Quotes from Terry Pratchett

They want dancing girls! They want thrills! They want elephants! They want people falling off roofs! They want dreams! The world is full of little people with big dreams!

A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.

You know it's going to be Mary the Maid, or someone like her, and there's going to be two men and she will end up with the nice one, and there has to be misunderstandings, and they never do anything more than kiss and it's absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exciting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not going to happen. The best you can expect is a thunderstorm.

Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honesty with merely being rude. I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes.

I've been following the noble profession of hermiting here for nigh on fifty-seven years, practising piety, sobriety, celibacy and the pursuit of true wisdom in the tradition of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather before me.

It's amazing the things that seem a good idea at the time.

In some parts of the city, curiosity didn't just kill the cat, it threw it in the river with lead weights tied to its feet.

They hadn't read as many stories as Malicia, and were rather more attached to the experience of real life, which is that when someone small and righteous takes on someone big and nasty, he is grilled bread product, very quickly.

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

And Dil was realizing that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed anymore.

someone has o speak up for them as has no voices

Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves.

There was a definite feel about Adora Belle Dearheart that a lid was only barely holding down an entire womanful of anger.

Being a buisance is not something you should die of.

I've seen men die valiantly. There's no future in it.

This is so inconvenient. But there is no doubt." She paused for a moment and said: "I will die the day after tomorrow. On Friday, just before half past six in the morning." It was an impressive statement, and did not deserve this reply: "Oh, that's a shame, tae be missin' the weekend like that," said Rob Anybody.

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find

old folks are s'pposed to like listenin' to the sound of children playin', I read that somewhere, I don't see why we should get told off 'cos we've got the wrong kind of old folks—

She said to me, This is fun. It weirdly is, I said. Maybe these are our salad days. Huh? You know. Happy. What's happy about a salad? She shrugged. Ranch, she said.

Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography.

Whoever said that a soft answer turneth away wroth had never worked in a bar.

They said that dying was just like going to sleep, although of course if you weren't careful bits of you could rot and drop off.

You're very ugly for fairies, she said. Aye, well, the ones you gen'rally see are for the pretty flowers, ye ken, said Rob Anybody, inventing desperately. We're more for the stingin' nettles and bindweed an' Old Man's Troosers an' thistles, okay? It wouldna be fair for only the bonny flowers tae have fairies noo, would it? It'd prob'ly be against the law, eeh?...

He's a man of few words, and he doesn't know what either of them means," people said, but not when he was within hearing.