Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

Currently there's five machines permanently networked here. They all contain the serious core stuff. A couple of the machines are pensioned off 486s, with little other value now. Plus there's two Jaz drives in the building and the portable also carries a fair amount of stuff. Plus every Friday a man comes around and carves all the new stuff onto stone slabs and buries them in the garden... I think I'm okay.

Terry Pratchett
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.

Terry Pratchett
Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.

Terry Pratchett
Life doesn't happen in chapters — at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep") but I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults.

Terry Pratchett
Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

Terry Pratchett
No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles].

Terry Pratchett
I wish that the people who sing about the deeds of heroes would think about the people who have to clear up after them.

Terry Pratchett
Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

Terry Pratchett
It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

Terry Pratchett
Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

Terry Pratchett
Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.

Terry Pratchett
Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.

Terry Pratchett
A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman.

Terry Pratchett
The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics.

Terry Pratchett
Oh, well...up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.

Terry Pratchett
'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...

Terry Pratchett
Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.

Terry Pratchett
Next comes the realist phase ("After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top.").

Terry Pratchett
It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course.

Terry Pratchett
It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.

Terry Pratchett
That was always the dream, wasn't it? 'I wish I'd known then what I know now'? But when you got older you found out that you NOW wasn't YOU then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp.

Terry Pratchett
All the higher life forms scythed away, just like that. [... ] Nothing but dust and fundamentalists.

Terry Pratchett
It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

Terry Pratchett
Evil in general does not sleep, and therefore doesn't see why anyone else should.

Terry Pratchett
I'd like to stand up for the rights of people who put everything on their burger — chutney, mustard, pickle, mustard pickle, tomato sauce... It is common knowledge in my family that I can't tell the difference between a veggie burger and a meat one, because the ratio of burger to pickles is so high.

Terry Pratchett
Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!" "Can't we do anything about it?" "No!" "Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly.

Terry Pratchett
I must confess the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.

Terry Pratchett
Do you think there's anything to eat in this forest? Yes, said the wizard bitterly, us.

Terry Pratchett
THAT'S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY'VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.

Terry Pratchett
There should be a notice ahead of the movie that says 'This movie is PG. Can you read? You are a Parent. Do you understand what Guidance is? Or are you just another stupid toddler who thinks they're an adult simply because they've grown older and, unfortunately, have developed fully-functioning sexual organs? Would you like some committee somewhere to decide *everything* for you? Get a damn grip, will you? And shut the wretched kid up!'

Terry Pratchett