.

— Hogfather

Drinks like this tend to get called Traffic Lights or Rainbow's Revenge or, in places where truth is more highly valued, Hello and Goodbye Mr Brain Cell.

— Hogfather

"Divide by cucumber error. Please reinstall universe and reboot."

— Hogfather

"What do you call that warm feeling you get inside?" "Heartburn?"

— Hogfather

"I could certainly run a marvellous university here if only we didn't have to have all these damn students underfoot all the time."

— Hogfather

"I am sure he wouldn't keep eating them if they were addictive."

— Hogfather

"I really should talk to him. He's had a near-death experience!" "We all have. It's called living."

— Hogfather

...although his body had been around quite a lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his head.

— Equal rites

He had that kind of real deep tan that rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when all you really need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open every day.

— Equal rites

Granny knew all about bad fortune telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.

— Equal rites

"That new lad. You know, the one they say has got a whole head full of brains?"

— Equal rites

They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things.

— Equal rites

Cutangle stood with legs planted wide apart, arms akimbo and stomach giving an expression of a beginners' ski slope, the whole of him therefore adopting a pose usually associated with Henry VIII but with an option on Henry IX and X as well.

— Equal rites

"It's not that I don't want (to die)...it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break."

— Reaper Man

While wizards don't believe in gods they know for a fact that gods believe in gods.

— Reaper Man

In the distance a couple were having the kind of quarrel that causes most of the surrounding streets to open their windows and listen in and make notes.

— Reaper Man

Ankh-Morpork has always had a fine tradition of welcoming people of all races, colours and shapes, if they have money to spend and a return ticket.

— Reaper Man

"It's called a shovel... I've seen gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.

— Reaper Man

autocondimentor - someone who will put salt and probably pepper on any mean you put in front of them regardless of how much it's got already and regardless of how it tastes.

— Reaper Man

The patrician (tax-collector) said...it was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged.

— Reaper Man

"She's a (spirit) medium. Well, more a small."

— Reaper Man

"Why does everyone run towards a blood-curdling scream?...It's contrary to all sense."

— Reaper Man

"We'll strategically withdraw to previously prepared position." "Who prepared them?" "we'll prepare them when we get there..."

— Reaper Man

"Have you any last words?" "Yes. I dont want to go."

— Reaper Man

"Why are you called One-man-bucket?" "...In my tribe we're traditionally named after the first thing my mother sees when she looks out of the tepee after the birth. It's short for one-man-pouring-a-bucket-of-water-over-two-dogs." "That's pretty unfortunate." "It's not too bad. It was my twin brother you had to feel sorry for. She looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name." "don't tell me, let me guess. Two-dogs-fighting?" "Two-dogs-fighting? Two-dogs-fighting? Wow, he would have given his right arm to be called Two-dogs-fighting."

— Reaper Man

...the complete carcass of a whole roast pig looked extremely aanoyed at the fact that someone had killed it without waiting for it to finish its apple...

— Sourcery

One of Rincewind's tutors said that 'to call his understanding of magical theory absymal is to leave no suitable world to describe his grasp of its practice.'

— Sourcery

No wizard would normally dream of giving a colleague a leg up unless it was in order to catch them on the hop.

— Sourcery

They looked at each other with mutual. grudging admiration and unlimited mistrust, but at least it was a mistrust each of them felt he could rely on.

— Sourcery

"Quick, you must come with me, you're in great danger!" "Why?" "Because I'll kill you if you dont."

— Sourcery

"my mother ran away before I was born".

— Sourcery

He looked sideways into the leering faces of men who would kill him sooner than think , and in fact would find it a lot easier.

— Sourcery

"Why me?" "For the good of the university. For the honour of wizardry. For the sake of the world. For your heart's desire. And I'll freeze you alive if you don't." Rincewind breathed a sigh almost of relief. He wasnt good on bribes, or cajolery, or appeals to his better nature. But threats, now threats were familiar. He knew where he was with threats.

— Sourcery

"What did it feel like?" "Have you ever been bitten by a viper?" "No." "In that case you'll understand exactly what it felt like." "hmmmm?" "It wasnt like a snake bite at all."

— Sourcery

"I cant swim." "Not a stroke?" "About how deep is the sea here, would you say?" "About a dozen fathoms I believe." "Then I could probably swim about a dozen fathoms, whatever they are."

— Sourcery

River water is incredibly pure - anything that has passed through so many kidneys must be.

— Sourcery

"Today the city, tomorrow the world." "Tomorrow the world, and - " he calculated quickly, "on Friday the universe! Good, that leaves the weekend free..."

— Sourcery

The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist's mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the lift, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. Although, possibly, quicker. And only licensed to carry fourteen people.

— Sourcery

He was staring fixedly at his finger, holding it out at arm's length in a manner that suggested he was very sorry he hadnt got longer arms.

— Sourcery

...stones that were missing him by inches and in some cases, hitting him by kilograms.

— Sourcery

...where his fall was broken by the floor.

— Sourcery

It wasnt lost. It always knew exactly where it was. It was always HERE. It was just that everything else seemed to have been temporarily mislaid.

— Sourcery

"Now hold on a minute." They held on a minute. They held on a further seventeen seconds.

— Sourcery

Rincewind's mind was operating at the speed of continental drift.

— Sourcery

Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before. The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.

— Lords and Ladies

They're back. And everything's all right again. For about five minutes.

— Lords and Ladies

... genuine kings tended to attract young ladies looking for opportunities in the queening department.

— Lords and Ladies

Using a metaphor in front of men as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red rag in front of a bu -- was like putting something very annoyting in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

— Lords and Ladies

The General Theory of L-space suggests that... the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence. (There is a Special Theory as well, but no-one bothers with it much because it's self-evidently a load of marsh gas.

— Lords and Ladies

People were always telling him to make something of his life and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.

— Lords and Ladies

He'd researched what was known of the early days of LAncre, and where eactual evidence was a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom(1) and extrapolated from associated sources(2). (1) Made it up. (2) Had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

— Lords and Ladies