Terry Pratchett Quotes

The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters.

I'm interested in mythology generally, but India has no special place in my heart - although Hindu gods seem a lot more fun.

The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn.

There's no point in killing an opponent... There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight.

See a pin and pick it up, and, all day long, you'll have a pin.

Who knows what the future holds.

...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.

People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.

Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.

If I had been Terry Pratchett the farmer, or Terry Pratchett the dentist, nobody would have paid any attention if I had announced I had Alzheimer's. But there is something fascinating about an author losing the power over words.

Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.

If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize, "The mountain is, and is not." They would think, "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.

What're quantum mechanics?" "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.

They can tak' oour lives but they canna tak' oour troousers!

Walter Plinge said: "You know she asked me a very silly question Mrs Ogg! It was a silly question any fool knows the answer!" "Oh, yes," said Nanny. "About houses on fire, I expect..." "Yes! What would I take out of our house if it was on fire!" "I expect you were a good boy and said you'd take your mum," said Nanny. "No! My mum would take herself!" "What would you take out then, Walter?" Nanny said. "The fire!

One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.

Luck is my middle name. Mind you, my first name is Bad.

No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys.

First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these...sometimes led her to walk into doors.

When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth.

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.

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.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink.

The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.

but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?

I think we are waiting for an e-book that even non-techies can be comfortable with. From my point of view, the biggest change is that I don't have to spend most of the day printing out and packaging a manuscript. I think I almost miss that.

Whut's the plan, Rob?" said one of them. "Okay, lads, this is what we'll do. As soon as we see somethin', we'll attack it. Right?" This caused a cheer. "Ach, 'tis a good plan," said Daft Wullie.

Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.

Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was.

You know, you're rather amusingly wrong.

But that was just it - hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.

You've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.

That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!

Before you can kill a demon, you have to be able to say it's name. Names have power. While the word Alzheimer's terrorizes us, it has power over us. When we are prepared to discuss it aloud, we might have power over it. It's thought of as a mental illness and it is a physical illness, affecting the brain. There should be no shame in having it, yet people still don't talk about it

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimers, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimers.

Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.

I ushered souls into the next world. I was the grave of all hope. I was the ultimate reality. I was the assassin against whom no lock would hold. - "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"