Terry Pratchett Quotes

[Undying Dream]

Here's some Terry Pratchett quotes... Feel free to add your own!  

[Undying Dream]

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

"But ye gotta know where ye're just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin' to rush oout again straight awa'."
-- Feegle tactics (Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men)

There will also be the usual welter of 'Good Morning, A Place I've Never Heard of' shows and, a lovely term, a number of drive-by signings.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them. My dream holiday would be a) a ticket to Amsterdam b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat smile
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

It gets worse. I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

There should be a notice ahead of the movie that says 'This movie is PG. Can you read? You are a Parent. Do you understand what Guidance is? Or are you just another stupid toddler who thinks they're an adult simple because they've grown older and, unfortunately, have developed fully-functioning sexual organs? Would you like some committee somewhere to decide everything for you? Get a damn grip, will you? And shut the wretched kid up !'
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

The difference between me and Neil in our attitude to movie projects is that he doesn't believe they're going to happen until he's sitting in his seat eating popcorn, and I don't believe they're going to happen.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

However, you do need rules. Driving on the left (or the right or, in parts of Europe, on the left and the right as the mood takes you) is a rule which works, since following it means you're more likely to reach your intended rather than your final destination.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Every procedure for getting a cat to take a pill works fine -- once. Like the Borg, they learn...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?'
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

A true beanie should have a propellor on the top.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I have to admit that I drive past Bridgwater quite regularly. And fast.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

What you have here is an example of that well known phenomenon, A Bookshop Assistance Who Knows Buggerall But Won't Admit It (probably some kind of arts graduate).
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remainds perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

In Reading [England] there is this thing called the IDR, short for "Inner Distribution Road", which is bureaucratese for "Big thing that cost a lot of money and relieves traffic problems, provided all your traffic wants to orbit the town centre permanently". It's a 2-3 lane dual carriageway that goes round the town centre. It has lots of roundabouts, an overhead section, a couple of spare motorway-like exits (that's British motorways -- y'know, the roundabout with the main road going under it), and a thing called the Watlington Street Gyratory, where you have to get in lane for your intended destination about three years and two corners before you get there with no signposting. I used to cycle along it every day to get to school, before I fell off at 35 mph. [Kids! Don't try this at home!] I know it well. I believe it is impossible to leave Reading heading west.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

"Out of Print" is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged".
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

AFPer: We've missed you, did you miss us? TP: Yes, but I think I have time to reload. smile
-- Terry returns to a.f.p. after a temporary absence. (Terry Pratchett and an AFPer, alt.fan.pratchett)

I was thinking of 'duh?' in the sense of 'a sentence containing several words more than three letters long, and possibly requiring general knowledge or a sense of history that extends past last Tuesday, has been used in my presense.'
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Well, they asked me in February, and I said it was coming out in November. When they asked in March, I said it was coming out in November. In April I pointed out that November, in fact, was going to be when the next book came out. In May, when asked on many occasions about when Maskerade was coming out, I said November. In November, it will be published. The same November all the way through, too.
-- So Terry, when is 'Maskerade' coming out, then? (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Bognor has always meant to me the quintessential English seaside experience (before all this global warming stuff): driving in the rain to get there, walking around in the rain looking for something to do when you're there, and driving home in the rain again...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occured to him.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I'm referred to, I see, as 'the biggest banker in modern publishing'. Now there's a line that needed the celebrated Guardian proof-reading.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough s**t, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I reckon that Stonehege was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
-- Terry defending his solution to the Monty Hall problem. (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Currently there's five machines permanently networked here. They all contain the serious core stuff. A couple of the machines are pensioned off 486s, with little other value now. Plus there's two Jaz drives in the building and the portable also carries a fair amount of stuff. Plus every Friday a man comes around and carves all the new stuff onto stone slabs and buries them in the garden... I think I'm okay.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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...
-- Terry learns Naomi Campbell has written a book. (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

She wanted a HOLIDAY in Australia, she said, and if I turned it into work she'd hit me -- so I gave in, because I did not want to be beaten about the Bush.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb -- they're often students, for heaven's sake.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Death isn't on line. If he was, there would be a sudden drop in the death rate. Although it'd be interesting to see if he'd post things like: DON'T YOU THINK I SOUND LIKE JAMES EARL JONES?
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

