Terry Pratchett

“Susan's gotta poker, you know," it said, as if anxious to be helpful. WELL, WELL. INDEED. MY GOODNESS ME."I fort-thought all of you knew that now. Larst-last week she picked up a bogey by its nose."Death tried to imagine this. He felt sure he'd heard the sentence wrong, but it didn't sound a whole lot better however he rearranged the words.”

“Omens are everywhere in this world you just have to find the one that fits.”

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

“Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces.”

“Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms: in the dark and based on bullshit.”

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”

“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.”

“A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.”

“Legends don't have to make sense. They just have to be beautiful. Or at least interesting.”

“The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.”

“The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.”

“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.”

“But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.”

“A dollar for a human bought a loaf of bread that was eaten in a few bites. The same dollar for Wee Mad Arthur bought the same-sized loaf, but it was food for a week and could then be further hollowed out and used as a bedroom.”

“There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can't take it any more.”

“Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor.”

“The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.”

“She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.”

“I never said nothing...""I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!”

“...this one [girl] had a slight suggestion of too many chocolates.”

“She waited with Billy Slick while Carrot went on the errand, and for something to say, she said, ‘Billy Slick doesn’t sound much like a goblin name?’ Billy made a face. ‘Too right! Granny calls me Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?’ He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human – human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls... the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress.”

“If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.”

“You see, evil alwys contains the seeds of its own destruction' said the angel said, 'It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moment of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of inquity and sink head first to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.”

“YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE""And what's that?""A SHARP EDGE.”

“If you thought hard enough, he’d always considered, you could work out everything. The wind, for example. It had always puzzled him until the day he’d realized that it was caused by all the trees waving about.”

“The monk solved his immediate problem by giving a little whimper and fainting.”

“Yes, but nomes aren’t hard to make,” said Dorcas. “You just need other nomes.” “You’re weird.”

“He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things.”

“That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!”

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.”

“She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.”

“You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind.”

“NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR?Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither.”

“Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.”

“But…but you can’t treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can’t say yes please, I’ll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. Its table d´hôte or nothing, otherwise…well, it would be silly.”

“Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.”

“He's going to go totally Librarian-poo.”

“This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.”

“Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”

“The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.”

“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”

“They say this fruit be like unto the world / So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man / So red without and yet within, unclue’d / We find the worm, the rot, the flaw. / However glows his bloom the bite / Proves many a man be rotten at the core.”

“Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.”

“(...) or there will be a reckoning!”

“That'll do”

“It's a certainty, but it just might work.”

“...'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.''Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.”

“Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, atbirthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweetdeprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took anysweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not takingall the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eatthem all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burstinto tears.”

“Wiara to coś, w co trudno uwierzyć.”