As far as I'm aware I'm not specifically banned anywhere in the USA, and am rather depressed about it. Surely some of you guys can do *something?* -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.books.pratchett) People whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be treated with patience, because it's usually not their fault they were reduced to getting their education from school. -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.books.pratchett) 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 :-) -- (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. :-) -- 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 shit, 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 bastard!!!!!'). I'm glad to say that most Baconians hared off after poissons rouge. -- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett) "But you read a lot of books, I'm thinking. Hard to have faith, ain't it, when you've read too many books?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) "Nac mac Feegle wha hae!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) In Ghat they believe in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about *what* they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow *cool*. Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes" were there for a purpose. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) "I name you ... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight and placed sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you'd never see your horse again, either... -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he'd had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armour would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read "Endeavour to be the one inside" he'd rather lost heart. -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) - "Remember -- that which does not kill us can only make us stronger." - "And that which *does* kill us leaves us *dead*!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum) 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) He was always at a loss when people acted like this. When machines went funny you just oiled them or prodded them or, if nothing else worked, hit them with a hammer. Nomes didn't respond well to this treatment. -- (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) "Nah," he said, eventually. "I've looked at the colours on flowers. They're definitely built-in." -- (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) "There is nothing that can be in our way, for this is Jekub, that Laughs at Barriers, and says brrm-brrm." -- From the Book Of Nome, Jekub, Chap. 3, v. V (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) - "Do you know, humans think the world was made by a sort of big human?" - "Get away?" - "It took a week." - "I expect it had some help, then,' said Dorcas. -- The Nomes discuss religion (Terry Pratchett, Diggers) 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) No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpock. Well *technically* they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, "Where's my clean socks?", no-one answers. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realized long ago that everything was steadily getting worse and, having a terrible little-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) "These people were not only cheering, they were throwing flowers and hats. The hats were made of stone, but the thought was there." -- Life among the primitive Discworld tribes (Terry Pratchett, Eric) While working his way along a wall he came to a huge door, which artistically portrayed a group of prisoners apparently being given a complete medical check-up [footnote: From a distance it did, anyway. Close to, no]. -- Rincewind visits the Tezumen tribe (Terry Pratchett, Eric) - "There's a door" - "Where does it go?" - "It stays where it is, I think." -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The trouble is that things *never* get better, they just stay the same, only more so. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) - "So we're surrounded by absolutely nothing. There's a word for it. It's what you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up." - "Yes. I think it's called the bill." -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) - "What're quantum mechanics?" - "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose." -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptiously looked very hard for one. -- Unseen University politics at work (Terry Pratchett, Eric) I HOPE WE ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY OF THIS 'FOUL FIEND' BUSINESS AGAIN. -- Death gets summoned by the college council (Terry Pratchett, Eric) There had been some desultory talk about putting up a statue to Rincewind but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the Roll of Honour, and finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed. -- Unseen University politics at work (Terry Pratchett, Eric) Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake. -- Why summoning demons is a Bad Idea (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) "You mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses who subject all male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitative rites?" said Eric, his glasses beginning to fog. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The sergeant put on the poker face which has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach. -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) - "What shall I do?" - "Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother." -- Rincewind and Eric at the Beginning of Time (Terry Pratchett, Eric) "Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind." -- Something that Terry feels strongly about, because a similar quote also appears in "Reaper Man" (Terry Pratchett, Eric) The Supreme Life President of Hell wrote: "What business are we in???" He thought for a bit, and then carefully wrote, underneath: "We are in the damnation business!!!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Eric) "Bingeley bingeley beep!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) ...He hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. *I* TURN UP ONLY ONCE. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) Slab: Jus' say "AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH" -- Detritus' war on drugs (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk [...]" -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was *always* a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) "Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody? -- Lord Vetinari reproves Vimes. (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to "serve the community" by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and *guess who's back*? They returned more times than raw broccoli. -- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay) 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) "[...] 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!) "Real children don't go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs." -- Susan, the ultimate sensible governess (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) "ER...HO. HO. HO." -- Death makes a career move (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) Biers was where the undead drank. And when Igor the barman was asked for a Bloody Mary, he didn't mix a metaphor. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) "Did you check the list?" YES. TWICE. ARE YOU SURE THAT'S ENOUGH? -- He's gonna find out... (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) "That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) "Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -- Bursar 1 - Hex 0 (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) *Glingleglingleglingle.* -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that. -- Lord Downey reflects on Mister Teatime (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled *backwards*. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head. -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++ -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) "Millennium hand and shrimp." -- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather) Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) After the stampede the artist Three Solid Frogs got to his feet, retrieved his brush from his nostril, pulled his easel out of a tree, and tried to think placid thoughts. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) ++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) "Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in life?" very quickly lacked both. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) "Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum." -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one. -- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) "I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!" -- Rincewind gives a speech on politics. (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh." -- Magic armour is not all it's cracked up to be. (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times) [...] Vimes's grin was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) "Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo." -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They *said* they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) "Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) "*Veni, vici*...Vetinari." -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) "'Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy'", she read out loud. "'Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel...'" -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) "One o'clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!" -- The Dis-organizer (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) He had the look of a lawn mower just after the grass had organised a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. *No one* ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. -- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo) Bigmac wasn't an athlete. If there was an Olympic Sick Note event, he would've won the 100 metres I've Got Asthma, the half marathon Lurk in the Changing Rooms, and the freestyle Got to Go to the Doctor. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb) "Is that *you*?" said a female voice. It wasn't exactly an unpleasant one, but it had a sharp penetrating quality. It seemed to be saying that if you *weren't* you, then it was *your* fault. Johnny recognized it instantly. It was the voice of someone who dialled the wrong numbers and then complained that the phone was answered by people she didn't want to speak to. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb) When all else failed, she tried being reasonable. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb) "You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs anymore." said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons." -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb) *No-one* liked the Joshua N'Clement block. There were two schools of thought about what should be done with it. The people who lived there thought everyone should be taken out en then the block should be blown up, and the people who lived *near* the block just wanted it blown up. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) There was a new library in the Civic Centre. It was so new it didn't even have librarians. It had Assistant Information Officers. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) Johnny had seen films of American shopping malls. They must have different sorts of people in America, he'd thought. They all looked cool, all the girls were beautiful, and the place wasn't crowded with little kamikaze grandmothers. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) "You've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger." -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) "I believe it's very hard to have fun in Iceland without fish being involved in some way." -- Looking for a good place to party (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) - "America?" said Mrs Liberty. "Won't we get scalped?" - "Good grief, no!" said William Stickers, who was a bit more up to date about the world. - "*Probably* not," said Mr Fletcher, who had been watching the news lately and was even more up to date than William Stickers. -- Still looking for a good place to party (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) Sergeant Comely was working on the general assumption that where you got lots of people gathered together, something illegal was bound to happen sooner or later. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) Mrs. Nugent was the Johnson's next door neighbour, and known to be unreasonable on subjects like Madonna played at full volume at 3 a.m. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) "Why bother with such a big stone arch?" "It's just showing off. There's probably a sticker on the back saying 'My Other Grave Is A Porch'". -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) Granddad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, education leaked out, like radioactivity. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) "Are you a physicist?" "Me? I don't know anything about science!" "Marvellous! Ideal qualification!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living. -- (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead) The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright collar around his neck with the word "PONGO" on it. Someone was going to suffer for this. -- The Librarian travels incognito (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "Oook!" "Oook?" "Kneel and deliver!" -- Casanunda, the worlds smallest lover turns highwaydwarf (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) I MUST SAY THESE ARE VERY GOOD BISCUITS. HOW DO THEY GET THE BITS OF CHOCOLATE IN? -- Death has a snack (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Nanny Ogg never did any housework herself, but she was the cause of housework in other people. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES. Death grinned hopefully. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu-- was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) The thing about iron is that you generally don't have to think fast in dealing with it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin although, in accordance with the rules of universal humour, he still had his hat on. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) For Magrat, stepping into a man's bedroom was like an explorer stepping on to that part of the map marked Here Be Dragons. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "I wants your body, Mrs Ogg." -- Casanunda makes his move (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "I know she's in there," said Verence, holding his crown in his hands in the famous Ai-Senor-Mexican-Bandits-Have-Raided-Our-Village position. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious. -- Schrodinger's Moggy explained (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) 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. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "Serve 'em right for not inviting me to their weddings." -- Ridcully contemplates the Trousers of Time (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting *donkeys* in a play!