Terry Pratchett

“Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.”

“What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?”

“And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.”

“The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?” ”

“Tanrı zar atmaz. O kainat ile kendi tasarladığı, tarifi imkansız bir oyunu oynar. Diğer oyuncuların (Herkes) gözünden bakıldığında bu, karanlık bir odada, kuralları söylemeyen ve sürekli gülümseyen bir kart dağıtıcısının dağıttığı boş kartlarla oynanan, sonsuz risklere girilen, anlaşılması imkansız ve ne olduğu bilinmeyen bir poker oyununa benzer...”

“İnsanlar, kendilerine binlerce zorluk çıkaran bir dünyada yaratıldılar. Ve bu halde bile onlar, enerjilerinin çoğunu bu zorluklara yenilerini eklemeye harcadılar...”

“Adam'a göre, sırf yediğin için başının derde gireceği kadar değerli bir elma asla olmamıştı...”

“Tilt makinelerini bilirmisin ? ''Oradan oraya sıçrarken oyunun dışında bir oda oluduğunu odanın dışında bir kent ,kentin dışında bir ülke , ülkenin dışında bir dünya ve dünyanın dışında trilyonlarca yıldız olduğunu unutuyorsun vebu daha başlangıç... ama orada anlıyormusun ? Bir kez bunu bilince dipteki deliğe aldırmıyorsun artık. O zaman ortalıkta daha uzun sıçrayarak dolaşabilirsin.”

“I've been following the noble profession of hermiting here for nigh on fifty-seven years, practising piety, sobriety, celibacy and the pursuit of true wisdom in the tradition of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather before me.”

“Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.”

“...smoke twisting amongst the lights and turning the air a desolate blue, the colour of dead hopes and lost chances.”

“Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɴᴏ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴍᴇ.—Death”

“You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.”

“A camel in distress isn’t a shy creature. It doesn’t hang around in bars, nursing a solitary drink. It doesn’t phone up old friends and sob at them. It doesn’t mope, or write long soulful poems about Life and how dreadful it is when seen from a bedsitter. It doesn’t know what angst is.”

“He'sh mad?""Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.""Ah, then he can’t be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.”

“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”

“And it be well for a knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules shown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike (...)”

“I could lend you a very fast horse" - Death”

“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.”

“Good evening, gentlemen!' said the vampire. 'Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of repressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It's not tearing your throats out that doesn't come easily to me. Please don't make it any harder.”

“...and Magrat was sick all night just at the thought of it and had the dire rear.”

“As the message drained away Vimes stared at the opposite wall, in which the door now opened, after a cursory knock, to reveal the steward bearing that which is guaranteed to frighten away all nightmares, to wit, a cup of hot tea.** The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away all demons, a little-known fact.”

“There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.”

“A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.”

“Solomon counted out the coins very slowly and in silence, and then said, "Are you certain you weren't born Jewish?""No," said Dodger. "I've looked. I'm not, but thanks for the compliment.”

“You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.”

“THERE'S NO JUSTICE, said Mort. JUST US.”

