Quotes from Terry Pratchett

The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to practice before doing it for real.

Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.

In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?

Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.

Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realize 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.

The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.

Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.

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

T????'s ?? ??s????, ?????'s ??s? ??. —Death

If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.

The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

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

He said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there.

Cutangle: 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: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.

J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it's big and up close. Sometimes it's a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it's not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Chances are where you find them

DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU, ALBERT.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel--or if there was, it was an oncoming train.

Sometimes words need music too. Sometimes the descriptions are not enough. Books should be written with soundtracks, like films.

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.

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…

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.