Terry Pratchett Quotes

A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows.

~ Terry Pratchett

The sun set, which is everyday magic...

~ Terry Pratchett

Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.“Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.

~ Terry Pratchett

She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need.

~ Terry Pratchett

A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.

~ Terry Pratchett

You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.Vimes blinked at her.Pardon?' he said.It's wounded!'Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said

~ Terry Pratchett

You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant... If I don't help them, who will?

~ Terry Pratchett

The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

~ Terry Pratchett

You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.

~ Terry Pratchett

The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

~ Terry Pratchett

Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.

~ Terry Pratchett

I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.

~ Terry Pratchett

It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

~ Terry Pratchett

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

~ Terry Pratchett

Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.

~ Terry Pratchett

When people talk about their great past they're usually trying to excuse the mediocre present.

~ Terry Pratchett

There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.

~ Terry Pratchett

Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography.

~ Terry Pratchett

Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.

~ Terry Pratchett

It is a mystery,' said Detritus.Vimes grinned mirthlessly. It was a mystery. And he didn't like mysteries. Mysteries had a way of getting bigger if you didn't solve them quickly. Mysteries pupped.

~ Terry Pratchett

And now the birds were singing overhead, and there was a soft rustling in the undergrowth, and all the sounds of the forest that showed that life was still being lived blended with the souls of the dead in a woodland requiem. The whole forest now sang for Granny Weatherwax.

~ Terry Pratchett

-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?-Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.

~ Terry Pratchett

Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft.When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.

~ Terry Pratchett

Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.

~ Terry Pratchett

Mister Rob Anybody and sundry others? said one of the figures in a dreadful voice.There's naebody here o' that name! shouted Rob Anybody. We dinna know anythin'!We have here a list of criminal and civil charges totaling nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three separate offenses-We wasna there! yelled Rob Anybody desperately. Isn't that right, lads?-including more than two thousand cases of Making an Affray, Causing a Public Nuisance, Being Found Drunk, Being Found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven cases of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anyone Else Could Understand It), Committing a Breach of the Peace, Malicious Lingering-It's mistaken identity! shouted Rob Anybody. It's no' oour fault! We wuz only standing there an' someone else did it and ran awa'!-Grand Theft, Petty Theft, Burglary, Housebreaking, Loitering with Intent to Commit a Felony-We wuz misunderstood when we was wee bairns! yelled Rob Anybody. Ye're only picking on us 'cause we're blue! We always get blamed for everythin'! The polis hate us! We wasna even in the country!

~ Terry Pratchett

Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?

~ Terry Pratchett

(About a cookbook...)- What about this one? Maids of Honor?- Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.

~ Terry Pratchett

Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder--which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.

~ Terry Pratchett

He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

~ Terry Pratchett

Quite amazing, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig?’ he said cheerfully through the smoke. ‘Though isn’t it a pity that they can only run on rails? I can’t imagine what the world would be like if everyone had their own steam locomotive. Abominable.

~ Terry Pratchett

Aargh! I’m too short for this shit!

~ Terry Pratchett

For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.

~ Terry Pratchett

... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative.

~ Terry Pratchett

There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can't take it any more.

~ Terry Pratchett

I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.

~ Terry Pratchett

Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables... There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.

~ Terry Pratchett

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

~ Terry Pratchett

Measurements is your saving grace if you want to raise steam.

~ Terry Pratchett

TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

~ Terry Pratchett