Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying.

Terry Pratchett
People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.

Terry Pratchett
What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.

Terry Pratchett
-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself? -Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.

Terry Pratchett
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

Terry Pratchett
There are no medium-sized trees in the deep forest. There are only the towering ones, whose canopy spreads across the sky. Below, in the gloom, there's light for nothing but mosses and ferns. But when a giant falls, leaving a little space... then there's a race - between the trees on either side, who want to spread out, and the seedlings below, who race to grow up. Sometimes, you can make your own space.

Terry Pratchett
They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.

Terry Pratchett
The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them...

Terry Pratchett
Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don't seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there's a bridge now.

Terry Pratchett
What you have here is an example of that well known phenomenon, A Bookshop Assistant Who Knows Buggerall But Won't Admit It (probably some kind of arts graduate).

Terry Pratchett
Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff on the environment, you're being chased and eaten by most of the planet's large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr.

Terry Pratchett
It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.

Terry Pratchett
After all, when you seek advice from someone it's certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.

Terry Pratchett
Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn't trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.

Terry Pratchett
My name is immaterial,' she said. That's a pretty name,' said Rincewind.

Terry Pratchett
I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.

Terry Pratchett
This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.

Terry Pratchett
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

Terry Pratchett
We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind." "Oh, no! You think so?" "Yes." "But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time." "Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad." Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror. "Gosh," he said.

Terry Pratchett
The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

Terry Pratchett
Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn't entirely there.
"You haven't heard of the Bay of Mante, have you?" he said. "No, sir," said Mort.
"Famous Shipwreck there."
"Was there?"
"There will be," said Death, "if I can find the damn place."

Terry Pratchett
An ancient proverb summed it up when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.

Terry Pratchett
This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

Terry Pratchett
A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.

Terry Pratchett
Although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin, that didn't mean to say she approved of it.

Terry Pratchett
Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don't always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don't wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.

Terry Pratchett
That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.

Terry Pratchett
I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

Terry Pratchett
You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

Terry Pratchett
Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.

Terry Pratchett