Quotes by Terry Pratchett

The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odor.The gray light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest.They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been.It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road toward Holy Wood and was soon out of sight. A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box.It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming.Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn.One of the farmers nudged the other.Oive seen this on the clicks, he said. Its always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens.His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe.Itd be a sight worth seeing that, he said.Sure would.Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage.There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly toward the road.The farmers looked at one another.Well, dang me, said one of them.

The sun set, which is everyday magic...

Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.“Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.

She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need.

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.

You know what? said Vimes aloud. This is going to be the worlds first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.Then youve got to stop them. You cant let them kill it! said Lady Ramkin.Vimes blinked at her.Pardon? he said.Its wounded!Lady, that was the intention, wasnt it? Anyway, its only stunned, said

You cant not help people just because theyre stupid or forgetful or unpleasant... If I dont help them, who will?

The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

You havent really been anywhere until youve got back home.

The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.

I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.

Why us? he said. Why is it happening to us?Everything has to happen to someone, said Ginger.

Its vital to remember who you really are. Its very important. It isnt a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

And Im made up of everyone Ive ever met whos changed the way I think. So who is me?

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.

When people talk about their great past theyre usually trying to excuse the mediocre present.

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.

Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood and canvas wonderland of Interesting and Instructive Kinematography.

Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying Got rocks in your head? to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you werent careful.