Quotes from Terry Pratchett

What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say.

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.

It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum.

Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.

He was, he would be the first to admit, a coward, an incompetent, and not even very good at being a failure.

Oh, well...up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.

Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face." (pp. 348-349)

Everyone is reading what they like and that's a good thing.

I mistrust the term graphic novel because it sounds like a good thing to put on a tee-shirt. That's why the French like them.

In the end the problem isn't that you have the wrong sort of government for the People, but that you have the wrong sort of People.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble.

Happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.

History, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles.

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

It was, according to the history books, the fastest coronation since Bubric the Saxon crowned himself with a very pointy crown on a hill during a thunderstorm, and reigned for one and a half seconds.

History tends to change people who think they're changing it.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.