Terry Pratchett

“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled. "Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?""What?""Oh, you'd like something simpler?”

“I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse."Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!”

“How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict patiently.Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant.No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.”

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.”

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

“I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS.”

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"Death thought about it.CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”

“Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.”

“Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.”

“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”

“The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.”

“Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word "revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word "scum.”

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of thecat, although in this case there were three determinate states the catcould be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”

“Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like ared flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front ofsomeone who was annoyed by it.”

“Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.”

“She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever findherself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.”

“And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to beliving in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely gotyou invited to the very best social occasions.”

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.”

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.”

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”

“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”

“This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.”

“Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee, haven't you? C'mon, everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!”

“I thought unicorns were more . . . Fluffy.”

“Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.”

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?”

“He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.”

“If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.”

“Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"Mort thought for a moment."No," he said eventually, "what?"There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.”

“Cutangle: While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.”

“What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?”

“And what would humans be without love?"RARE, said Death.”

“They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on”

“Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...”

“A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.”

“I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”

“He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”

“Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.”

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”

“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.”

“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”

“...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.”

“Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.”

“Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.Excursions', said Magrat patienly.Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.”

“What’s this here,” he said suspiciously, “about us got to give you faggots?”Oh, we have to have them,” said Newt, “We burn them.”Say what?”We burn them.”The guard’s face broadened into a grin. And they’d told him England was soft. “Right on!” he said”

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”