Quotes by Terry Pratchett

Hed heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

Measurements is your saving grace if you want to raise steam.

Albert grunted. Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?Mort thought for a moment.No, he said eventually, what?There was silence.Then Albert straightened up and said, Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve em right.

TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

Hell wasnt a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowleys opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.

Its daft, locking us up, said Nanny. Id have had us killed.Thats because youre basically good, said Magrat. The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.

The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldnt even notice them.

... it is to your credit that you recognize that if he was a monster then it was other monstrous things which made him so. The iron forged on the anvil cannot be blamed for the hammer...

You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?

What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? Evil starts when you begin to treat people as things. And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family.

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

Evil in general does not sleep, and therefore doesnt see why anyone else should.

There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them. Most people dont know this and this is just as well because the world could not really operate if everyone stayed in bed with the blankets over their head, which is what would happen if people knew what horrors lay a shadows width away.

She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, which did not make a whole lot of sense, because probably AFTER you had walked a mile in their shoes, you would understand that they were chasing you and accusing you of the theft of a pair of shoes--although, of course, you could probably outrun them, owing to their lack of footwear.

She sniffed, and smiled a bit, but not too much because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesnt understand you its someone who understands perfectly, before youve had a chance to have a good pout about not being understood.

But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.

I guess the truth is nobody told this smart kid that communication between such divergent life forms was impossible, so he just went ahead and did it anyhow.

Just for a moment there was an unusual feeling of bliss. Strange word, he thought. Its one of those words that describe something that does not make a noise but, if it did make a noise, would sound just like that. Bliss. Its like the sound of a soft meringue melting gently on a warm plate.

Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, It shouldnt be like this. Her mentor replies, There isnt a way things should be. Theres just what happens, and what we do.