TPTerry Pratchett

875 collected words

Terry Pratchett

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?

Terry Pratchett / quote

02Undated

YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.That's what being alive is all about.

Terry Pratchett / quote

03Undated

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.GOOD MORNING.Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.'Are you Death?'IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.'I'm going to die?'POSSIBLY.'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.'What's that?'I'M NOT SURE.'That's very helpful.

Terry Pratchett / quote

04Undated

BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE RATHER STUPID AND WASTE THEIR LIVES. HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT? HAVE YOU NOT LOOKED DOWN FROM THE HORSE AT A CITY AND THOUGHT HOW MUCH IT RESEMBLED AN ANT HEAP, FULL OF BLIND CREATURES WHO THINK THEIR MUNDANE LITTLE WORLD WAS REAL? YOU SEE THE LIGHTED WINDOWS AND WHAT YOU WANT TO THINK IS THAT THERE MAY BE MANY INTERESTING STORIES BEHIND THEM, BUT WHAT YOU KNOW IS THAT REALLY THERE ARE JUST DULL, DULL SOULS, MERE CONSUMERS OF FOOD, WHO THINK THEIR INSTINCTS ARE EMOTIONS AND THEIR TINY LITTLE LIVES OF MORE ACCOUNT THAN A WHISPER OF WIND.The blue glow was bottmless. It seemed to be sucking her own thoughts out of her mind.'No,' whispered Susan, 'no, I've never thought like that.'Death stood up abruptly and turned away. YOU MAY FIND OUT THAT IT HELPS, he said.

Terry Pratchett / quote

05Undated

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

Terry Pratchett / quote

06Undated

The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.

Terry Pratchett / quote

07Undated

Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?

Terry Pratchett / quote

08Undated

Do you know how wizards like to be buried?""Yes!""Well, how?"Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs."Reluctantly.

Terry Pratchett / quote

09Undated

DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE.-Death

Terry Pratchett / quote

10Undated

Then Carrot said, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say.""What?" Vimes' sudden rage was like a thunderclap. "Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference -

Terry Pratchett / quote

11Undated

Maladict had hallucinations, but Wazzer had a certainty you could bend steel around. It was the opposite of a hallucination, somehow. It was as if she could see what was real and you couldn't.

Terry Pratchett / quote

12Undated

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Terry Pratchett / quote

13Undated

First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

Terry Pratchett / quote

14Undated

[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!

Terry Pratchett / quote

15Undated

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

Terry Pratchett / quote

16Undated

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

Terry Pratchett / quote

17Undated

I just rearrange words into a pleasing order for money.

Terry Pratchett / quote

18Undated

Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.

Terry Pratchett / quote

19Undated

That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!

Terry Pratchett / quote

20Undated

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!

Terry Pratchett / quote

21Undated

What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

Terry Pratchett / quote

22Undated

Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.

Terry Pratchett / quote

23Undated

Gods 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 / quote

24Undated

On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

Terry Pratchett / quote