The net software here did its meltdown trick again at the weekend (it happens about once every six months -- if only everything was as reliable as WordPerfect 4.2, which only chews up a novel about once every two or three years...)
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I'd like to stand up for the rights of people who put everything on their burger -- chutney, mustard, pickle, mustard pickle, tomato sauce... It is common knowledge in my family that I can't tell the difference between a veggie burger and a meat one, because the ratio of burger to pickles is so high.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

'They can ta'k our live but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...
-- Braveheart (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Mort isn't fashionable UK movie material -- there's no parts in it for Hugh or Emma, it's not set it Sheffield, and no one shoves drugs up their bum...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Too many people want to have written.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

DW is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most 'refined' form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode 'Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot'.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Up until now I'd always though RSI meant 'I hate my damn job'.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

You know what I'd really, really like? What I'd pay MONEY for? A ZX81 with a disc drive. I understood the ZX81. It was so easy to interface stuff to it.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Not only did I wipe Lemmings from my hard disc, I overwrote it so's I couldn't get it back.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

To get the walkthrough, you have to take the sponge from Nanny Ogg's pantry and stick it in the ear of the troll with the tutu, then take the lumps and put them in the pouch with the zombie's razor.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

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.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Dream on. British TV Is The Best In The World is on a par with the statement about how British Justice Is The Envy Of The World ("Hey, Miguel, how come we can't convict innocent people so quickly and expensively?")
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy, humourless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I found while driving in Wyoming that wearing a stetson and driving a beat-up pickup meant you could go as fast as you like, while the police picked up Californian winnebagos that went one mph over 55. After all, they wanted to bring money into the state, not merely circulate it.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my hands aren't even in the same time zone...
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I always call it 'Tour Flu', because two or three weeks in hot bookshops with hundreds of people usually produces an ailment of some kind. Going on tour is like a box of rare diseases -- you never know what you're going to get.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Let's see, now... in HOGFATHER there are a number of stabbings, someone's killed by a man made of knives, someone's killed by the dark, and someone just been killed by a wardrobe. It's a book about the magic of childhood. You can tell.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

One of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well, we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged, either.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Botswana is also the only country in the world with a colour in its flag meant to represent rain (a sort of blue-grey). Not many people know this.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

1) I have never waved a hankie in anger 2) I do not peronally know any Morris dancers 3) But Morris dancing is kind of funny and weird at the same time.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however, there are alternate pasts.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Any town built by filling a mud hole with sawdust and proudly having a slug as a sort of civic totem is a town, one feels, where Rincewind would feel right at home.
-- Terry looks forward to his visit to Seattle, USA. (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Somehow, trying to get Granny Weatherwax and 'panty raid' into the same sentence is beyond me.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I'm sure we can arrange an academic scholarship for Detritus. Troll cheerleaers would be nice: 'Two... four.... er.. many... lots'.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Experience has taught me that you feel better on a flight if you avoid chicken fat in plastic sauce.
-- The joys of travelling the world by plane (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I stroll along, talk, I sign books, people buy me drinks, I forget where my hotel is, I get lost and fall into some local body of water... done it hundreds of times.
-- Going to a convention is fun! (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I've always thought the Patrician is a party animal. Can you imagine waking up next day and remembering all those witty things you said and did, and then realising that he was listening?
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

It's an old magical principle -- it's even filtered down into RPG systems -- that magic, while taking a lot of effort, can be 'stored' -- in a staff, for example. No doubt a wizard spends a little time each day charging up his staff, although you go blind if you do it too much, of course.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Take One ticket to New Orleans Take One cab to Bourbon Street Take steps to the counter of the all night frozen dacquiri shop. Take One Large Cupful.
-- Terry's recipe for the Ultimate Banana Dacquiri (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

AFPer: Terry, what the heck was going on at the end of Strata? I've just re-read the ending again and come up with another possible explanation which takes the total number into double figures. TP: See? Other people would just have given you one or two. Amazing value, I think.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

3) I don't sign parts of the body, even if they're still attached.
-- From Terry's Rules of Book Signing (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger, it's American editors.
-- Setting the record straight (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes, especially since, as has been tactfully pointed out, I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Oh dear, I'm feeling political today. It's just that it's dawned on me that 'zero tolerance' only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I'm getting a lot of mail and email about FoC (I particularly liked the postcard which read 'We were sure it was the wallpaper, you b*****d!!!!!'). I'm glad to say that most Baconians hared off after poissons rouge.
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness. If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella.
-- (Terry Pratchett, CIX Pratchett Conference)  

[Undying Dream]

Guards! Guards!

