Quotes from Terry Pratchett

Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along. Fate wins.

I'm not bloody well going to have it, understand? Vimes shouted, shaking the ape back and forth. Oook, the Librarian pointed out, patiently. What? Oh. Sorry. Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue out of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 pounds of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.

Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad.

I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee.

Then there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful.

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.

The people who guard the rainbow don't like those who get in the way of the sun.

Tiffany's Second Thoughts said: Hang on, was that a First Thought? And Tiffany thought: No, that was a Third Thought. I'm thinking about how I think about what I'm thinking. At least, I think so. Her Second Thoughts said: Let's all calm down, please, because this is quite a small head.

What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it?

Then Carrot said, It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say. What? Vimes' sudden rage was like a thunderclap. Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference -

People ought to think for themselves... The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. (Corporal Carrot)

Who really knew what evil lurked in the heart of men? ME. Who knew what sane men were capable of? STILL ME, I'M AFRAID. Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn't going in there again. No wonder it stank here. YOU CAN'T HEAR ME, CAN YOU? OH. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT, said Death, and waited.

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.

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless.

Death was hereditary. You got it from your ancestors.

It's a bad case o' the thinkin' he's caught, missus. When a man starts messin' wi' the readin' and the writin' then he'll come doon with a dose o' the thinkin' soon enough. I'll fetch some o' the lads and we'll hold his heid under water until he stops doin' it, 'tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin'.

He quite liked the English. They tended to say sorry a lot, which was quite understandable given their heritage and the crimes of their ancestors.

There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins.

Horses, Death felt, shouldn't grin. Any horse that was grinning was planning something.

There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore 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. Amazing.

He wanted one drink, and understood precisely why he wasn't going to have one. One drink ended up arriving in a dozen glasses.

Don't you *ever* let go? I haven't yet. Why? I suppose... because in this world, after everyone panics, there's always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe.

If you took the world away and just left the elctricity, it would look like the most exquisite filigree ever made - a ball of twinkling silver lines with the occasional coruscating spike of a satellite beam. Even the dark areas would glow with radar and commercial radio waves. It could be the nervous system of a great beast.