Quotes by Terry Pratchett

I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.

You hardly know me and yet you invited me out on a date,’ said Miss Dearheart. ‘Why?’Because you called me a phoney, Moist thought. You saw through me straight away. Because you didn’t nail my head to the door with your crossbow. Because you have no small talk. Because I’d like to get to know you better, even though it would be like smooching an ashtray. Because I wonder if you could put into the rest of your life the passion you put into smoking a cigarette. In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I’d like to commit hanky-panky with you, Miss Adora Belle Dearheart… well, certainly hanky, and possibly panky when we get to know one another better. I’d like to know as much about your soul as you know about mine…He said: ‘Because I hardly know you.’‘If it comes to that, I hardly know you, either,’ said Miss Dearheart.‘I’m rather banking on that,’ said Moist. This got a smile.‘Smooth answer. Slick. Where are we really eating tonight?

In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

The last thing she wanted was to see her friend getting ideas in her head. There was such a lot of room in there for them to bounce around and do damage.

Take 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.

Its not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewhere, would much rather you werent doing.

People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but expect dinner to turn up within the hour.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasnt that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

One day its the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next its everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no ones been taking out the trash.

. . . and what are you exactly, my friend? Their subordinate? Their employee? Or, I would suggest, their equal? Thats what young Karl would certainly have said, and probably still does. Unless hes no longer alive. Dodger gave Solomon and strange look and Solomon hastened to clarify. Mmmm, as I recall, if you go around telling people that they are downtrodden, you tend to make two separate enemies: the people who are doing the downtreading and have no intention of stopping, and the people who are downtrodden, but nevertheless -- people being who they are -- dont want to know. They can get quite nasty about it. (205)

And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasnt that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didnt measure up.

Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly.“Its all right,” said Lady Ramkin. “Its his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you.”To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp.

It didnt have a name. Animals dont normally bother with them.

Yes, but humans are more important than animals, said Brutha.This is a point of view often expressed by humans, said Om.

That’s why we all hate ’em, he thought. Those expressionless eyes watch us, those big faces turn to follow us, and doesn’t it just look as if they’re making notes and taking names? If you heard that one had bashed in someone’s head over in Quirm or somewhere, wouldn’t you just love to believe it? A voice inside, a voice which generally came to him only in the quiet hours of the night or, in the old days, half-way down a whiskey bottle, added: Given how we use them, maybe we’re scared because we know we deserve it…

But all this business about kings and lords, its against basic human dignity. Were all born equal. It makes me sick.Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick, said Nobby.Its Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby.

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…

His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

His parents called him Youngster. They did this in the subconcious hope that he might take the hint. Wensleydale gave the impression of having been born with a mental age of 47.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots thatd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.This was the Captain Samuel Vimes Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness.