Quotes from Terry Pratchett

Where do you get your fantastic ideas from? You steal them. You steal them from reality. It outstrips fantasy most the time.

The office of Master of Traditions had fallen inevitably on Ponder Stibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought that things should happen on time and that numbers should add up.

One said, Tell us…what is it like? "What is what like?" One said, Being insane. Being human.

Wizards, like cats, can see Death.

I get depressed with these fluffy dragons and noble elves. Elves were never noble. They were cruel bastards. And I dislike heroes. You can't trust the buggers. They always let you down. I don't believe in the natural nobility of kings, because a large percentage of them in our history have turned out to be power-crazed idiots. And I certainly don't believe in the wisdom of wizards. I've worked with their modern equivalents, and I know what I'm talking about.

And he goes around killing people?" said Mort. He shook his head. "There's no justice." Death sighed. No, he said... there's just me.

The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law.

Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you'll see what I mean.

Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that makes us human.

Most people will shy away from killing people they haven't been introduced to.

Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A, said the Bursar. The table fell silent. Did anyone understand that? said Ridcully. The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity som time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was quite often coherent, although not by normal human standards.

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?

He waited patiently until the uproar had died away. It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'.

A year ago astronomers across the Discworld had been puzzled to see the stars gently wheel across the sky as the world-turtle executed a roll. The thickness of the world never allowed them to see why, but Great A'Tuin's ancient head had snaked out and down and had snapped right out of the sky the speeding asteroid that would, had it hit, have meant that no one would ever have needed to buy a diary ever again.

He always says that,' muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. 'He knows I don't like being married to a duchess.' 'I thought you and Lady Sybil-' 'Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'It's just the duchess bit I don't like.

He isn't looking at the view because his past life keeps flashing in front of his eyes and getting in the way

I DON'T WANT TO GO.

Nanny Ogg was about to say: What? You mean not compliant and self-effacing like what you is, Esme? But she stopped herself. You didn't juggle matches in a fireworks factory.

There was, indeed, no life. Stillness and silence ruled here. In fact Tiffany, who cared a lot about getting words right, would have said it was a hush, which is not the same as silence. A hush is what you get in cathedrals at midnight.

As I am sure some of you know, I boast of the fact that for a couple of years I was a volunteer librarian, working weekends for no more reward than a cup of tea, a sweet biscuit, and a blind eye to the enormous number of books that I was taking home.

Tell the wee hag who we are, lads," said the helmet twiddler. There was the scrape of many small swords being drawn and thrust into the air. "Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it up and extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

all freedom is limited, artificial, and therefore illusory, a shared hallucination at best. No sane mortal is truly free, because true freedom is so terrible that only the mad or the divine can face it with open eyes.

all men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear[...]