Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant. You mean the sledgehammer, sir? Yes.
I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.
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.
Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.
The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people.
Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face." (pp. 348-349)
Imagination is only intelligence having fun. A healthy mind knows how to switch between worlds, and which one you need to eat and sleep in.
You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. "So we can believe the big ones?" Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.
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.
The calendar 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.
Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce.
I would rather stare at the wall for half an hour than watch an episode of any of the 53,801 Australian soap operas now cluttering up UK TV.
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.
That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people.
People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.
The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.
You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?
And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.
Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, "Well, isn't this nice.
My character - and for that matter my worst habits - could only be described by someone else. You can't open a box with the crowbar inside it.
I have no fear of death whatsoever. I suspect that few people do, what they all fear is what might happen in the years or months before death.
He said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there.
The space between the young reader’s eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.’
People don't like to say comic so they say Graphic Novel, despite the fact that I don't think the true Graphic Novel has been written anywhere.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.
When you read, I'm sure you don't realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don't do that.
Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT." Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.
Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong... But it might.
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.
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.
'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.
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).
[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!
I was a very keen reader of science fiction, and during the time I was going to libraries, it was good, written by people who knew their science.
Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal.... The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can't avoid it.
I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.
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.
Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.
In my heart, I'm just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I'm not a rich man.
... the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.
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.
While a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well.
It's very rare that I ever go and research a particular subject. Mostly I do serendipitous research, I read stuff, things spinning out of the page.
If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.
He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine.
It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.
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.
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.