There was for example the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl or steady gait into nowhere for all time. This theory was popular among academics.
She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will half the time quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.
This looks like a job for inadvisably applied magic if ever I saw one.
Just to keep the bad dreams at bay she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death.
No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink.
When you look into the abyss it's not supposed to wave back.
Although she was aware that somewhere under her complicated strata of vests and petticoats there was some skin that didn't mean to say she approved of it.
It's going to look pretty good then isn't it " said War testily "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse.
Apes had it worked out. No ape would philosophize "The mountain is and is not." They would think "The banana is. I will eat the banana. There is no banana. I want another banana.
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order because it is better organized.
Anyway just because you're sworn enemies doesn't mean you can't be friends does it?
It was written in some holy book apparently so that made it okay and probably compulsory.
Matter exploded into being apparently as chaos but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord.
You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.
-Oh yes? Can you identify yourself? -Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.
The city's full of people who you just see around.
He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'
If complete and utter chaos was lightning then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!
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.
If per capita was a problem decapita could be arranged
Oh a very useful philosophical animal your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows beating hares in races... very handy.
The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?
Shoes men coffins; never accept the first one you see.
Brother Preptil the master of the music had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.
Modesty is only arrogance by stealth.
Some shadows are so long they arrive before the light.
No one knew where you were before you were born but when you were born it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched.
Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home.
Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods it just meant you believed in architecture.
What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the ark sir?
...and the funny thing was that people who weren't entirely certain they were right always argued much louder than other people as if the main person they were trying to convince were themselves.
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.
He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.
Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Heaven has no taste.""Now-""And not one single sushi restaurant."A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.
Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.
Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.
When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork he is tired of ankle-deep slurry.
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.
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.
A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.
Of course Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys they reasoned had to be very pure indeed.
And we don't often get any wading birds in the River Ankh mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway it's easier for them to walk on the surface.
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone's wallets.
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.
No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things and a philosophy comes.
Death: Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom.
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)
William: I'm sure we can all pull together sir.Vetinari: Oh I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.
Many an ancient lord's last words have been 'You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh.'
An ancient proverb summed it up when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner it ran he is tired of life.
People whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be treated with patience because it's usually not their fault they were reduced to getting their education from school.
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
If words had weight a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.
Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.
Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.
Life is just chemicals. A drop here a drip there everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and sudenlly you're going to live another few hours.
There is always time for another last minute
She was convinced that she was anorexic because every time she looked in the mirror she did indeed see a fat person.
Their families cordially detested one another.
If there's one thing that really annoys a god it's not knowing something.
Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.
You've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.
It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.
Its useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.
Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person but that person is also you.
Questions don't have to make sense Vincent " said Miss Susan. "But answers do.
Not all questions are answered but fortunately some answers are questioned.
Sometimes the best answer is a more interesting question
The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time and it hadn't worked.
I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.
Dark Fantasy is just another way of saying Horror.
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.
It was like being in a Jane Austen novel but one with far less clothing.
The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.
Of course just because we've heard a spine-chilling blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong.
[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!
He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.
This book had two authors and they were both the same person.
Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.
There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow though to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.
Winston Churchill said 'In war time truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'. Any book called The Truth should therefore have one.
He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.
...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
There have been better attempts at marching and they have been made by penguins.
Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.
Most modern fantasy just rearranges the furniture in Tolkien's attic.
Make ourselves attractive to students?" said the Archchancellor. "Mr Stibbons the whole idea of a university is that it should be hard to get into.
But that was just it - hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.
Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.
Demons were like genies or philosophy professors - if you didn't word things exactly right they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.
Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.
It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences sporadic coughs and people saying isolated things like "Well isn't this nice.
Now he knew: They were real. Who'd make up a thing like this? Okay one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord but nobody was perfect.
Wikipedia eh? Must be accurate then!
Other people salted away money for their old age but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories.
I don't read an awful lot of fiction and when I do it tends to be lightweight stuff.
[...] the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks.
I don't think a baker reads an awful lot about bread.
We sleepwalk through our lives because how could we live if we were always this awake?
It's quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from say the average voter.
Oh dear me the Booker people don't like me. I don't care. I have been given an award for being taken not seriously and I am very very pleased about that.
Magic never dies. It merely fades away.
