Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett Quotes
756 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself? -Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
There were two ways of looking at the world, but only one when you are starving.
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.
Terry Pratchett
Source
Report...
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
1
...
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
...
31
Quote of the day
Now if the harvest is over, And the world cold, Give me the bonus of laughter, As I lose hold.
John Betjeman
Terry Pratchett
Creative Commons
Born:
April 28, 1948
Died:
March 12, 2015
(aged 66)
Bio:
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett was an English author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his Discworld series of 41 novels.
Known for:
The Colour of Magic (1983)
The Shepherd's Crown (2015)
The Wee Free Men (2003)
Good Omens (1990)
Most used words:
people
time
life
death
wrong
thought
man
course
gods
day
mind
kind
books
looked
meant
Terry Pratchett on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Terry Pratchett Quotes
Terry Pratchett Short Quotes
Quotes about Terry Pratchett
English Author Quotes
Author Quotes
20th-century Author Quotes
Related People
Neil Gaiman
English Novelist
Stephen Baxter
British Author
Douglas Adams
English Novelist
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes