Quotes from Terry Pratchett

You're saying,' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.

It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming. No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand.

as self-centered as a tornado

No-one likes being told it's their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it's your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel—merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

Governments govern, but prime ministers and presidents do not personally turn up in people's homes to tell them how to run their lives, because of the mortal danger this would present. There are laws instead.

71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn't believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren't true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed.

The gods help those who help themselves, and my word, didn't I help myself.

I wouldn't say I'm the best, she said, but I can't think of anyone better, I have to say.

The anger rose up, joyfully. 'Yes! I'm me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!

Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers.

as well balanced as an upturned pyramid.

They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.

For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they're human is a tragedy. For a cat, it's an experience.

One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash.

here is the new thing and here it is. And yesterday you never thought about it and after today you don't know what you would do without it. That was what the technology was doing. It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round.

DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE. -Death

Yes, she'd made a mistake... but she wasn't going to be bullied. You couldn't let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people's watercolors.

the world kept turning and the Turtle moved.

What the gods said was heard by each combatant in his own language, and according to his own understanding. It boiled down to: I. This is Not a Game. II. Here and Now, You are Alive.

They say this fruit be like unto the world / So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man / So red without and yet within, unclue'd / We find the worm, the rot, the flaw. / However glows his bloom the bite / Proves many a man be rotten at the core.

She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder. In the silence of the woods, Polly turned. I can't see her, she said. I am happy for you, said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug. But I didn't see anything, said Polly. No, said Wazzer. But you turned around...

Vimes' glare ran from face to face, causing most of the squad to do an immediate impression of the Floorboard and Ceiling Inspectors Synchronised Observation Team.

being assassinated is natural causes for a king.