What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.
Terry PratchettThey looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.
Terry PratchettTake the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Terry PratchettCommander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.” “Sir?” “It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.” “Sir?” “That’s practically zen.
Terry PratchettSilverfish looked down. "Oh. Are you a dwarf?" Cuddy gave him a blank stare. "Are you a giant?" he said. "Me? Of course not!" "Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes."
Terry PratchettIt is a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole.
Terry PratchettThe conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people.
Terry PratchettIf you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.
Terry PratchettI think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.
Terry PratchettI saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of berry juice in it. Told him I'd bought it from the dwarves. That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest.
Terry PratchettThe most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.
Terry PratchettWhat is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.
Terry PratchettThe universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.
Terry PratchettI should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.
Terry PratchettWhat I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.
Terry PratchettOne of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well, we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged, either.
Terry PratchettLight thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
Terry PratchettAll he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.
Terry PratchettOf course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
Terry PratchettMany feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, 'It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?'
Terry PratchettIt's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.
Terry PratchettAll was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel - or if there was, it was an oncoming train.
Terry PratchettAny wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realize that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.
Terry PratchettWhatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
Terry PratchettThe consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
Terry PratchettThe Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.
Terry PratchettIt seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.
Terry PratchettI’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.
Terry PratchettThe space between the young reader’s eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.’
Terry PratchettThere are, almost by definition, an unlimited number of Hells - potentially at least a personal one for every living sapient being.
Terry PratchettYou call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.
Terry PratchettAnkh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course — it was not round and shiny — but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.
Terry Pratchett