Terry Pratchett Quotes

That's a nice song,' said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time. It's an old soldiers' song,' he said. Really, sarge? But it's about angels.' Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits. As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,’ he said. 'I've seen old men cry when they sing it,’ he added. Why? It sounds cheerful.' They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.

~ Terry Pratchett

ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.Death took a step backwards.It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.Death glanced sideways at the servants. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

~ Terry Pratchett

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

~ Terry Pratchett

IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT /MEANT/ TO BE SAFE.

~ Terry Pratchett

How do you get all those coins? asked Mort.IN PAIRS.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.

~ Terry Pratchett

OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?

~ Terry Pratchett

The reaper does not listen to the harvest.

~ Terry Pratchett

WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?

~ Terry Pratchett

YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.That's what being alive is all about.

~ Terry Pratchett

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.GOOD MORNING.Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.'Are you Death?'IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.'I'm going to die?'POSSIBLY.'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.'What's that?'I'M NOT SURE.'That's very helpful.

~ Terry Pratchett

BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE RATHER STUPID AND WASTE THEIR LIVES. HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT? HAVE YOU NOT LOOKED DOWN FROM THE HORSE AT A CITY AND THOUGHT HOW MUCH IT RESEMBLED AN ANT HEAP, FULL OF BLIND CREATURES WHO THINK THEIR MUNDANE LITTLE WORLD WAS REAL? YOU SEE THE LIGHTED WINDOWS AND WHAT YOU WANT TO THINK IS THAT THERE MAY BE MANY INTERESTING STORIES BEHIND THEM, BUT WHAT YOU KNOW IS THAT REALLY THERE ARE JUST DULL, DULL SOULS, MERE CONSUMERS OF FOOD, WHO THINK THEIR INSTINCTS ARE EMOTIONS AND THEIR TINY LITTLE LIVES OF MORE ACCOUNT THAN A WHISPER OF WIND.The blue glow was bottmless. It seemed to be sucking her own thoughts out of her mind.'No,' whispered Susan, 'no, I've never thought like that.'Death stood up abruptly and turned away. YOU MAY FIND OUT THAT IT HELPS, he said.

~ Terry Pratchett

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

~ Terry Pratchett

The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.

~ Terry Pratchett

Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?

~ Terry Pratchett

Do you know how wizards like to be buried?Yes!Well, how?Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.Reluctantly.

~ Terry Pratchett

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

~ Terry Pratchett

Then Carrot said, It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say.What? Vimes' sudden rage was like a thunderclap. Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference -

~ Terry Pratchett

Maladict had hallucinations, but Wazzer had a certainty you could bend steel around. It was the opposite of a hallucination, somehow. It was as if she could see what was real and you couldn't.

~ Terry Pratchett

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

~ Terry Pratchett

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

~ Terry Pratchett

Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.

~ Terry Pratchett

That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!

~ Terry Pratchett

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!

~ Terry Pratchett

What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

~ Terry Pratchett

Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.

~ Terry Pratchett

Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

~ Terry Pratchett

On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

~ Terry Pratchett

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

~ Terry Pratchett

The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

~ Terry Pratchett

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

~ Terry Pratchett

You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.

~ Terry Pratchett

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

~ Terry Pratchett

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

~ Terry Pratchett

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying O great table, without whom we are as naught. Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.

~ Terry Pratchett

Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

~ Terry Pratchett

When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

~ Terry Pratchett

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

~ Terry Pratchett

It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing' people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.

~ Terry Pratchett