Terry Pratchett Quotes

They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.

That was messages without meaning: telepathy without brains.

Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards.

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

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

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. (...)You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.

Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.

She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn't going.

Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.

And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

And just when you’d think [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they occasionally showed more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.

She sniffed, and smiled a bit, but not too much because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesn't understand you it's someone who understands perfectly, before you've had a chance to have a good pout about not being understood.

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things--unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog...

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 halfway 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.

...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here.

Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back, or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah, and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs, and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time

There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own.

If women were as good as men they'd be a lot better!

Falling isn’t so bad, you know. It’s only the landing that hurts.

I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse."Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!

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

Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.

He thought of the deep crevasses and windy caves of Underlay, and the stories of the creatures that dwelt there. Of course, he didn’t believe in them. He’d told them, because the handing on of an oral mythology was very important to a developing culture, but he didn’t believe in supernatural monsters. He shivered. He hoped they didn’t believe in him.

Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze.

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on

One day I'll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you'll be in trouble.

You mean it's my destiny? she said at last.Granny shrugged. Something like that. Probably. Who knows?

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

The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

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

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

Amazin'.' he said again. 'He just looks as though he's thinking, right?''Er...yes.''But he's not actually thinking?''Er...no.''So...he just gives the impression of thinking but really it's just a show?''Er...yes.'Just like everyone else, then really,' said Ridcully

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

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

To Tiffany's surprise, Nanny Ogg was weeping gently. Nanny took another swig from her flagon and wiped her eyes. 'Cryin' helps sometimes,' she said. 'No shame in tears for them as you've loved. Sometimes I remember one of my husbands and shed a tear or two. The memories're there to be treasured, and it's no good to get morbid-like about it.

I guess the truth is nobody told this smart kid that communication between such divergent life forms was impossible, so he just went ahead and did it anyhow.

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

the whole point of the wish business was to see to it that what the client got was exactly what he asked for and exactly what he didn't really want.

There's one thing you can say for air pollution, you get utterly amazing sunrises.

Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust "Mothers of Borogravia!" and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust?Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...

I don’t think it's weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength, if you ask me.

You’d better tell me what you know, toad,” said Tiffany. “Miss Tick isn’t here. I am.”“Another world is colliding with this one,” said the toad. “There. Happy now? That’s what Miss Tick thinks. But it’s happening faster than she expected. All the monsters are coming back.”“Why?”“There’s no one to stop them.”There was silence for a moment.“There’s me,” said Tiffany.

You don't need none of that," she said. "You need headology.

If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.

A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows.

There is never a bad time for a pun. There’s also never really a good time for a pun. You might as well just stay braced for a pun at all times, and ride them when they come with as much grace as you can manage.The fact that you can replace ‘pun’ with ‘disaster’ in the last three rules says a lot about the human race.

But...well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.

Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.

But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.

Tiffany jumped when she saw a balloon sail up above the trees, catch the wind, and swoop away, but it turned out to be just a balloon and not a lump of excess Brian. She could tell this because it was followed by a long scream of rage mixed with a roar of complaint: “AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!” which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg!

Probably went swimming and got eaten by a pineapple.

How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.

The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn't have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn't. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no one was suffering they didn't enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness.

Insanity is catching.

Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.