Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

Terry Pratchett
Death isn't online. If he was, there would be a sudden drop in the death rate. Although it'd be interesting to see if he'd post things like: DON'T YOU THINK I SOUND LIKE JAMES EARL JONES?

Terry Pratchett
Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.

Terry Pratchett
I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?' If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?

Terry Pratchett
Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They've got a mean streak.

Terry Pratchett
Heaven has no taste." "Now-" "And not one single sushi restaurant." A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.

Terry Pratchett
You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

Terry Pratchett
Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both.

Terry Pratchett
It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?

Terry Pratchett
Personal's not the same as important. People just think it is.

Terry Pratchett
They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.

Terry Pratchett
She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense, because probably AFTER you had walked a mile in their shoes, you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes—although, of course, you could probably outrun them, owing to their lack of footwear.

Terry Pratchett
This is Morbidia," said Vlad. "Although she's been calling herself Tracy lately, to be cool.

Terry Pratchett
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

Terry Pratchett
In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language.

Terry Pratchett
We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.' Precisely,' said a passing bush.

Terry Pratchett
And these are your reasons, my lord?" "Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent." Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.

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
Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?

Terry Pratchett
If cats looked like frogs we'd realise what nasty cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.

Terry Pratchett
I was thinking of 'duh?' in the sense of 'a sentence containing several words more than three letters long, and possibly requiring general knowledge or a sense of history that extends past last Tuesday, has been used in my presence.'

Terry Pratchett
YOU FEAR TO DIE? "It's not that I don't want... I mean, I've always...it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break...

Terry Pratchett
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

Terry Pratchett
Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short.

Terry Pratchett
And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.

Terry Pratchett
Vimes had got around to a Clean Desk policy. It was a Clean Floor strategy that eluded him at the moment.

Terry Pratchett
As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was.

Terry Pratchett
We were born vampires." "I thought you became –" "— vampires by being bitten? Dear me, no. Oh, we can turn people into vampires, it's an easy technique, but what would be the point? When you eat… now what is it you eat? Oh yes, chocolate… you don't want to turn it into another Agnes Nitt, do you? Less chocolate to go around." He sighed. "Oh dear, superstition, superstition everywhere we turn.

Terry Pratchett
Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course.

Terry Pratchett
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned by no later than the date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

Terry Pratchett