"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily. "I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.
-- The joys of working undercover (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm. "All by himself?" said the captain. "No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other.
-- Making Friends and Hitting People (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC.
-- The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"Pour encourjay lays ortras."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off."
-- Captain Vimes addresses a band of rioters (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
-- The Elucidated Brethren see the light (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."
-- Carrot travels to Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter [footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force].
-- Nobby takes Carrot for a drink in The Mended Drum (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
-- The City Watch takes action (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.
-- Captain Vimes ponders his problems (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

Thunder rolled. ... It rolled a six.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography"
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

"The significant owl hoots in the night."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)  

[Undying Dream]

Mort

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade
hopefully.
- I WOULDN'T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
- NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
-- Death addresses his new apprentice (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You're dead," he said. Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.
-- Princess Keli in trouble (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.
-- Death goes fishing (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
-- Discworld politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- 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?"
-- Death consults a job broker (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "Sodomy non sapiens," said Albert under his breath.
- "What does that mean?"
- "Means I'm buggered if I know."
-- Mort and Albert are facing a problem (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much -- in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all -- but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.
-- Princess Keli prepares for her coronation (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- " He stopped talking.
-- Cutwell tries to reason with the Duke of Sto Helit (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.
-- Mort goes out for a drink (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"
-- Mort tastes scrumble for the first time (Terry Pratchett, Mort)  

[Undying Dream]

Good Omens

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say."
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.
-- Crowley listens to his favourite rock group (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He'd been particularly pleased with Manchester.
-- Crowley contemplating his achievements (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Humans suffering from a conflict of signals aren't the best people to be holding guns, especially when they've just witnessed a natural childbirth, which definitely looked an un-American way of bringing new citizens into the world.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Of course he was all in favour of Armageddon in general terms.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"
-- Crowley the demon and Aziraphale the angel in conversation (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

On those occasions when the angel managed to get his mind into the twentieth century, it always gravitated to 1950.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Art thou a witch, viva espana?"
-- The Spanish Inquisition (Tadfield version) in action (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen had been shot 25 minutes after setting foot in France.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"?" he said.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Jesus won't cut you off before you're through
With him you won't never get a crossed line,
And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemised
He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.

The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference
He's in at any hour, day or night
And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll-free
He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life."
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL."
- "Yeah?"
- "JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE."
- "Ngk," said Crowley.
-- Crowley in conversation with his superiors (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.
-- The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Thud. Thud. Thud. Splat.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Did any of them kids have some space alien with a face like a friendly turd in a bike basket?"
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."
-- Crowley is a demon, in case you don't know (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

R. P. Tyler was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call dramatic. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."
-- Armageddon delayed by technical difficulties (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

In the Beginning It was a nice day.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?"
- REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.
-- Death in conversation with a biker (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty-foot-high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley was in Hell's bad books. Not that Hell has any other kind.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Sister Mary headed through the night-time hospital with the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness safely in her arms. She found a bassinet and laid him down in it. He gurgled. She gave him a tickle.
-- The antichrist is born (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

A man threw himself through the window, a knife between his teeth, a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in one hand, a grenade in the other. "I glaim gis oteg in der gaing og der --" he paused. He tooke the knife out of his teeth and began again.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

- "Surely you have considered terrorist activity?"
There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."
-- The BBC interviews a nuclear spokesperson (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

... walking like a man carrying a thermos flask of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels grey-beards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the city of Wah-Shing-Ton", in SF B-movies.
-- Crowley gets out the Holy Water (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

She'd stopped reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.
-- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)  

[Undying Dream]

Colour of Magic

Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant "idiot".
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic)

"Reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits?"
-- Economics explained (Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic)

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."
-- Rincewind discussing Twoflower (Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic)  

[Undying Dream]