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They are not all that subtle." -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "Go ahead, bake my quiche" -- Magrat instructs the castle cook (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Remember, A Dragon is For Life, Not Just for Hogswatchnight -- Motto of The Sunshine Home for Sick Dragons in Morphic Street, Please Leave Donations of Coal by Side Door. (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) There have, in the course of decadent history, been many large wigs, often with build-in gewgaws to stop people having to look at boring hair all the time. There had been ones big enough to contain pet mice or clockwork ornaments. Mme Cupidor, mistress of Mad King Soup II, had one with a bird cage in it, but on special state occasions wore one containing a perpetual calendar, a floral clock and a take-away linguini shop. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) The place looked as though it had been visited by Gengiz Cohen [footnote: hence the term "wholesale destruction"]. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) "This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here." -- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) No matter what she did with her hair it took about three minutes for it to tangle itself up again, like a garden hosepipe in a shed [Which, no matter how carefully coiled, will always uncoil overnight and tie the lawnmower to the bicycles]. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth? -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) And the child had a permanently runny nose and ought to be provided with a handkerchief or, failing that, a cork. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: 'Thing-ies') or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five 'flavours', known as 'up', 'down', 'sideways', 'sex appeal' and 'peppermint'. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) A heap of discarded garments by the bed suggested that Verence had mastered the art of hanging up clothes as practised by half the population of the world, and that he had equally had difficulty with the complex topological manoeuvres necessary to turn the socks the right way out. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) Chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn't when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) It's not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select. -- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies) The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille. -- The goddess with the nice earrings (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely The Opera Ghost -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) She'd even given herself a middle initial - X - which stood for "someone who has a cool and exciting middle name". -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) "What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and *writes* a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man." -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) "The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows. [footnote: Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings.] -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) "...my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings." -- Agnes tells Christine about herself (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it anyway. -- Granny Weatherwax commits optimism (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) - "There have been...accidents." - "What kind of accidents?" - "The kind of accidents you prefer to call...accidents." -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) - "But I don't *believe* in reincarnation!" he protested. - SQUEAK. - And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: Reincarnation believes in *you*. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) It was done far more often than the audiences ever realized -- when singers had a sore throat, or had completely dried, or had turned up so drunk they could barely stand, or, in one notorious instance many years previously, had died in the interval and subsequently sung their famous aria by means of a broom-handle stuck up their back and their jaw operated with a piece of string. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) After you'd known Christine for any length of time, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) "Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. 'There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely." -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) No male had ever touched Agnes before, except perhaps to push her over and steal her sweets. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) The pre-luncheon drinks were going quite well, Mr Bucket thought. Everyone was making polite conversation and absolutely no one had been killed up to the present moment. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Nanny could get a statue to cry on her shoulder and say what it really thought about pigeons. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harrassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end. -- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade) If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) "Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact." -- Lord Rust describing Edward d'Eath (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it. -- The Life and Times of Corporal Nobbs (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) "Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage." -- Gaspode, of course (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) "It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them." -- The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) - BIG FIDO? - "Yes?" - HEEL. -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as "Oook". -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) - "It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!" - "It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant." - "You see?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) The maze was so small that people got lost looking *for* it. -- Bloody Stupid Johnson at his finest (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms) "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) The Librarian had seen many weird things in his time, but that had to be the 57th strangest. [footnote: he had a tidy mind] -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Woof bloody woof." -- Gaspode the Wonder Dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) No-one would have believed, in the final years of the Century of the Fruitbat, that Discworld affairs were being watched keenly and impatiently by intelligences greater than Man's, or at least much nastier; that their affairs were being scrutinised and studied as a man with a three-day appetite might study the All-You-Can-Gobble-For-A-Dollar menu outside Harga's House of Ribs... -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours *preferred* explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Meat pies! Hot sausages! Inna bun! So fresh the pig h'an't noticed they're gone!" -- Genuine pig portion packages (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first. -- Middle management explained (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter." -- Popcorn comes to the Discworld (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Students?" barked the Archchancellor. "Yes, Master. You know? They're the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we're a *university*? They come with the whole thing, like rats --" -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) 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. