Discworld Quotes

You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.IT'S EDUCATIONAL.'What if she cuts herself?'THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.

~ Terry Pratchett

Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of time.

~ Terry Pratchett

Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!

~ Terry Pratchett

History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

~ Terry Pratchett

Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, atbirthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweetdeprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took anysweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not takingall the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eatthem all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burstinto tears.

~ Terry Pratchett

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it upand extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

~ Terry Pratchett

Is somethin' wrong? said Daft Wullie.Aye! snapped the kelda. Rob willnae tak' a drink o' Special Sheep Liniment!Wullie's little face screwed up in instant grief.Ach, the Big Man's deid! he sobbed. Oh waily waily waily - Will ye hush yer gob, ye big mudlin! shouted Rob Anybody, standing up. I am no' deid! I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man cannae feel the chilly winds o' Fate lashing aroound his nethers wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?

~ Terry Pratchett

Sybil’s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars.  The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

~ Terry Pratchett

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

~ Terry Pratchett

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

~ Terry Pratchett

His granny taught him to read, see. I reckon it overheated his mind.

~ 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

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

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

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

Gods didn’t mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief …

~ Terry Pratchett

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

~ Terry Pratchett

Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered. And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere.

~ Terry Pratchett

Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that.

~ Terry Pratchett

The end of times? said Nanny. Look, Tiff, Esme tol' me to say, if you want to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don't mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories - they're there to be cherished.

~ Terry Pratchett

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?‘Yes. Yes, of course.’Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

~ 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

There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people don't know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadow's width away.

~ Terry Pratchett

On the Kite, the situation was being 'workshopped'. This is the means by which people who don't know anything get together to pool their ignorance.

~ Terry Pratchett

On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.

~ Terry Pratchett

Silverfish looked down.Oh. Are you a dwarf?Cuddy gave him a blank stare.Are you a giant? He said.Me? Of course not!Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes.

~ Terry Pratchett

Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.

~ Terry Pratchett

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

~ 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

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

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

~ Terry Pratchett

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

~ Terry Pratchett

For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.

~ Terry Pratchett

Susan stared at him.The blue glow in Death’s eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and into the darkness beyond……which went on and on, for ever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone.

~ Terry Pratchett

I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a damp square of cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er ... what is it?'ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.'Oh ...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah...'IT WAS NOT AT ALL COOPERATIVE.'Really ...?'IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL.

~ Terry Pratchett

Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.

~ Terry Pratchett

never ask the tight-rope walker how he keeps his balance. if he stops to think about it, he falls off

~ Terry Pratchett

All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.

~ Terry Pratchett