Quotes from Terry Pratchett

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.

I let you sleep, Sam, said Lady Sybil. You didn't get in this morning until after three. Everyone's double-shifting, dear, said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. I've got to set a good example. I'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning, said Sybil.

Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority—everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.

And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is me?

It dawned on him—very slowly, because it was a completely new sensation—that someone in the world was frightened of him. The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law.

No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept resonated in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were...sort of...bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical.

Between every rational moment were a billion irrational ones.

Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers.

Ah, I know that, said Tiffany, as the boat rocked on the swell. Whales aren't dangerous, because they just eat very small things... Row like the blazes, lads! Rob Anybody yelled.

It was so loud and so deep, it wasn't really sound at all, just something that turned the air hard and then hit you with it.

He looked up at them, a scruffy Napoleon with his laces trailing, exiled to a rose-trellised Elba.

Behind him the Master of Ceremonies cleared his throat. His eyes took on a distant, glazed look. The Stealer of Souls, he said in the faraway voice of one whose ears aren't hearing what his mouth is saying, "Defeater of Empires, Swallower of Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind, the— ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. I CAN SEE MYSELF IN.

I know nothing about her. Just some books, and some stories she tried to tell me, and things I didn't understand, and I remember big red soft hands and that smell. I never knew who she really was. I mean, she must have been nine too, once.

Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down.

Artists and writers have always had a rather exaggerated idea about what goes on at a witches' sabbat. This comes from spending too much time in small rooms with the curtains drawn, instead of getting out in the healthy fresh air. For example, there's the dancing around naked. In the average temperate climate there are very few nights when anyone would dance around at midnight with no clothes on, quite apart from the question of stones, thistles, and sudden hedgehogs.

Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought. And because the theater was fiction made flesh, she hated the theater most of all. But that was it—hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.

Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in.

He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus.

all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot.

There are no maps. You can't map a sense of humor.

The three thieves looked around. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they received a general impression of armourality, with strong overtones of helmetness.

Things were simpler then. And also very, very stupid.

It's supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly... and other things ending in olly.

To his mild surprise, the men were still out in the yard. Someone had even hung up the swordsmanship targets, which would certainly be helpful if the watch-men were faced with an enemy who was armless and tied to a pole.