“Пътуващи коткиОСКАР ПРОПЪТУВА 2000 МИЛИ“ — заглавие в местния вестник. Или нещо такова. Поне веднъж годишно. Във всеки местен вестник. От редовните е, също като „Спор за обществен парцел“ или „Буря в час по трудово обучение“.Толкова много такива истории се появиха, че изследователите от Кампанията в полза на Истинските котки се захванаха да ги, ами, да ги изследват. Първоначалното подозрение беше, че съществува неизвестна досега порода Истински котки, вероятно издънка на вече почти изчезналата железопътна котка. Хубаво ще е да си мислим, че днес съществува самолетна котка, макар че може би няма да е хубаво, защото колкото и да ни топли тази идея, просто няма как на височина 30 000 фута да не ви хрумне мисълта, че тази котка сигурно си има любимо място за спане в самолета и то най-вероятно е някъде из жиците. Или може би днес съществува камионна котка, за която Т.С.Елиът не е и сънувал дори. Felis Freuhaf, международно създание, което се шляе из световните коли и дебелее от шоколадчета. Или пък това би могло да бъде още едно доказателство за теорията на Шрьодингер, тъй като от квантова гледна точка не може да се твърди, че разстоянията съществуват, а всичкото това привидно пространство между нещата е просто резултат от случайни флуктуации в матрицата на материята и не бива да се взема на сериозно.Невероятната истина не влизаше в подозренията, може би защото не са много хората в тази страна, разполагащи с повече от един местен вестник. Но от стотиците изрезки, изпратени от членове на Кампанията, тази истина най-сетне изплува.Всичките тези котки са една и съща котка. Не един и същи тип котка. Една и съща котка.Това е един дребничък черно-бял котак. Най-различните приписвани му имена не важат — те имат значение само за хората, макар че, интересно, името Оскар наистина изниква доста често. Внимателният анализ на десетките снимки на пътуващата котка, която примига срещу светкавицата на фотоапарата, го доказа.Миналата година се оказа, че е преодолял минимум 15 000 мили, голяма част от които под капака на мотора, където само жалното му мяукане предупреждава шофьора, щом той спре да пийне кафе.Няма да получим потвърждение, докато изследователите, въоръжени с цял товар болезнено оборудване, не го издирят, но актуалната, доста интересна теория твърди: онова, което първоначално ви се струва, че е въпросното жално мяучене, всъщност е поток от указания от сорта на: „Сега наляво, наляво ти казах, наляво бе, простак, добре де, карай, докато стигнем търговския център, там можеш да хванеш шосе А370…“Оскар всъщност се опитва да стигне някъде. Процесът е малко въпрос на налучкване, а е възможно и да е подценил размерите на страната и броя на превозните средства в нея. Но той упорства. Несъмнено, в най-добрите традиции на Истинските котки навсякъде, той ще направи всичко друго, но не и да слезе от колата и да тръгне пеш.Инцидентно някои от последните изрезки от пресата твърдят, че Оскар се бил окотил под капака на мотора на някаква кола. Това отваря мъничка пробойна в част от теорията — една свястна субсидия би я запушила като нищо — но води до интригуващата мисъл, че може би в края на краищата ще възникне нова раса пътуващи котки. И всички те ще израснат с убеждението, че домът е нещо, до което можеш да стигнеш само като се качваш в шумни тенекиени неща, движещи се със сто километра в час.Може би и лемингите са започнали така.В хода на това проучване един от изследователите се натъкна на очарователен анекдот за свети Ерик, епископа на Смирна от четвърти век, за когото мнозина вярват, че е действителният светец — покровител на Истинските котки. На път да отнесе едно послание, разправят, той настъпил една котка и креснал:„Воiстiнъ, ще мi ся тозъ проклетъ мачокъ да бьше сь манналъ оттукъ и нiвгашъ да се не върне!“Котакът бил дребничък и черно-бял според съвременните данни.”

“The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.”

“This is Holy Wood. To pass the time quickly, you just film the clock hands moving fast...”

“An' you told him what I said about a verbal contract not being worth the paper it's printed on?”

“It was like rising slowly out of a pink cloud, or a magnificent dream which, try as you might, drains out of your mind as the daylight shuffles in, leaving a terrible sense of loss; nothing, you know instinctively, nothing you're going to experience for the rest of the day is going to be one half as good as that dream.”

“Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab.”

“Either your clothes died when you did, he thought, or maybe you just mentally dressed yourself from force of habit.”

“Ye gods, it was so much better when there were just four of us up against that bloody great dragon, Vimes thought as they walked on. Of course, we nearly got burned alive a few times, but at least it wasn't complicated. It was a damned great dragon. You could see it coming. It didn't get political on you.”

“To be fucking human, to not put too fine a point on it, and Daniel Boone can kiss my ass.”

“How do they rise up?”

“But smart has to have a depth as well as a length. Some smart brushes over a problem. And some smart grinds exceeding slow, like the mills of God, and it grinds fine, and when it comes up with an answer, it has been tested.”

“...William wondered why he always disliked people who said 'no offense meant.' Maybe it was because they found it easier to to say 'no offense meant' than actually to refrain from giving offense.”

“*The best way to describe Mr. Windling would be like this: You are at a meeting. You'd like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn't very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is putting their papers neatly together, a voice says "If I can raise a minor matter, Mr. Chairman..." and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr. Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term "in my humble opinion," which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, "these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed".”

“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.”

“The night was as black as the inside of a cat.”

“Modesty is only arrogance by stealth.”

“Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.”

“Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and throughly worth living.”

“They were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.”

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

“Adam looked at Them. They were his kind of people, too.You just had to decide who your friends really were.”

“He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle.”

“They tended to wield the huge blunt ax of the law in circumstances that required the delicate scalpel of common sense. [...] Policeman with their great big boots were not required here on a night like this. It would be a good idea to put a thumbtack under the ponderous feet of Justice.”