I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.
Terry PratchettI wrote three books, I had three greenhouses. It seemed to me to be very satisfactory.
Terry PratchettPriests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.
Terry PratchettMy name is unpronounceable in your tongue, woman,” it said. “I’ll be the judge of that,” warned Granny, and added, “Don’t call me woman.” “Very well. My name is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz,” said the demon smugly.
Terry PratchettFascism may be good at making the trains run on time, but you wouldn't like some of the destinations.
Terry PratchettIn order to have a change of fortune at the last minute, you have to take your fortune to the last minute.
Terry PratchettIt was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory.
Terry PratchettWhat do you call those things at the bottom of rivers? Frogs? Stones? Unsuccessful gangsters?
Terry PratchettIt is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers
Terry PratchettSomeone got killed up here.... It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter." "How’d you know all that?" "I just trod on ‘im.
Terry Pratchett... the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.
Terry PratchettAnyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
Terry PratchettVoodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.
Terry PratchettI am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.
Terry PratchettGods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
Terry PratchettYou can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.
Terry PratchettSome police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. 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 wind at eighty miles an hour.That would do it every time.
Terry PratchettDrinks like this tend to get called Traffic Lights or Rainbow's Revenge or, in places where truth is more highly valued, Hello and Good-Bye, Mr. Brain Cell.
Terry PratchettNo more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.
Terry PratchettAsking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.
Terry PratchettAnd no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.
Terry PratchettPets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course.
Terry PratchettI know loads of coppers and dealt with them a lot when I was a journalist - coppers are easy to write for; they tend to run on rails.
Terry PratchettMr Lipwig, there's a lady in the hall to see you and we've thanked her for not smoking three times and she's still doing it!
Terry PratchettThere are some things that are more appropriate to a children's than an adult book but there's a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway.
Terry PratchettI certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called "The Valley Full of Clouds." Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.
Terry PratchettThey felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.
Terry PratchettI was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat. -Lord Vetinari
Terry PratchettThe merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
Terry PratchettI'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way, Yo!
Terry PratchettPeople's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before they die. The process is called "Living".
Terry PratchettNeedless to say, they refused to submit to the Empire, conducting such a persistent guerrilla war that the Romans gave up hope of conquering Scotland, and the Wee Free Men remained both wee and free.
Terry PratchettIt's never a good idea to ask a man on a tight-rope how he keeps his balance: a) he would probably fall off and b) he probably doesn't know what the muscles are called in any case.
Terry PratchettLord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.
Terry PratchettThat's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.
Terry PratchettShe was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.
Terry Pratchett