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ba33118
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Well, I think," said Nobby, "that when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around for on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink."
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Terry Pratchett |
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d1f0232
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and all those frogs going 'Rabbit, rabbit'..." "I think, sir, that it was 'Ribbit, ribbit'..." "So, what goes 'Rabbit, rabbit'?" "Rabbits, I think. All the time..."
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Terry Pratchett |
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aa93db7
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The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids, and they weren't allowed to run away.
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Terry Pratchett |
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f9bc468
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Red sky at night, the city's alight.
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Terry Pratchett |
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3279394
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Gossiping's part of witchcraft,' said Tiffany. 'They're checking to see if they've gone batty yet.
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sanity
women
witches
humor
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Terry Pratchett |
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a5f6a6d
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Music, landscape gardening, architecture--there was no start to his talents.
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Terry Pratchett |
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559ce6b
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There was no himself in himself.
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Terry Pratchett |
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bb36991
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Happier than a terrier in a barrel full of rats
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Terry Pratchett |
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d9e87f6
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You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn't it? Sorry. You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be.
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Terry Pratchett |
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0c6e407
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He found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always at its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically
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Terry Pratchett |
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de63a52
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The games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.
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Terry Pratchett |
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4b7206f
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Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn't his fault).
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Terry Pratchett |
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a8e0ef9
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Are you a hero, actually?" "Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact."
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Terry Pratchett |
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289a6c9
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Barbarism? Hah! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin' 'em in the eye, and we'd be happy to buy 'em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make 'em look pretty, or put poison in people's grub. Civilization? If that's civilization, you can shove it where the sun don't shine!
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Terry Pratchett |
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e8a571d
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And now, because of a song, Vimes, a simple piece of music, Vimes, soft as a breath, stranger than a mountain, some very powerful states have agreed to work together to heal the problems of another autonomous state and, almost as collateral, turn some animals into people at a stroke.
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music
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Terry Pratchett |
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d240e9d
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She turned. A young man of godlike proportions* was standing in the doorway. *The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously.
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Terry Pratchett |
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1555248
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She felt livid. They'd all lost so many powers. It was ridiculous to have to communicate by flapping bits of your skin, and as for the tongue... Yuerkkk ... As far as she knew, in the whole life of the universe, no Auditor had ever experienced the sensation of yuerkkk. This wretched body was full of opportunities for yuerkkk. She could leave it at any time and yet, and yet... part of her didn't want to. There was this horrible desire, secon..
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internal-organs
stomach
yuerkk
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Terry Pratchett |
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d5791a5
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For the enemy is not Troll, nor it is Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good.
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Terry Pratchett |
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71a8dec
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The gods," he said. "Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream."
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thought-dream
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Terry Pratchett |
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b7d13b6
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The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it.
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Terry Pratchett |
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e702524
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Sometimes life reaches that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do.
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Terry Pratchett |
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1d80924
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By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. [...] By the stinking of my nose, something wicked this way goes[.] [...] By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies.
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Terry Pratchett |
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fcb3c60
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down below the mines and sea ooze and fake fossil bones put there by a Creator with nothing better to do than upset archeologists and give them silly ideas.
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Terry Pratchett |
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d9baf76
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We spray our fantasies on the landscape like a dog sprays urine. It turns it into ours. Once we've invented our gods and demons, we can propitiate or exorcize them. Once we've put fairies in the sinister solitary thorn tree, we can decide where we stand in relation to it; we can hang ribbons on it, see visions under it--or bulldoze it up and call ourselves free of superstition.
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Terry Pratchett |
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3998f20
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My first novel was published by the first publisher I sent it to. And so I've been learning as I go, and I find it now rather embarrassing that people beginning the Discworld series start with The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, which I don't think are some of the best books to start with. This is the author saying this, folks. Do not start at the beginning with Discworld.
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Terry Pratchett |
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cfa06a5
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It was destined to be the most impressive kiss in the history of foreplay. The kiss lasted more than fifteen years. Not even frogs can manage that.
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Terry Pratchett |
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742be71
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Everybody needs a witch, but sometimes they just don't know it.
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Terry Pratchett |
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9892e21
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People in chains had a tendency to look guilty.
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Terry Pratchett |
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e361574
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She taught me so much, she said to herself. She me as we were walking around after the sheep, and she told me all those things that I needed to know, and the first thing was to look after people. Of course, the other thing had been to look after the sheep.
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granny-aching
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Terry Pratchett |
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52f837f
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It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed... ...and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its fo..
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pratchett
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Terry Pratchett |
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4e96592
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An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's ! Ye cannae tell me that's right!
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Terry Pratchett |
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d8b0559
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That was great, al' that reading' ye did!' said Rob Anybody. 'I didnae understand a single word o' it!' 'Aye, it must be powerful language if you cannae make oout what the heel it's goin' on aboot!' said another pictsie.
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Terry Pratchett |
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a05e8df
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HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
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Terry Pratchett |
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518a750
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You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?" said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. "It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become b..
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Terry Pratchett |
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04e5467
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But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.
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Terry Pratchett |
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20bb2e4
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The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. Susan's att..
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Terry Pratchett |
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c4d2dcf
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Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn't mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.
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Terry Pratchett |
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2dde151
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Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
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Terry Pratchett |
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2b07222
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She was never likely to say out loud, "I wish that I could marry a handsome prince," but knowing that if you did you'd probably open the door to find a stunned prince, a tied-up priest, and a Nac Mac Feegle grinning cheerfully and ready to act as best man definitely made you watch what you said."
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Terry Pratchett |
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30babed
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Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Veti..
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democracyger
rulers
government
democracy
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Terry Pratchett |
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0734999
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for the first time Rincewind saw the troll. It wasn't half so bad as he had imagined. Umm, said his imagination after a while. It wasn't that the troll was horrifying. Instead of the rotting, betentacled monstrosity he had been expecting Rincewind found himself looking at a rather squat but not particularly ugly old man who would quite easily have passed for normal on any city street, always provided that other people on the street were use..
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Terry Pratchett |
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546832e
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He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labor.
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Terry Pratchett |
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1f03855
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There was a sudden silence from the combo in the smoke. One of the trolls picked up a small rock and started to pound it gently, producing a slow, sticky rhythm that clung to the walls like smoke. And from the smoke, Ruby emerged like a galleon out of the fog with a ridiculous feather boa around her neck. It was continental drift with words. She began to sing. The trolls stood in respectful silence. After a while Victor heard a sob. Tears w..
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Terry Pratchett |
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f8746f1
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After my wife was killed in that pogrom in Russia, I came to England with only my tools, and when I saw the white cliffs of Dover, alone without my wife, I said, "God, today I don't believe in you anymore." "What did God say?" Dodger had asked. Solomon had sighed theatrically, as if he had been put upon by the question, and then smiled and said, "Mmm, God said to me, 'I understand, Solomon; let me know when you change your mind."
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Terry Pratchett |