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat *anything*. -- A fact McDonalds knows about as well (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "The thing is that Mr. Dibbler can even sell sausages to people who have bought them off him *before*." -- Now *that's* marketing (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) - "You pay for it before you eat it? What happens if it's dreadful?" - "That's why." -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "One minute I'm just another rabbit and happy about it, next minute *whazaam*, I'm thinking. That's a major drawback if you're looking for happiness as a rabbit, let me tell you. You want grass and sex, not thoughts like 'What's it all about, when you get right down to it?'" -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I'm a cat person, myself," she said, vaguely. A low-level voice said: "Yeah? Yeah? Wash in your own spit, do you?" -- It's a dog's life (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Why's it called Ming?" said the Archchancellor, on cue. The Bursar tapped the pot. It went *ming*. -- Discworld archeology revealed (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) - "I thought swords had to be straight." - "Perhaps they start out straight and go bendy with use. A lot of things do." -- Odour-eaters, right? Yeah, she means odour-eaters. (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "He's in love," said Gaspode. "It's very tricky." "Yeah, I know how it is," said the cat sympathetically. "People throwing old boots and things at you." -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "In a word -- im-possible!" "That's two words," said Dibbler. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I'm vice-president of Throwing Out People Mr Dibbler Doesn't like the Face of." -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) - "It looks worse than you can imagine!" - "I can imagine some pretty bad things!" - "That's why I said *worse*!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Woof?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said 'miaow'." -- Our hero meets Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Worlds only harmonica-playing dog. Tuppence." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Seems I can't get me 'ead down these days without rescuin' people or foilin' robbers or sunnink." -- It's a wonder dog's life (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "How's he in the mysterious senses department?" -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Walk a mile on these paws and call me a liar." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Woof. In tones of low menace." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "There's nothin' wrong with bein' a son of a bitch." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I thought it was going to be bucket-of-water time myself." -- Gaspode's way of saying "I'm sorry, was I intruding?" (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I can explain it in Dog, but you only listen in Human." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I mean are we talking Thicko City here or what?" -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I wouldn't give it to a dog, and I *am* one." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Does that look like ten per cent to you, Victor?" -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "... Percy the Pup here with a cold nose, bright eyes, glossy coat and the brains of a stunned herring." -- Gaspode the wonder dog on 'Laddie' (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Maybe you should loosen her clothing or something." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I could send you a bone with a file in it, only you'd eat it." -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "If gharstely creatures from before the Dawna Time starts wavin' at you from under your bed, jus' you don't come complainin' to me," -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Idiot I may be, but tied up I ain't." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "And Howondaland Smith, Balrog Hunter, practic'ly eats the dark for his tea." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Messin' around with girls in thrall to Creatures from the Void never works out, take my word for it." -- Gaspode gives Victor some practical advice (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Growl, growl." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I can bite your leg if you like." -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "I expect I've saved the day, right?" -- Gaspode the wonder dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Can't sing. Can't dance. Can handle a sword a little." -- Victor's resume (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "Did I hear things, or can that little dog speak?" said Dibbler. "He says he can't," said Victor. Dibbler hesitated. "Well," he said, "I suppose he should know." -- Dibbler meets Gaspode the Wonder Dog (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) In retrospect, Victor was always a little unclear about those next few minutes. That's the way it goes. The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die. -- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures) "When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend." -- Detritus learns about weapons safety (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch) He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armour. It was gilt by association. -- (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch) "Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes." -- (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch) The Assassin moved quietly from roof to roof until he was well away from the excitement around the Watch House. His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things. -- (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch) No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) One day, if he could master GCSE maths and reliably pick up a soldering iron by the end that wasn't hot, he was going to be a Big Man in computers. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) "I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked," said Johnny reproachfully. "Doubtless it had a map," said the Captain. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) Wobbler had written an actual computer game like this once. It was called "Journey to Alpha Centauri". It was a screen with some dots on it. Because, he said, it happened in *real time*, which no-one had ever heard of until computers. He'd seen on TV that it took three thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri. He had written it so that if anyone kept their computer on for three thousand years, they'd be rewarded by a little dot appearing in the middle of the screen, and then a message saying, "Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home." -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) Wobbler thought that California was where good people went when they died. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) If Not You, Who Else? -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) "We got a talk about it at school. There's lots of stuff most girls can't do, but you've got to pretend they can, so that more of them will." -- Sexism explained (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) Bigmac's brother was reliably believed to be in the job of moving video recorders around in an informal way. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) He microwaved himself something called a Pour-On Genuine Creole Lasagne, which said it served four portions. It did if you were dwarfs. -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say "Um". -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) "Stuck? You're an *alien*," said Johnny. "Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact." -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) "If we find a cat I'm going to kick it!