The kind of accidents you prefer to call...accidents.
Nature abhors a lot of things including vacuums ships called the Marie Celeste and the chuck keys for electric drills.
Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.
If you put butter and salt on it it tastes like salty butter.
The trouble with having an open mind of course is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
How do you get all those coins?" asked Mort. IN PAIRS.
In my experience what every true artist wants really wants is to be paid.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way around.
Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding 'Your money or your life' had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on.
Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
He'd been wrong there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it was a flamethrower.
I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.
On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.
There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job. I am of course delighted and honoured and needless to say flabbergasted.
Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.
Assassins did have a certain code after all. It was dishonorable to kill someone if you weren't being paid.
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.
Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.
The author can always delve into his own personality and find aspects of himself with which he can dress his characters.
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.
Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends I read somewhere.
Are you a devious plotting unreliable madman? Ah good then you can be my most trusted advisor.
I would advise budding writers some other kind of job unless they think they're very very lucky.
Granddad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around education leaked out like radioactivity.
His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance a disability which affects all too few.
And the new day was a great big fish
The Tezuman priests have a sophisticated calendar and an advanced horology " quoted Rincewind. "Ah " said Eric "Good." "No " said Rincewind patiently. "It means time measurement." "Oh.
No one thinks that young adults read hooks for YOUNG ADULTS books for young adults are read by kids.
Young adults that actually read are reading bodice rippers and best-sellers and me. And Horror.
The important thing about adventures thought Mr. Bunnsy was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.
Susan says don't get afraid get angry.
The oldest fan letter I've had is from someone aged eighty-five.
There are some things that are more appropriate to a children's than an adult book but there's a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway.
Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.
Winners never talk about glorious victories. Thats because they're the ones who see what the battle field looks like afterwards. Its only the losers who have glorious victories.
Afterward there was that long crowded pause in which everyone decides that although they are very shaken and possibly upside down they are to their surprise still alive.
What was the point of education he thought if people went out afterward and used it?
Lessee...he'd gone off after the funeral and gotten drunk. No not drunk another word ended with "er." Drunker. that was it.
In fact the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of thecat although in this case there were three determinate states the catcould be in: these being Alive Dead and Bloody Furious.
Happiness is not the natural state of mankind and is never achieved from the outside in.
You know I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree." One of the giants grinned at him. Druellae snorted. "Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?
No more words. We know them all all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.
But we're a university! We have to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?""Students " said Senior Wrangler morosely.
You had to hand it to the Patrician he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't he sent men to come and take it away.
I don't think it's weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength if you ask me.
He was he would be the first to admit a coward an incompetent and not even very good at being a failure.
She was beautiful but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance not up close.
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.
Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.
Raising the flag and singing the anthem are while somewhat suspicious not in themselves acts of treason.
...no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life they say is only the core of their actual existence.
Ninety percent of true love is acute ear-burning embarrassment.
It must be hard for humans forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.
Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters the Mile the Marathon -- he'd run them all.
This is Morbidia " said Vlad. "Although she's been calling herself Tracy lately to be cool.
Everything starts somewhere although many physicists disagree.
It's amazing how fast gold works.
It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease but when you have Alzheimer's you are an old fart. That's how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.
It's the end game that people dread and that's what I'm scared of
The best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I've got Alzheimer's.
I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I've got Alzheimer's.
I know three people who have got better after a brain tumour. I haven't heard of anyone who's got better from Alzheimer's.
It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's.
Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.
There are almost by definition an unlimited number of Hells - potentially at least a personal one for every living sapient being.
I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things.
There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally however there are alternate pasts.
People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky they just make brief patterns in it.
The fastest way to travel is to be there already.
The words are easy - most of them have already been invented.
They felt in fact tremendously bucked-up which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.
Carpe Jugulum " read Agnes aloud. "That's... well Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day ' so this means-" "Go for the throat
Most species do their own evolving making it up as they go along which is the way Nature intended.
It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline.
There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it's wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.
...smoke twisting amongst the lights and turning the air a desolate blue the colour of dead hopes and lost chances.
Certainly the Americans want to buy rights but have no idea what to do with them.
My dream holiday would be a) a ticket to Amsterdam b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat.
If you had enough money you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes.
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.
When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.
