Terry Pratchett Quotes

“The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“I know it's not thematically in tune with my new job and all, but I find it effective. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day," I say. "But set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.”
― Jim Butcher, Cold Days

“Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.”
“Sir?”
“It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.”
“Sir?”
“That’s practically zen.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“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. So let's just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“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, Going Postal

“Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.
That would do it every time.”
― Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not…what do they call it…go postal? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. THEN go postal. But with precision.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

“I assure you I will not kill you," said Inigo.
"I know that," said Vimes. "But will you try?”
― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

“In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.*

*This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erraticaly in all directions, that the chance of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“You don’t have to test everything to destruction just to see if you make it right.”
― Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

“Tao of Pratchett. I live by it.”
― Harry Dresden

“That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we'll never know.”
― Terry Pratchett, Snuff

“You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming.”
― Terry Pratchett

“I've stolen books. They're the only thing worth taking that don't belong to you.”
― Sully Tarnish, The Dragon and the Apprentice: A Humorous Fantasy Adventure

“They writes some bits o’ their letters in them wee codies. That’s a terrible thing tae do to a reader. It’s hard enough readin’ the normal words, wi’oot somebody jumblin’ them all up.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“In a distant and secondhand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part… See… Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“I don't see what's so terrific about creating people as people, and then getting upset cuz they act like people!" said Adam severely. "Anyway if you stop telling people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it out while they're alive!”
― Terry Pratchett y Neil Gaiman, Buenos Presagios

“Die Selbstgefälligkeit triumphierender Tugend konnte fast ebenso schlimm sein wie entblößte Verderbtheit.”
― Terry Pratchett

“She looked up to see the man with a duck on his head moving across to sit opposite her, picking up the fallen chair as he did so.
The duck itself remained entirely nonplussed.
‘Let me guess – you’re a big Terry Pratchett fan?’
‘No,’ said the man, looking affronted. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason.”
― Caimh McDonnell

“The stranger, crouching down beside Nico, turned to him with a huge grin on his face. “You know what I said to myself this morning?” he said, somehow managing it both softly but quite friendly. “I said to myself, 'Self, what this afternoon really needs is a good old-fashioned shoot-out in the middle of the street.' What is this, the Wild, Wild West? Ridiculous.”
― Karryn Nagel

“As Brant listened intently to Nico share about his transition, his mind was crowded with questions and curiosities about the process of transforming from a girl to a boy — to a man, he corrected himself silently. He wasn’t sure what was okay to ask, and he didn’t want to offend his new friend. He considered where his questions were coming from, and found that they were mostly about wanting details that felt VERY private to ask a relative stranger. He filed most of his questions under “none of his business” and landed on the most important one of all, the one that had to be answered.”
― Karryn Nagel, Guarding Gus

“Remi sighed dramatically, clearly for effect. “Everyone expects me to be such a brooding and bloodthirsty killer. I VANT to DWAIN your BLOOD, and all that nonsense. I mean, I drink as needed, but,” he shrugged noncommittally, “I'm not tortured. What I truly crave at my age is new experiences. I can help in many ways, c’ va, and it seems like you could use an extra hand.” He waved his hands in the air, jazz hands fluttering.”
― Karryn Nagel, Guarding Gus

“In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practised the ultimate democracy. You didn't need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“See how Cerberus loves his Yummy-Doggy! Your dog can have that glossy coat, those glistening fangs, those three heads, if you feed him Yummy-Doggy! Yummy-Doggy in the handy two-ounce tin! Cerberus says Yummy-Doggy is scr-r-rumptious! Ask for Yummy-Doggy!!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction

“Cogito ergo cluck.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction