Quotes from Terry Pratchett

And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.

Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.

Witches aren't like that. We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.

What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the ark, sir?

But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.

As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.

Cats are like witches. They don't fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There's no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won't know they've lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.

Do you think there's anything to eat in this forest?" "Yes," said the wizard bitterly, "us.

Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha. 'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.

Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.

Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!

How do you get all those coins? asked Mort. IN PAIRS.

If you try to to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.

If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.

Things are not as they seem. They are what they are.

I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT'D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN'T IT?

It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to 'serve the community' by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways.

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

Witches were a bit like cats. They didn't much like one another's company but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.

You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes – we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

He could think in italics . Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.

Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?