Quotes by Terry Pratchett
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If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.

Blessings be on this house, Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house.

If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.

I'm not superstitious. I'm a witch. Witches aren't superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.

The Deftmenes are mad and the Dumii are sane, thought Snibril, and that's just the same as being mad except that it's quieter.

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.

It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives.

Look out! He's got a daisy!

Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling 'banana', but didn't know how you stopped.

If you try to to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.

What we're going to do is keep the peace. That's our job. We're not going to be heroes, we're just going to be ... normal.

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?

Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

Bring 'em in stupid, send them away clever, that's the UU way!

Bein' a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it.

Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.

The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you've got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You've got to stop. You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.

Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls.

Tolkien is eminently filmable, I think. 'The Lord of the Rings' is intensely... landscaped. But 'Discworld' is about dialogue, which is one reason why it might be hard to film.

Of 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.

Incidentally, it's best not to argue with the nursing staff. I find the best course of action is to throw some chocolates in one direction and hurry off in the other while their attention is distracted.

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

You can't give or take ten elephants, boss, said M'Bu firmly. He knew that counting elephants was a precision job. A man might be uncertain about how many wives he had, but never about elephants. Either you had one, or you didn't.

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

You worked for Harry King, they said, because a broken leg was bad for business, and Harry King was all about business.

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.

The worst thing you can do is nothing.

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

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

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.

Well, it would have to be The Man Who Was Thursday. It's a damn good read that I believe should be read by everyone in politics.

In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?

The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.

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

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.

It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

So much universe, and so little time.

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.

Oh yes? Can you identify yourself? Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.

He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spent ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air everyday.

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

The world is a globe. The farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.

A crowbar is a universal pass key.

We humans definitely need other people to keep us human.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

I've often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth.'

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things.

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

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it's just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it's in the blood.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.

It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

When you read, I'm sure you don't realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don't do that.

I'm glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

'Discworld' is taking something that you know is ridiculous and treating it as if it is serious, to see if something interesting happens when you do so.

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.

I think it does Discworld good if I don't write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Sooner or later we're all someone's dog.

You can't remember the plot of the Dr Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

I think I would like to go into modelling. Of course, I don't know how to do it, and wouldn't be any good at it if I did, so I'm going to employ someone to walk the catwalks on my behalf. It would still be me, of course.

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

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

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

I've got wide tastes, but I don't like jazz.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

When you're all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

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.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.

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