Terry Pratchett Quotes - Page 7

Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
Terry Pratchett
TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
Terry Pratchett
Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.
Terry Pratchett
Measurements is your saving grace if you want to raise steam.
Terry Pratchett
He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.
Terry Pratchett
Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables... There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.
Terry Pratchett
I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.
Terry Pratchett
There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can't take it any more.
Terry Pratchett
... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative.
Terry Pratchett
Oh, that's just Thud! That's easy!" yapped a voice.Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief."I used to play it when I was a kid," he burbled. It's boring. The dwarfs always win!"Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: While I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplummable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry.
Terry Pratchett
Aargh! I’m too short for this shit!
Terry Pratchett
For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.
Terry Pratchett
Quite amazing, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig?’ he said cheerfully through the smoke. ‘Though isn’t it a pity that they can only run on rails? I can’t imagine what the world would be like if everyone had their own steam locomotive. Abominable.
Terry Pratchett
What some people need," said Magrat, to the world in general, "is a bit more heart.""What some people need," said Granny Weatherwax, to the stormy sky, "is a lot more brain."Then she clutched at her hat to stop the wind from blowing i
Terry Pratchett
Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder--which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.
Terry Pratchett
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.
Terry Pratchett
(About a cookbook...)- What about this one? Maids of Honor?- Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.
Terry Pratchett
Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?
Terry Pratchett
Mister Rob Anybody and sundry others?" said one of the figures in a dreadful voice."There's naebody here o' that name!" shouted Rob Anybody. "We dinna know anythin'!""We have here a list of criminal and civil charges totaling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offenses-""We wasna there!" yelled Rob Anybody desperately. "Isn't that right, lads?""-including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven cases of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering-""It's mistaken identity!" shouted Rob Anybody. "It's no' oour fault! We wuz only standing there an' someone else did it and ran awa'!""-Grand Theft, Petty Theft, Burglary, Housebreaking, Loitering with Intent to Commit a Felony-""We wuz misunderstood when we was wee bairns!" yelled Rob Anybody. "Ye're only picking on us 'cause we're blue! We always get blamed for everythin'! The polis hate us! We wasna even in the country!
Terry Pratchett
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
Terry Pratchett
Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft.When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.
Terry Pratchett
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.
Terry Pratchett
-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?-Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.
Terry Pratchett
And now the birds were singing overhead, and there was a soft rustling in the undergrowth, and all the sounds of the forest that showed that life was still being lived blended with the souls of the dead in a woodland requiem. The whole forest now sang for Granny Weatherwax.
Terry Pratchett
It is a mystery,' said Detritus.Vimes grinned mirthlessly. It was a mystery. And he didn't like mysteries. Mysteries had a way of getting bigger if you didn't solve them quickly. Mysteries pupped.
Terry Pratchett
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
Terry Pratchett
Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography.
Terry Pratchett
There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.
Terry Pratchett
When people talk about their great past they're usually trying to excuse the mediocre present.
Terry Pratchett
Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.
Terry Pratchett
And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?
Terry Pratchett
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.
Terry Pratchett
Why us?" he said. "Why is it happening to us?""Everything has to happen to someone," said Ginger.
Terry Pratchett
I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.
Terry Pratchett
Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.
Terry Pratchett
The fastest way to travel is to be there already.
Terry Pratchett
You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.
Terry Pratchett
The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.
Terry Pratchett
You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant... If I don't help them, who will?
Terry Pratchett
You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.Vimes blinked at her.Pardon?' he said.It's wounded!'Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said
Terry Pratchett
A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.
Terry Pratchett
She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need.
Terry Pratchett
Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.“Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.
Terry Pratchett
The sun set, which is everyday magic...
Terry Pratchett
The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odor.The gray light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest.They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been.It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road toward Holy Wood and was soon out of sight. A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box.It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming.Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn.One of the farmers nudged the other."Oi've seen this on the clicks," he said. "It's always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens."His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe."It'd be a sight worth seeing that," he said."Sure would.""'Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage."There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly toward the road.The farmers looked at one another."Well, dang me," said one of them.
Terry Pratchett
A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows.
Terry Pratchett
That's what you people never understand," said Rincewind, wearily. "You think magic is just something you can pick up and use like a, a -""Parsnip?" said Nijel."Wine Bottle?" said the Seriph."Something like that," said Rincewind cautiously, but rallied somewhat and went on, "But the truth is, is -""Not like that?""More like a wine bottle?" said the Seriph hopefully."Magic uses people," said Rincewind hurriedly. "It affects you as much as you affect it, sort of thing. You can't mess around with magical things without it affecting you. I just thought I'd better warn you.""Like a wine bottle," said Creosote, "that -""- drinks you back," said Rincewind.
Terry Pratchett
It's witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is ALL crusts.
Terry Pratchett
Look at it like this, it's not that we're making life, we're simply giving life a place to live.
Terry Pratchett
It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.
Terry Pratchett
Time travel was only a kind of magic, after all. That's why it always went wrong.
Terry Pratchett
Haven’t you got any romance in your soul?’ said Magrat plaintively. ‘No,’ said Granny. 'I ain’t. 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. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What’s real, what’s not real, and what’s the difference.
Terry Pratchett
... darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simplyits absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side ofdarkness, the light fantastic.It was a rather disappointing purple colour.
Terry Pratchett
Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?
Terry Pratchett
It took place in the midnight in the University's Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.
Terry Pratchett
Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.
Terry Pratchett
Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.
Terry Pratchett
What is magic?There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.
Terry Pratchett
We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.'Precisely,' said a passing bush.
Terry Pratchett
It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.
Terry Pratchett