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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 1aaf511 | Can I ask a question, sir?" said Maurice, as Death turned to go. You May Not Get An Answer. "I suppose there isn't a Big Cat in the Sky, is there?" I'm Surprised At You, Maurice. Of Course There Are No Cat Gods. That Would Be Too Much Like...Work. Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler." | Terry Pratchett | ||
| a2b4525 | the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 833bdbd | They represented what people called the "international community." And like all uses of the word "community," you were never quite sure what or who it was." | Terry Pratchett | ||
| c2d7308 | The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader'.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| e3c10c2 | Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed anymore. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 79f7c5b | We are as gods to beasts of the field. We order the time of their birth and the time of their death. Between times, we have a duty. | kindness-to-animals terry-pratchett | Terry Pratchett | |
| 3b77a79 | There were a lot of things he could say. "Son of a bitch!" would have been a good one. Or he could say, "Welcome to civilization!" He could have said, "Laugh this one off!" He might have said, "Fetch!" But he didn't, because if he had said any of those things then he'd have known that what he had just done was murder." | murder police | Terry Pratchett | |
| c4fd5f2 | Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving people what they need to get. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| b53bdbe | Two uniformed trolls were standing in front of Sergeant Colon's high desk, with a slightly smaller troll between them. This troll was wearing a slightly downcast expression. It was also wearing a tutu and had a small pair of gauzed wings glued to its back. " - happen to know that trolls don't have tradition of a Tooth Fairy," Colon was saying. "Especially not one called' - he looked down - "Clinkerbell. So how about we just call it breaki.. | humourous | Terry Pratchett | |
| 8ea6700 | Teppic hadn't been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| ab9720a | Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight! | jingo vetinari vimes war | Terry Pratchett | |
| a6a3fe2 | Stanley always followed the rules. All sorts of things could go wrong if you didn't. So far he'd done 1:Upon Discovery of the Fire, Remain Calm. Now he'd come to 2: Shout 'Fire!' in a Loud, Clear Voice. 'Fire!' he shouted, and then ticked off 2 with his pencil. Next was: 3: Endeavour to Extinguish Fire If Possible. Stanley went to the door and opened it. Flames and smoke billowed in. He stared at them for a moment, shook his head, and shut.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 3858b6b | Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces. | flogging right-hand-man | Terry Pratchett | |
| f076448 | Legitimate First watched them go as they walked away. Sergeant Colon felt he was being measured up. "I've always wondered about his name," said Nobby, turning and waving. "I mean...Legitimate?" "Can't blame a mother for being proud, Nobby," said Colon." | humourous | Terry Pratchett | |
| 9bded9a | Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 5fb936d | Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 0adc905 | But I did not return until half past four this morning and I distinctly remember stubbing my toe on the stairs. I am as drunk as a skunk, Drumknott, which of course means skunks are just as drunk as I. I must say the term is unfamiliar to me, and I had not thought hitherto of skunks in this context, but Mustrum Ridcully was kind enough to enlighten me. | idioms vetinari | Terry Pratchett | |
| 2dd3020 | Young women should not go alone on dark nights, even in Oxfordshire. But any prowling maniac would have had more than his work cut out if he had accosted Anathema Device. She was a witch, after all. And precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife which she kept in her belt. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| d0c98e8 | But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she's not beautiful. There's a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there's a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven't yet learned that o.. | intelligence | terry pratchett | |
| e6d226a | Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. | music scavengers | Terry Pratchett | |
| 1397b55 | The night was as black as the inside of a cat. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 0567bfa | I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense. | religion | Terry Pratchett | |
| 27cacb2 | Well, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature? I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself! | humor sarcasm | Terry Pratchett | |
| f10f02c | I have to ask, sir...Why does it have to be done like this?" Vetinari smiled. "Can you keep a secret, Mister Lipwig?" "Oh, yes, sir. I've kept lots." "Capital. And the point is, so can I. You do not need to know." | secrets vetinari | Terry Pratchett | |
| 33b107b | All around him people were eating their unfood wih, if not actual evidence of enjoyment, then with no more actual disgust than was to be found in burger chains all over the planet. He stood up, took his tray over to the PLEASE DISPOSE OF YOUR REFUSE WITH CARE receptacle, and dumped the whole thing. If you had told him that there were children starving in Africa he would have been flattered that you'd noticed. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| e31f60b | Aristocrats don't notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It's not vanity, you understand, it's built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad. | aristocrats being-right being-wrong | Terry Pratchett | |
| 597cb68 | Where I come from, Annagramma, they have the Sheepdog Trials. Shepherds travel there from all over to show off their dogs. And there're silver crooks and belts with silver buckles and prizes of all kinds, Annagramma, but do you know what the big prize is? No, you wouldn't. Oh, there are judges, but they don't count, not for the big prize. There is - there was a little old lady who was always at the front of the crowd, leaning on the hurdles.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 8006db6 | Her books on alchemy were marvellous objects, every page a work of the engraver's art, but they nowhere contained instructions like "Be sure to open a window". They have instructions like "Adde to the Zinc untile Rising Gas Yse Vigorousky Evolved", but never added "Don't Doe Thys Atte Home" or even "And Say Fare-Thee-Welle to Thy Eyebrows." | humourous | Terry Pratchett | |
| 1846dc7 | Shut up sergeant. You're a free troll. That's an order" Sam Vimes" | terry-pratchett the-fifth-elephant | Terry Pratchett | |
| c05a57a | He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word "fear." Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word "survival"..." | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 1641074 | She prowled the city on moonlit nights, and OK, there was the occasional chicken, but she always remembered where she'd been and went round the next day to shove some money under the door. It was hard to be a vegetarian who had to pick bits of meat out of her teeth in the morning. She was definately on top of it, though. It was easy to be a vegetarian by day. It was preventing yourself from becoming a humanitarian at night that took the rea.. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| f24c478 | He stared at his feet. "I'm still very ignorant," he said, "but at least I'm ignorant about really important things." | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 8ef6d7e | Think critically about what you are told. Do not accept the word of authority unthinkingly. Science is not a belief system: no belief system instructs you to question the system itself. Science does. (There are many scientists, however, who treat it as a belief system. Be wary of them.) | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 20ae591 | Never f*!k with the ineffable. | humor religion | Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett | |
| 31cb286 | Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look. A couple of months ago someaone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. (...) The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it DID look as if it would swear. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| f69871e | Why does everyone run toward a blood-curdling scream?" mumbled the Senior Wrangler. "It's contrary to all sense." | Terry Pratchett | ||
| e119e11 | Then it came to her. She did deserve to die. And she was alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. land. The land of the Achings. She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun... | tiffany-aching | Terry Pratchett | |
| 6740a3a | It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept. That statement is not really true On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia.. | funny humor poetic-simile | Terry Pratchett | |
| b635ec5 | Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 523a696 | It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and the wind at eighty miles per hour. That would do it every time. | Terry Pratchett | ||
| 9f423b9 | It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me. | getting-old | Katherine Dunn | |
| 23bcc45 | He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in stitches. Eleven years old he was then. | Katherine Dunn | ||
| 2faa1ae | My heart died. Arty would despise her. But Mama told me to go on hoping. "Go ahead and love her," Mama said. I've wondered since whether those were Mama's last words, the final sizzle of her synapses." | Katherine Dunn | ||
| dea8a72 | Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket. "Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars." The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly. I leaned my hot arms on the tab.. | Katherine Dunn |