Quotes from Terry Pratchett

That's the trouble about the good guys and the bad guys! They're all guys!

Right! Right! You can get there! I can get there! You're a natural at counting to two! I'm a nat'ral at counting to two! If you can count to two, you can count to anything! If I can count to two, I can count to anything! And then the world is your mollusc! My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings. She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun...

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.

STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A... A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT.

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

I heard the Empire has a tyrannical and repressive government! What form of government is that? said Ponder Stibbons. A tautology, said the Dean, from above.

The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain.

Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants.

We play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style.

We are as gods to beasts of the field. We order the time of their birth and the time of their death. Between times, we have a duty.

Twoflower didn't just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew--he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.

Granny disapproved of magic for domestic purposes, but she was annoyed. She also wanted her tea. She threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrassment.

Escapism isn't good or bad of itself. What is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to. I write from experience, since in my case I escaped to the idea that books could be really enjoyable, an aspect of reading that teachers had not hitherto suggested.

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold... It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs. -Can we? -Damned if I know. I can't. -Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could. -Can you? -No! -Ah-ha!

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there's food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be.

Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere, said the toad. You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs. But this is a real place! So? That's what they believe. Besides, they're only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there's room? I'm a toad, so you'll appreciate that I'm having to guess a lot here.

Under the table, Greebo sat and washed himself. Occasionally he burped. Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but never managed it from the cat.

Corporal Nobbs," he rasped, "why are you kicking people when they're down?" "Safest way, sir," said Nobby. Nobby had long ago been told about fighting fair and not striking a fallen opponent, and had then given some creative thought to how these rules applied to someone four feet tall with the muscle tone of an elastic band.

My granny used to say if you're too sharp you'll cut yourself

I don't reckon it's allowed, going round setting fire to people," said Adam. "Otherwise people'd be doin' it all the time." "It's all right if you're religious," said Brian reassuringly. "And it stops the witches from goin' to Hell, so I expect they'd be quite grateful if they understood it properly.

There's no a lot of laughs in an underworld. This one used to be called Limbo, ya ken, 'cause the door was verra low.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?