Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?
But you ain't part of it, are you?" said Granny conversationally. "You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?
... when your name is really and truly Percy Blakeney, pronounced 'Black-knee', and you still have bad acne in your twenties, you accept Pimple as a nickname and are grateful that it wasn't anything worse.
Ponder just let it happen. It's because their minds are so often involved with deep and problematic matters, he told himself, that their mouths are allowed to wander around making a nuisance of themselves.
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?"
I must confess 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 occurred to him.
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.
Granny Weatherwaz was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.
There's no point in killing an opponent... There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.
I believe in reincarnation,” [Bjorn] said. I KNOW. “I tried to live a good life. Does that help?” THAT’S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION... YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN.
I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.
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.
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.
Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.
The dwarfs can turn lead into gold... It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs. -Can we? -Damned if I know. I can't. -Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could. -Can you? -No! -Ah-ha!
These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.
No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable
Ah," said Mr Pin. "Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'.
It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed." "That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.
And Sam Vimes thought: Why is Young Sam's nursery full of farmyard animals anyway? Why are his books full of moo-cows and baa-lambs? He is growing up in the city. He will only see them on a plate! They go sizzle!
Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village-the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
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.
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.
Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW.
I hate cats." Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. "I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.
There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can't take it any more.
I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.
You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap.
Well, yes, but it's not about the football." "You're saying that football is not about football?" "It's the sharing," she said. "It's being part of the crowd. It's chanting together. It's all of it. the whole thing.
Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.
...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.
It's no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way .
Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.
You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?" "Only a man would think of that. It's our job," said Moist. "If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate . . .)
The thing about witchcraft," said Mistress Weatherwax, "is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect
I would like you to teach [the orcs] civilised behaviour," said Ladyship coldly. He appeared to consider this. "Yes of course, I think that would be quite possible," he said. "And who would you send to teach the humans?
… people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood.
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.
I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.
In fact, very few people on the face of the planet know that the very shape of the M25 forms the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'.
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.
He's probably their battle poet, too." "You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?" "No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy....When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.
His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.
It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.
It as true that normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well know fact. ... Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.
I know it’s not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!" "My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow…" "Is that so? Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig!
She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft. When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.