Discworld Quotes

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?'
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“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

“Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Eric

“Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
― Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

“Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course — it was not round and shiny — but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

“We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind."
"Oh, no! You think so?"
"Yes."
"But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time."
"Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad."
Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror.
"Gosh," he said.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

“Silverfish looked down.
"Oh. Are you a dwarf?"
Cuddy gave him a blank stare.
"Are you a giant?" He said.
"Me? Of course not!"
"Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“The boldest of the three moved suddenly, grabbed Angua and pulled her upright. "We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?" he snarled.

Someone sniggered.

"I hope you're not going to kill anyone," said Carrot.

"That's up to us!"

"Sorry, was I talking to you?" said Carrot.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.”
― Terry Pratchett, Eric

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

“What a place! What a situation! What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“And Tiffany knew that if a witch started thinking of anyone as "just" anything, that would be the first step on a well-worn path that could lead to, oh, to poisoned apples, spinning wheels, and a too-small stove... and to pain, and terror, and horror and the darkness.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

“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

“Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I'm your worst nightmare!' said Teatime cheerfully.
The man shuddered.
'You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?'
'Sorry?' Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.
'Then you're the one where I'm falling, only instead of the ground underneath it's all --'
'No. In fact I'm --'
The guard sagged. 'Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue --'
'No, I'm --'
'Oh, shit, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws --'
'No,' said Teatime. 'Not that one.' He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. 'I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you, stone dead.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“It was the way he wore the place. You expected him any moment to break into the kind of song that has suspicious rhymes and phrases like "my kind of town" and "I wanna be a part of it" in it; the kind of song where people dance in the street and give the singer apples and join in and a dozen lowly matchgirls suddenly show amazing choreographical ability and everyone acts like cheery lovable citizens instead of the murderous, evil-minded, self-centered people they suspect themselves to be. But the point was that if Carrot had erupted into a song, people WOULD have joined in. Carrot could have jollied up a circle of standing stones to form up behind him and do a rumba.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Then it came to her. She did not deserve to die. And she was not alone. She never would be. Not while her land was beneath her boots. Her land. The land of the Achings.

She was Tiffany Aching. Not Granny Weatherwax, but a witch in her own right. A witch who knew exactly who she was and how she wanted to do things. Her way. And she had not failed, because she had barely begun...”
― Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

“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