Terry Pratchett

From BillionQuotes

Jump to: navigation, search

Terence David John (Terry) Pratchett (Born April 28, 1948) British author.

Contents

[edit]

See also

[edit]

Sourced

[edit]

Other Discworld Books

[edit]

The Discworld Companion

  • There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books, merely alternative pasts.
[edit]

The Science of Discworld

  • With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.
  • Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...
  • On Roundworld, things happen because the things want to happen.[*]
    [*] In a manner of speaking. They happen because things obey the rules of the universe. A rock has no detectable opinion about gravity.
  • Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question.
  • This was turning out to be the longest winter in living memory, so long, in fact, that living memory itself was being shortened as some of the older citizens succumbed.
  • As yet unmeasured, but believed to be faster than light owing to its ability to move so quickly out of light's way.
    • Note: [on the speed of dark]
  • 'I just wanted to bring this out in the open, Dean, calmly and in the spirit of reconciliation...
    ...we are all here for you, although I can't imagine what you are here for.'
[edit]

The Science of Discworld II: The Globe

  • If you gave a man a fat woman, he'd just have a fat woman for a day, but if you helped a man become very important because he knew the secret of buffaloes and fish, he could get himself as many fat women as he wanted. - Chapter 23
[edit]

The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch

  • 'There are quite a lot of reasons why that course of action might not, with ease, be rescued in any coherent way from the category of the insanely unwise, Dean.' - Ponder Stibbons, chapter 11
[edit]

Theatre of Cruelty

Theatre of Cruelty

  • 'Now I *know* you saw something, sir,' he said. 'You were there.'

Well, yes,</span> said Death. I have to be, you know. But this is very irregular.</span>

[edit]

Discworld's Unseen University Diary 1998

[edit]

Discworld's Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999

[edit]

Discworld Assassins' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2000

[edit]

Discworld Fools' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001

[edit]

Discworld Thieves' Guild Yearbook and Diary 2002

[edit]

Discworld (Reformed) Vampyre's Diary 2003

Thought for the week</span>
Remember, ve are not bloodsuckers.
What is missing from *AMPY*ISM? V R! - 1–5 Offle

[edit]

The Discworld Almanak - The Year of The Prawn

  • If the Swan be nesting high, then floods are expected; if only the head of the Swan may be seen, they have arrived abruptly. - February

1. All fungi are edible.
2. Some fungi are not edible more than once.</span> - Ember

[edit]

Non-Discworld Novels

[edit]

The Carpet People

  • They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.
    It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.
  • On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got heard, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics.
  • Keep 'em busy. That was one of the three rules of being chief that old Grimm had passed on to him. Act confidently, never say 'I don't know,' and when all else fails, keep 'em busy.
  • ...I wish that the people who sing about the deeds of heroes would think about the people who have to clear up after them.
  • Anyway, just because you're sworn enemies doesn't mean you can't be friends, does it?
  • When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.
  • 'I can't have you subjects throwing my family over the balcony, that would never do.'
    'Good,' said Snibril.
    'I'll do it myself.'
  • 'Whose side are they on?' said Brocando.
    'Sides? Their own, I suppose, just like everyone else.'
  • 'Stop that!' he shouted. 'You're soldiers! You're not supposed to fight!'
  • Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants – the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.
  • The Deftmenes are mad and the Dumii are sane, thought Snibril, and that's just the same as being mad except that it's quieter. If only you could mix them together, you'd end up with normal people.
  • Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business'.
  • The sign outside the shop said Apothecary, which meant that the shop was owned by a sort of early chemist, who would give you herbs and things until you got better or at least stopped getting any worse.
  • 'Well ... welcome. My house is your house', his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, 'although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually give you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion --'
  • 'What would Deftmenes be if we went around obeying orders all the time?'
    'They might be ruling the Carpet,' said Pismire.
    'Ha!' said Brocando, 'but the trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.'
  • 'Waiting is the worst part,' said Pismire.
    'No it isn't,' said Owlglass, who wasn't even being trusted to hold a sword. 'I expect that having long sharp swords stuck in you is the worst part.'
  • 'But we should kill him!'
    'No. You've been listen to Brocando too often,' said Bane.
    Brocando bristled. 'You know what he is! Why not kill--' he began, but he was interrupted.
    'Because it doesn't matter what he is. It matters what we are.'
[edit]

Only You Can Save Mankind

  • Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.
[edit]

Johnny and the Bomb

[edit]

Johnny and the Dead

[edit]

Truckers

  • Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance...
    • Source: Chapter 1
  • 'You're not going to die, are you sir?' he said.
    'Of course I am. Everyone is. That's what being alive is all about.'
    • Source: Chapter 7
  • The way to deal with an impossible task was to chop it down into a number of merely very difficult tasks, and break each one of them into a group of horribly hard tasks, and each of them into tricky jobs, and each of them...
    • Source: Chapter 7
[edit]

Diggers

[edit]

Wings

[edit]

The Unadulterated Cat

[edit]

Strata

[edit]

The Dark Side of the Sun

[edit]

Usenet

  • I keep vaguely wondering what Macs are like, but the ones I've seen spend too much time being friendly.
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 5 July, 1992 [1]
  • Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 22 November 1993 [2]
  • 'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 15 October 1996 [3]
    • Notes: in response to a comment that if television is educational because watching it can teach you a lot about society, then a cheeseburger is also educational
  • I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 8 June 1997 [4]
  • Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 8 August 1997 [5]
  • 'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 11 January 1999 [6]
    • Note: referring to the movie Braveheart
  • There should be a notice ahead of the movie that says 'This movie is PG. Can you read? You are a Parent. Do you understand what Guidance is? Or are you just another stupid toddler who thinks they're an adult simply because they've grown older and, unfortunately, have developed fully-functioning sexual organs? Would you like some committee somewhere to decide *everything* for you? Get a damn grip, will you? And shut the wretched kid up !'
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 10 July 2001 [7]
  • Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
    • Source: alt.fan.pratchett, 30 May 1998 [8]
[edit]

Other

  • Life doesn't happen in chapters— at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep") but I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults.
  • I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.
  • As for the Map... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it.
    That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans:
    A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
    I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.
    • Excerpt from an interview, [9]
  • My programming language was solder.
    • Pratchett on his early computers, from a talk "When I Were A Lad, We Used To Dream of 64K" at the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland.
[edit]

Attributed

  • Brave men make good soldiers, but cowards make better strategists.
  • Librarians rule, Ook!
  • Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
  • The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so.
  • Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
[edit]

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:
Wikipedia has an article about:
Discworld.


Wikiquote links: People - Literary Works - Proverbs - Films - TV Shows - Themes - Categories
bg:Тери Пратчет

bs:Terry Pratchett de:Terry Pratchett fr:Terry Pratchett it:Terry Pratchett he:עולם הדיסק pl:Terry Pratchett pt:Terry Pratchett sr:Тери Прачет

Retrieved from "http://www.billionquotes.com/index.php/Terry_Pratchett"
Personal tools