Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

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
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
If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!

Terry Pratchett
And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.

Terry Pratchett
Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.

Terry Pratchett
Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.

Terry Pratchett
Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

Terry Pratchett
The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.

Terry Pratchett
No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable

Terry Pratchett
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

Terry Pratchett
There were two ways of looking at the world, but only one when you are starving.

Terry Pratchett
And we don't often get any wading birds in the River Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface.

Terry Pratchett
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.

Terry Pratchett
Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'.

Terry Pratchett
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

Terry Pratchett
Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point MY POINT EXACTLY.

Terry Pratchett
I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.

Terry Pratchett
The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.

Terry Pratchett
Theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.

Terry Pratchett
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Terry Pratchett
History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it

Terry Pratchett
Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

Terry Pratchett
London was not designed for cars. Come to that, it wasn't designed for people. It just sort of happened. This created problems, and the solutions that were implemented became the next problems, five or ten or a hundred years down the line.

Terry Pratchett
I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels.

Terry Pratchett
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.

Terry Pratchett
History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

Terry Pratchett
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave, and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.

Terry Pratchett
Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

Terry Pratchett
Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact.

Terry Pratchett
The thing with crowns is, it isn't the putting them on that's the problem, it's the taking them off.

Terry Pratchett