Terry Pratchett Quotes

But you can't just leave it at that! said Anathema, pushing forward. Think of all things you could do! Good things.Like what? said Adam suspiciously.Well... you could bring all the whales back, to start with.He put his head on one side. An' that'd stop people killing them?She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes.An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you ask me to do about 'em? said Adam. No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale.

~ Terry Pratchett

You couldn't say: It's not my fault. You couldn't say: It's not my responsibility.You could say: I will deal with this.You didn't have to want to. But you had to do it.

~ Terry Pratchett

There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.

~ Terry Pratchett

Veil, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like zer dark eyes of zer mind back home in Uberwald, zer would be a sudden crash of thunder,' said Otto. 'And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say Yonder is . . . zer castle a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.' He sighed. 'In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.

~ Terry Pratchett

And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say 'Yonder is...zer castle' a volf would be bound to howl mournfully. In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.

~ Terry Pratchett

The only thing more dangerous then a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency...

~ Terry Pratchett

I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.

~ Terry Pratchett

You hardly know me and yet you invited me out on a date,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Why?’Because you called me a phoney, Moist thought. You saw through me straight away. Because you didn’t nail my head to the door with your crossbow. Because you have no small talk. Because I’d like to get to know you better, even though it would be like smooching an ashtray. Because I wonder if you could put into the rest of your life the passion you put into smoking a cigarette. In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I’d like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart… well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better. I’d like to know as much about your soul as you know about mine…He said: ‘Because I hardly know you.’‘If it comes to that, I hardly know you, either,’ said Miss Dearheart.‘I’m rather banking on that,’ said Moist. This got a smile.‘Smooth answer. Slick. Where are we really eating tonight?

~ Terry Pratchett

In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

~ Terry Pratchett

The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.

~ Terry Pratchett

Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

~ Terry Pratchett

It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing.

~ Terry Pratchett

People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but expect dinner to turn up within the hour.

~ Terry Pratchett

One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash.

~ Terry Pratchett

. . . and what are you exactly, my friend? Their subordinate? Their employee? Or, I would suggest, their equal? That's what young Karl would certainly have said, and probably still does. Unless he's no longer alive.' Dodger gave Solomon and strange look and Solomon hastened to clarify. 'Mmmm, as I recall, if you go around telling people that they are downtrodden, you tend to make two separate enemies: the people who are doing the downtreading and have no intention of stopping, and the people who are downtrodden, but nevertheless -- people being who they are -- don't want to know. They can get quite nasty about it.' (205)

~ Terry Pratchett

And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

~ Terry Pratchett

Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly.“It's all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “It's his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.”To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp.

~ Terry Pratchett

It didn't have a name. Animals don't normally bother with them.

~ Terry Pratchett

Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.

~ Terry Pratchett

That’s why we all hate ’em, he thought. Those expressionless eyes watch us, those big faces turn to follow us, and doesn’t it just look as if they’re making notes and taking names? If you heard that one had bashed in someone’s head over in Quirm or somewhere, wouldn’t you just love to believe it? A voice inside, a voice which generally came to him only in the quiet hours of the night or, in the old days, half-way down a whiskey bottle, added: Given how we use them, maybe we’re scared because we know we deserve it…

~ Terry Pratchett

But all this business about kings and lords, it's against basic human dignity. We're all born equal. It makes me sick.''Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick,' said Nobby.'It's Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby.

~ Terry Pratchett

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…

~ Terry Pratchett

His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

~ Terry Pratchett

His parents called him Youngster. They did this in the subconcious hope that he might take the hint. Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of 47.

~ Terry Pratchett

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

~ Terry Pratchett

The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things.

~ Terry Pratchett

Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages.“Why don’t we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?” he said.And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.“It’s got to be worth a try,” he said.

~ Terry Pratchett

He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human—human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls …the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress.

~ Terry Pratchett

One day I'll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you'll be in trouble.

~ Terry Pratchett

I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer,” Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone’s breakfast. He added: “In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room.

~ Terry Pratchett

Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,’ said Carrot‘What, in Ankh-Morpork?’‘Yes, sir.’‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value

~ Terry Pratchett

Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,’ said Carrot'What, in Ankh-Morpork?’Yes, sir.’‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value

~ Terry Pratchett

Doesn't this place give you the creeps? You could perhaps do something with some floral wallpaper and a fire-bomb.

~ Terry Pratchett

It’s bad enough barging into Guild property, but we’ll get into really serious trouble if we shoot anyone. Lord Vetinari won’t stop at sarcasm. He might use’ - Colon swallowed - ‘irony.

~ Terry Pratchett

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.

~ Terry Pratchett

Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.”“Sir?”“It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.”“Sir?”“That’s practically zen.

~ Terry Pratchett

Of course, to be fair, that was a parent's job. The world was so full of sharp bends that if they didn't put a few twists in you, you wouldn't stand a chance of fitting in.

~ Terry Pratchett

I have to ask, sir...Why does it have to be done like this?Vetinari smiled. Can you keep a secret, Mister Lipwig?Oh, yes, sir. I've kept lots.Capital. And the point is, so can I. You do not need to know.

~ Terry Pratchett

You know it’s going to be Mary the Maid, or someone like her, and there’s going to be two men and she will end up with the nice one, and there has to be misunderstandings, and they never do anything more than kiss and it’s absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exciting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not going to happen. The best you can expect is a thunderstorm.

~ Terry Pratchett

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. [Fred. Free.]

~ Terry Pratchett