Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

We sleepwalk through our lives, because how could we live if we were always this awake?

Terry Pratchett
In her own special category, she was quite beautiful. This was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at.

Terry Pratchett
It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.

Terry Pratchett
These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.

Terry Pratchett
You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more," said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.

Terry Pratchett
Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

Terry Pratchett
If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.

Terry Pratchett
'Don't think of it as dying,' said Death. 'Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.'

Terry Pratchett
Right!" "Right!" "You can get there!" "I can get there!" "You're a natural at counting to two!" "I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!" "If you can count to two, you can count to anything!" "If I can count to two, I can count to anything!" "And then the world is your mollusc!" "My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

Terry Pratchett
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

Terry Pratchett
I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir' Ridcully sighed. 'Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?' 'Permission to go and find my mother?'

Terry Pratchett
While a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well.

Terry Pratchett
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.

Terry Pratchett
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

Terry Pratchett
He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

Terry Pratchett
She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't.

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
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
They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time.

Terry Pratchett
Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.

Terry Pratchett
Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can. People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.

Terry Pratchett
People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Terry Pratchett
Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.

Terry Pratchett
They say that the eyes of some paintings can follow you around the room, a fact that I doubt, but I am wondering whether some music can follow you for ever.

Terry Pratchett
People like that don't need a reason apart from "because I can". They have a nightmare and try to make it happen.

Terry Pratchett
Demons were like genies or philosophy professors - if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

Terry Pratchett
Got to be worth a try, I suppose," said Crowley. "It's not as if I haven't got lots of other work to do, God knows." His forehead creased for a moment, and then he slapped the steering wheel triumphantly. "Ducks!" he shouted. "What?" "That's what water slides off!" Aziraphale took a deep breath. "Just drive the car, please," he said wearily.

Terry Pratchett
She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

Terry Pratchett
Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.

Terry Pratchett
He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.

Terry Pratchett