Quotes from Terry Pratchett

It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don't know how to use it?' Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don't attack me,' said Maladict patiently. Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn't be any good with it,' said the sergeant. No, sir. I'd probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That's what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I'd get hell from the League if I did that, sir.

They think written words are even more powerful,' whispered the toad. 'They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.

I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult, said Granny firmly. Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble. But all them things exist, said Nanny Ogg. That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.

Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat. -Lord Vetinari

The Kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.

There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.

The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.

That's one form of magic, of course. What, just knowing things? Knowing things that other people don't know.

It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can't, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.

I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD. Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?

I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.

You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. Besides you don't build a better world by choppin' heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs.

We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.' Precisely,' said a passing bush.

The thing about witchcraft, said Mistress Weatherwax, is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect

Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in . He was fascinated.

You know, you're rather amusingly wrong.