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind) What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed. -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) "Ibid you already know." -- More Discworld philosophers (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one. -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills. -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) - "Therefore I will have dinner sent in," said the priest. "It will be roast chicken." - "I hate chicken." Dios smiled. "No sire. On wednesdays the King always enjoys chicken, sire." -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids) "What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. "It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical." -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) No one was avoiding him, it was just that an apparent random Brownian motion was gently moving everyone away. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) "Dock-a-loodle-fod!" -- Dyslexic roosters are a sad sight (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water's fresh and drinkable, and *in all that time* never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY. -- Dirty Death (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) It is traditional, when loading wire trolleys, to put the most fragile items at the bottom. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) I EXPECT, he said, THAT YOU COULD MURDER A PIECE OF CHEESE? -- Death talks to the Death of Rats (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) "Bonsai!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) "Chap with a whip got as far as the big sharp spikes last week," said the low priest. -- Life in the Temple of Offler (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) "You know," said Windle, "it's a wonderful afterlife." -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? -- Death appeals to Azrael (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) - "Have you any last words?" - YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO. - "Well. Succinct, anyway." -- Death at the other end of the scythe, for once (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) Mrs Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small. -- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man) "Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "It's a god-eat-god world." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink." -- We meet Dydactylos the philosopher (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. *Crabs* thought he walked sideways. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) One day a tortoise will learn how to fly. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) History, contrary to popular theories, *is* kings and dates and battles. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "There's very good eating on one of these, you know." -- Eyeing the tortoise for tea (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Ah. Philosophy," said Om. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) SQUEAK. -- The Death of Rats (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Eureka," he said. "Going to have a bath then?" -- Philosophy in action (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE. -- Death on symbolic last games (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Go on, do Deformed Rabbit... it's my favourite." -- Shadow puppets are so cute (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "What's a philosopher ?" said Brutha. "Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "You're not one of us." "I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armour plating. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!" "Yes, but perhaps he thought that you wanted it." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god). -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done *anything* with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "All the other prophets came back with commandments!" "Where they get them?" "I ... suppose they made them up." "You get them from the same place." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "Now we've got a truth to die for!" "No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "I used to think that *I* was stupid, and then I met philosophers." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy." -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) "That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles." -- The many and varied advantages of philosophy (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) Until an unfortunate axe incident, Gloria had been captain of the school basketball team. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) "Scum," said Crash, his voice low with resigned menace, "you've bought a leopard, haven't you?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) "Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong." -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The question seldom addressed is *where* Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants *really quickly*. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) SNH, SNH, SNH. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian's hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species 'female' but have never expected to get this close to one. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) "I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way, Yo!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn't work, however, got broken. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) "What duck?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) There was a roar like the scream of a camel who has just seen two bricks. -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) "Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say." -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music) He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overhelming majority of citizens. [footnote: The overhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit] -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life. "Erm," he said, "excuse me..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed. -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like. -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it. -- Discworld wildlife (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) "It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse." -- The Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse encounter unexpected difficulties (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting. -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) "I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!" he hissed. "I'm afraid of grounds." "You mean heights," said Conina. "And stop being silly." "I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) It became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice. -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) "I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE." -- Death is obviously not a dog person (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery) Death was Nature's way of telling you to slow down. -- (Terry Pratchett, Strata) The sky spun again as Marco turned the ship so that 'down' was where long tradition had always put it, in the region of the feet. -- (Terry Pratchett, Strata) He didn't look mad, but they never did. -- (Terry Pratchett, Strata) "You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We *know* we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've *lost*. