Terry Pratchett Quotes

That was an important rule of any game: always make it easy for people to give you money.

~ Terry Pratchett

A flicker of defiance flared very briefly in Rincewind's battered heart.

~ Terry Pratchett

And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. 'cos it's *magic*. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!

~ Terry Pratchett

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

~ Terry Pratchett

Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

~ Terry Pratchett

He had never been interested in stories at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period.

~ Terry Pratchett

What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?

~ Terry Pratchett

The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European sophistication. The idea has been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off.There are no maps. You can't map a sense of humour. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

~ Terry Pratchett

Farther down the riverbank sat a young man dressed all in white. He was the only person in sight. His hair was white, his skin chalk pale, and he sat and stared up and down the river, as if he were admiring the view. He looked like how Victorian Romantic poets looked just before the consumption and drug abuse really started to cut it. --Good Omens pg.191-192

~ Terry Pratchett

You totally ruined my life, you know that?' said Rincewind hotly. 'I could have really made it as a wizard if you hadn't decided to use me as a sort of portable spellbook. I can't remember any other spells, they're all too frightened to stay in the same head as you!

~ Terry Pratchett

Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library.Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot.Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing.Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until the end fell off.Then he ate it.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was a Guild of Assassins, after all. Black was what you wore. The night was black and so were you. And black had such style, and an Assassin without style, everyone agreed, was just a highly paid arrogant thug.

~ Terry Pratchett

Then Tak looked upon the stone and it was trying to come alive, and Tak smiled, and wrote All things strive.And for the service the stone had given, he fashioned it into the first Troll, and delighted in the life that came unbidden.

~ Terry Pratchett

When Geoffrey was away, the goat often took himself off. He had soon got the goats at Granny’s cottage doing his bidding, and Nanny Ogg said once that she had seen what she called ‘that devil goat’ sitting in the middle of a circle of feral goats up in the hills. She named him ‘The Mince of Darkness’ because of his small and twinkling hooves, and added, ‘Not that I don’t like him, stinky as he is. I’ve always been one for the horns, as you might say. Goats is clever. Sheep ain’t. No offence, my dear.

~ Terry Pratchett

You want fantasy? Here's one... There's this species that lives on a planet a few miles above molten rock and a few miles below a vacuum that'd suck the air right out of them. They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface. As far as they can tell, there's nowhere else in the universe where they could stay alive for ten seconds. And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time? They call it real life.

~ Terry Pratchett

Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewelry into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic.

~ Terry Pratchett

Too much alleged ‘fantasy’ is just empty sugar, life with the crusts cut off.

~ Terry Pratchett

- Surely you have considered terrorist activity?There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours.-- The BBC interviews a nuclear spokesperson (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

~ Terry Pratchett

I just think the world ought to be more sort of organized.''That's just fantasy,' said Twoflower.'I know. That's the trouble.' Rincewind sighed again.

~ Terry Pratchett

Humans need fantasy to be human.

~ Terry Pratchett

Fantasy imposes order on the universe. Or, at least, it superimposes order on the universe. And it is a human order. Reality tells us that we exist for a brief, beleaguered span in a cold infinity; fantasy tells us that the figures in the foreground are important. Fantasy peoples the alien Outside, and it doesn’t matter a whole lot if it peoples it with good guys or bad guys. Putting ‘Hy-Brasil’ on the map is a step in the right direction, but if you can’t manage that, then ‘Here Be Dragons is better than nothing. Better than the void.

~ Terry Pratchett

In fact the Gods were as puzzled by all this as the wizards were, but they were powerless to do anything and in any case were engaged in an eons-old battle with the Ice Giants, who had refused to return the lawnmower.

~ Terry Pratchett

Preston, I don't think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.

~ Terry Pratchett

The living often don’t appreciate how complicated the world looks when you are dead, because while death frees the mind from the straitjacket of three dimensions it also cuts it away from Time, which is only another dimension. So while the cat that rubbed up against his invisible legs was undoubtedly the same cat that he had seen a few minutes before, it was also quite clearly a tiny kitten and a fat, half-blind old moggy and every stage in between. All at once. Since it had started off small it looked like a white, catshaped carrot, a description that will have to do until people invent proper four-dimensional adjectives.

~ Terry Pratchett

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

~ Terry Pratchett

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

~ Terry Pratchett

Adora Belle fought back, and to make sure fought back even before she was attacked.

~ Terry Pratchett

There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.

~ Terry Pratchett

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

~ Terry Pratchett

That's No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,' said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. 'Ye were one jock short,' he added helpfully.

~ Terry Pratchett

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.

~ Terry Pratchett

My personal theory is that he has a very firm grasp upon reality, it's simply not a reality the rest of us have ever met before.

~ Terry Pratchett

Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.

~ Terry Pratchett

Reality so often fails when it comes to small, satisfying details, she thought.

~ Terry Pratchett

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

~ Terry Pratchett

Positive thinking,' he would say, 'is also very important.

~ Terry Pratchett

He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.

~ Terry Pratchett

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm. At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

~ Terry Pratchett

You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree.One of the giants grinned at him.Druellae snorted. Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?

~ Terry Pratchett

The Dean leaned toward an ear.“I was saying,” he said loudly, “that we didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘sex’ when we were young.”“That’s true. That’s very true,” said Poons. He stared reflectively at the flames. “Did we ever, mm, find out, do you remember?

~ Terry Pratchett