The Light Fantastic

- "DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY IT FOR FUN?"
- "Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I'm only an amateur,
I'm afraid"
- "BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS!"
-- The joys of bridge (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as "slightly foxed", although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had beed badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.
-- Ah, but has it been hedgehogged? (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"The knuckles! The horrible knuckles!"
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

I WAS AT A PARTY, he added, a shade reproachfully.
-- Death is summoned by the Wizards (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

- "What is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?"
- "Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper."
-- Cohen the Barbarian in conversation with Discworld nomads (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

The old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?" The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said. The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I."
-- Rincewind and Twoflower take up broomstick flying (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear. "You said you could fly one of these things!" "No I didn't; I just said you couldn't!"
-- Rincewind and Twoflower attempt broomstick flying (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead."
-- Apparently Terry nicked this from James Thurber. Still a good quote, though. (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

The druid stiffened. "*Nice?*" he said. "A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology -- nice?" "Oh, yes," said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!" "No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I --" The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss.
-- Cohen the Barbarian interrogates Rincewind (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"Students made it long ago," said Rincewind. "Handy way in and out after lights out." "Ah," said Twoflower, "I understand. Over the wall and out to brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?" "Nearly right except for the singings and the poetry, yes," said Rincewind.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

- "Pull me up, then," he hinted.
- "I think that might be sort of difficult," grunted Twoflower. "I don't
actually think I can do it, in fact."
- "What are you holding on to, then?"
- "You."
- "I mean besides me."
- "What do you mean, besides you?" said Twoflower.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

- "If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark
tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might
not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply.
- "There is an alternative, then."
- "Out with it, man."
- "You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones
which certainly are there," said Twoflower.
Dead silence from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, "That was sarcasm."
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable here that "all men spoke of his prowess" any bard who valued his life would add hastily "except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him."
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)  

[zaraki - kenpachi]

undying_dream said: 'They can ta'k our live but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...
-- Braveheart (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

This quote makes perfect sense if you really think about it. These people are willing to pay the ultimate cost in order to be free, knowing that living without freedom is a fate worse than death. They don't want their kids to be brought up in a land without freedome and peace, and therefore they are willing to risk their lives to abtain their freedom. The quote makes sense because going against the british was a sign that they would not be ruled, it showed that they had at least some choice in what would happen to them, even if that choice costed them their lives.  

[Who Shall Remain Nameless]

Hmm, let's see if I can remember a couple.

Maskerade
"It's a sort of tonic. It's made from apples. Well...mainly apples..."

"....What do you mean they're wrong? They're predictions!

I don't see there being a rain of curry in Klatch next may. You don't get curry that early."

"Er, excuse me, but what is that on your shoulder?

It's...a fur collar.

Excuse me, but I just saw it flick its tail.

Yes. I happen to beleive in beauty without cruelty."

Small Gods

"And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the chosen one:

Psst!

.............

Yea, the Great God Om spake again unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

Psst!!

...............

Once more the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

Are you deaf, boy?"

Reaper Man

"Bill Door found a peice of chalk in the farm's old smithy, located a peice of board among the debris, and wrote very carefully for some time. Then he wedged the board in front of the henhouse and pointed Cyril towards it.

THIS YOU WILL READ, he said.

Cyril peered myopically at the "c**k-A-Doodle-Doo" in heavy gothic script. Somewhere in his tiny mad chicken mind a very distinct and chilly understanding formed that he'd better learn to read, very, very quickly."

"It was another dawn. Cyril the cockerel stirred on his perch. The chalked words clowed in the half light.
He concentrated.
He took a deep breath.
"Dock-a-loodle-fod!"
Now that the memory problem was solved, there was only the dyslexia to worry about."  

[Undying Dream]

Equal Rites

If broomsticks were cars, this one would be a split-window Morris Minor.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

Still, it was a relief to get away from that macabre sight. Gander considered that gnolls didn't look any better inside than out. He hated their guts.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

"While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe." Treatle nodded. "I hadn't looked at it like that," he said, "But you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance."
-- Discworld scientists at work (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.
-- Discworld scientists at work (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

They may have been ugly. they may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion, the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.
-- Meet the creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

"They say there's dwarf mines under the Ramtops," she said inconsequentially. "My, but them little buggers is in for a surprise."
-- Granny reflects on Esk's methods of lighting a fire. (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)