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) "You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents) On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got *heard*, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics. -- Carpet politics are very similar to Discworld politics (Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People) "He's a man of few words, and he doesn't know what either of them mean," people said, but not when he was within hearing. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People) "My house is your house", his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, "although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually *give* you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion --" Owlglass was clearly having some trouble getting to the end of the sentence. -- Carpet philosophers at work (Terry Pratchett, The Carpet People) 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) "I perceive a possibility of an immediate chronological sequence of events which includes a violence," said Three. He stepped back, "I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Dark Side of the Sun) The one positive thing you could say about the bread products around him was that they were probably as edible now as they were on the day they were baked. *Forged* was a better term. Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency. Dwarfs were not, as far as Vimes knew, religious in any way, but the way they thought about bread came close. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they? -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) There was no such thing as a dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) He wasn't strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime (did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again?) -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase "people are people everywhere" had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren't virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it didn?t cost you anything. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small squad of not very efficient soldiers. For defence, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) She moved like someone who had grown used to her body and, in general, looked like what Vimes had heard described as "a woman of a certain age." He'd never been quite certain what age that was. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) "When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!" -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) - "I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons," said the Archchancellor coldly. "I suppose you're not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?" - "Of course not!" snapped Ponder, "I don't even know what he looked like. He died before I was born." - "Ah-*hah*!" -- The faculty members of Unseen University discuss time travel (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) In the fetid fleapit of Rincewind's brain the projectionist of memory put on reel two. Recollection began to flicker. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES *DO* PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) "Nulli Sheilae sanguineae" -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) "All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is *bastards*." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualised as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled "Me, who does the telling" and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled "Everyone else". -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) "When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life." -- Management slogan, Ridcully-style (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent) Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of the list 'the man who arrived just before you'. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero) - "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) There were no flies on C.M.O.T Dibbler. He would have charged them rent. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world *belongs*, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse *me*? This is my glass? I don't *think* so. My glass was full! *And* it was a bigger glass! -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming. No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret" -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) "He's going to go totally Librarian-poo." -- Gaspode about Vimes (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) "But surely dogs can't talk--" Sacharissa began. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear," said Gaspode, "Did I *say* I was talking?" "Well, not in so many words--" -- Sacharissa meets Gaspode the Wonder Dog (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN? The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of potato. SQUEAK, he said. Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY *ME*, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) "Some people are heroes. And some people jot down notes." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Truth) Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in this reasoning. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) Boot-faced cats aren't born but made, often because they've tried to outstare or occasionally rape a speeding car and have been repaired by a vet who just pulled all the bits together and stuck the stitches in where there was room. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. But they don't, so that's all right. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17 % of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start ("She looks like a Winnifred to *me*"), and the as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) Next comes the realist phase ("After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top."). -- Getting Real cats to take medication can be a problem (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff on the environment, you're being chased and eaten by most of the planet's large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr. -- Why humans like cats (Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat) "Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it?" "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short." -- (Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men) "Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! *We willna be fooled again!*" -- (Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men) "Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!" -- Rule One (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) "Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a *proper* exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean." -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) "No running with scythes!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you *think* before you break 'em. -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) "Bikkit!" -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) Even with nougat you can have a perfect moment. -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) In the second scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: "Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?" Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: "A fish!" And Clodpool went away, satisfied. -- (Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time) - "Outside! What's it like?" - "Well -- It's sort of big" -- (Terry Pratchett, Truckers) The Store was having its last sale. It was holding a Grand Final Clearance of specially selected sparks, and flames to suit every pocket. -- (Terry Pratchett, Truckers) It's a small step for a man, but a giant leap for nomekind. -- (Terry Pratchett, Truckers) Granny's remedies, made from simple, honest, and generally nearly poisonous herbs and roots, were amazing things. After one dose of stomache-ache jollop, you made sure you never complained of stomach ache ever again. In its way, it was a sort of cure. -- No, not that Granny. The other one. (Terry Pratchett, Truckers) "No, no, no, what you do is, you get a gnu, then you point it at the driver and someone says, 'Look out, he's got a gnu!' and you say, 'Take us where we want to go or I'll fire this gnu at you!'" -- "Host Age at 10,000 Feet", Nome style (Terry Pratchett, Truckers) There was a polite beeping from the Thing. "You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier." Masklin turned wearily to the others. "All right, own up. Who broke it?" -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) Beyond the top of the sky was the place the Thing had called the universe. It contained -- according to the Thing -- everything and nothing. And there was very little everything and more nothing than anyone could imagine. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) - "The other humans around it are trying to explain to it what a planet is." - "Doesn't it know?" - "Many humans don't. Mistervicepresident is one of them." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) AIRPORTS: A place where people hurry up and wait. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) "I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) Nomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high- speed mouse. That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them. The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a nome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) And then there were the frogs. Very, very small frogs. They had such a tiny life cycle it still had trainer wheels on it. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) And this had been the way things were for as far back as the frogs could remember [footnote: About three seconds. Frogs don't have good memories]. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) "You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up." "Why not?" said Gurder. "Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess." -- The nomes discuss science (Terry Pratchett, Wings) CONCORDE: It goes twice as fast as a bullet and you get smoked salmon. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) It had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway places written on it were like magic -- Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printed in Hong Kong, Iceland... -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, there were dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this because frogs can't count beyond one. They saw lots of ones. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at. Thinking isn't. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought long and hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about the need to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge. In fact, what they thought was: "._._.mipmip._._.mipmip._._.mipmip". -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) HOTELS: A place where TRAVELLING HUMANS are parked at night. Other humans bring them food, including the famous BACON, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICH. There are beds and towels and special things that rain on people to get them clean. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) - "Very clever idea, though." - "What is?" - "Asking the questions when people arrive. If anyone was coming here to do some subversive overthrowing, everyone'd be down on him like a pound of bricks as soon as he answered 'Yes'." - "It's a sneaky trick, isn't it," said Angalo, in an admiring tone of voice. -- The nomes encounter American customs regulations (Terry Pratchett, Wings) - "What's the human singing about, Thing?" said Masklin. - "It is a little difficult to follow. However, it appears that the singer wishes it to be known that he did something his way." - "Did what?" - "Insufficient data at this point. But whatever it was, he did it at a) each step along life's highway and b) not in a shy way..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) FLORIDA (or FLORIDIA): A place where may be found ALLIGATORS, LONG-NECKED TURTLES and SPACE SHUTTLES. An interesting place which is warm and wet and there are geese. BACON, LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICHES may be found here also. A lot more interesting than many other places. The shape when seen from the air is like a bit stuck on a bigger bit. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) SATELLITES: They are in SPACE and stay there by going so fast that they are never in one place enough to fall down. TELEVISIONS are bounced off them. They are part of SCIENCE. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) SCIENCE: A way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it is wrong. There is a lot more Science than you think. -- From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings) "All right," said Masklin. "But you're not to fly down low again and try to read the signposts. Every time you do that, humans rush into the streets and we get lots of shouting on the radio." "That's right." said the Thing. "People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wings) The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) - "We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience" - "But the point is... the point is... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you." -- Stop being so negative (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) People didn't hit you over the head with farmhouses back home. -- Nanny Ogg gets homesick (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because -- what with trolls and dwarfs and so on -- speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. -- Home Pragmatics (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) "Emberella," thought Magrat. "I'm fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain." -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down. "You're a dwarf," she said. -- Nanny Ogg meets Casanunda (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) - "'S called the Vieux River." - "Yes?" - "Know what that means?" - "No." - "The Old (Masculine) River," said Nanny. - "Yes?" - "Words have sex in foreign parts," said Nanny hopefully. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) "You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage." -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Yabi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Yabi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against any decent swordmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off. -- (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government. -- Local-body politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) "Baths is unhygienic," Granny declared. "You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that." -- Taking personal hygiene to new limits (Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad) The calender of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because -- well, June 12th was quite nice, and..." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying "Mother". No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do," said Granny. "But right now he should go home." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "I daresay," said Granny, pushing the Fool aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. "If anyone locked *me* in a dungeon, there'd be screams." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "He didn't take any notice!" whispered Tomjon. "A born critic," said the dwarf. -- Discworld stage actors in conversation (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) "Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody." -- Even Nanny Ogg gets upset occasionally (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end... -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)