Quotes from Terry Pratchett

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

A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch, Carrot drew himself up proudly, because someone's taken a book ? You think that's worse than murder? The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like What's so bad about genocide?

Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.

This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.

Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about, said the voice of Maurice. They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.

Oh yes? Can you identify yourself? -Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.

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.

People aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances.

He's out of his depth on a wet pavement.

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

Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

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

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.

We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.

But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

If per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged

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.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

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...

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.

The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, "What about me?" and you can just hear the universe replying, "Well, what about you?"

HOROSCOPE: Today is a good time for making new friends. A good deed may have unforeseen consequences. Don't upset any druids. You will soon be going on a very strange journey. Your lucky food is small cucumbers. People pointing knives at you are probably up to no good. PS, we really mean it about the druids.

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