Terry Pratchett: Trending quotes (page 33)

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people”

“Yes! I'm! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!”

“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.”

“Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.”

“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.”

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”

“Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'.”

“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.”

“Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.”

“A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.”

“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.”

“The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.”

“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.”

“The secret is not to dream," she whispered. "The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me any more. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.”

“Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.”

“They didn't know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you've got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you're alive, when you really shouldn't be.”

“Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.”