Quotes About Terry Pratchett

Pollution removed his helmet and shook out his long white hair. He had taken over when Pestilence, muttering about penicillin, had retired in 1936.

You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant. You mean the sledgehammer, sir? Yes.

If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.

It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

And what do you really do? asked Tiffany. The thin witch hesitated for a moment, and then: We look to ... the edges, said Mistress Weatherwax. There's a lot of edges, more than people know. Between life and death, this world and the next, night and day, right and wrong ... an' they need watchin'. We watch 'em, we guard the sum of things. And we never ask for any reward. That's important.

The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

The universe, they say, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness.

Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child.

Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word revenue, which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word scum.

Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people.

Hell needed horribly bright, self-centered people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage

They shed a rather unpleasant glow that didn't so much illuminate, as outline the darkness.

The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.

Not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favor of unnatural things.' Vetinari looked perplexed. 'You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?

So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn't received and that might have been eaten by gargoyles.

And then there was the headless horseman! said Tiffany. He had no head! Well, that is the major job qualification, said the toad.

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.

Don't you want to die nobly for a just cause? I'd much rather live quietly for one.

Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn't trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.

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.

As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo's realisation that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before. The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more.