I reckon that Stonehege was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs razor-sharp knives and falling rocks.
Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.
I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and with great presence of mind they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.
This man was so absent-mindedly clever that he could paint pictures that didn't just follow you around the room but went home with you and did the washing-up.
It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things provided you were bad enough to be funny.
The more you think about it the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.
You're allowed to grant people into the darkness but you must allow them to come out again.
All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.
Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL ALBERT." Albert: "Oh yes sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.
DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU ALBERT.
It's hard to be famous and alive.
They say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike but has anyone checked lately?
At least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Esk felt that bravery was called for but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight.
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.
He'sh mad?' â??Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.' â??Ah then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.
Peace?' said Vetinari. 'Ah yes defined as period of time to allow for preparation for the next war.
... all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot.
You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that.
There's one thing you can say for air pollution you get utterly amazing sunrises.
Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact.
Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth Air Fire Water and Surprise.
Chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn't when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes.
He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
... 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.
Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
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.
One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.
See a pin and pick it up and all day long you'll have a pin.
One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.
All was black gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel - or if there was it was an oncoming train.
Pride is all very well but a sausage is a sausage.
It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people all knowing and superior they're watching and thinking about you right back at you.
People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room sometimes.
Creatures which lacking mankind's superior brain power did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.
On the Disc the Gods aren't so much worshipped as they are blamed.
Even the blind and meek and voiceless have gods.
I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.
Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!
Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
never ask the tight-rope walker how he keeps his balance. if he stops to think about it he falls off
The universe they say depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm persuasion uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.
His voice gave out and he made several wavy motions with his hand indicative of the shape of a woman who would probably be unable to keep her balance.
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
It is a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole.
She couldn't do any worse but then he couldn't do better. So maybe it balanced out.
Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it were something worthwhile rather than a mess of bad food no sleep and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.
Thats how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits.
There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.
I stroll along talk I sign books people buy me drinks I forget where my hotel is I get lost and fall into some local body of water... done it hundreds of times.
Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg!
It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.
Science fiction is fantasy with bolts painted on outside.
There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.
The enemy isn't men or women it's bloody stupid people and no-one has the right to be stupid.
Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.
The universe they said depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm persuasion uncertainty and bloody-mindedne ss.
What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up?
Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board and look all over the place for the dice.
This is where the gods play games with the lives of men on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.
Experience has taught me that you feel better on a flight if you avoid chicken fat in plastic sauce.
It's a metaphor of human bloody existence a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.
Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian. With a badge.
It is possible to live well with dementia and write best-sellers 'like wot I do.
Maybe the best comics are written by people who really are at ease in the comic world.
Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.
Smaller-than-Medium-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock
The public thinks big sensible measured thoughts while people run around doing silly things
The Kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.
Hello inner child I'm the inner babysitter!
Big fat hairy monkey hands a couple of octaves wide~?
What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?
There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead they were... what was the word... deshabille. It meant untidy but with bags and bags of style.
They want dancing girls! They want thrills! They want elephants! They want people falling off roofs! They want dreams! The world is full of little people with big dreams!
Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.
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.
In the world I live in 'not worse' is nearly as good as 'better'.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I don't think I've ever been critical of the money Douglas Adams makes especially since as has been tactfully pointed out I myself have had to change banks having filled the first one up.
I wouldn't trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!
You were safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a stick.
Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms: in the dark and based on bullshit.
Truly he thought the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.
It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers
It's not Brits who think American readers are a bunch of whinging morons with the geo-social understanding of a wire coathanger it's American editors.
(About sweeping).... What he was in FACT doing was moving the dirt around with a broom to give it a change of scenery and a chance to make new friends.
A hardback's harder at Christmas time because that's a good hardback buying time.
If my father could have sat up in bed and said goodbye I'd have pressed the button. I wouldn't have been able to see for crying but I would have considered that a duty.
Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
People are often so busy living that they never stop to wonder why.
It doesn't matter how you live and die it's how the bards wrote it down.
Drinks like this tend to get called Traffic Lights or Rainbow's Revenge or in places where truth is more highly valued Hello and Good-Bye Mr. Brain Cell.
People aren't just people they are people surrounded by circumstances.
Theres no stink more sorrorful than the stink of wet burnt paper. It means: the end.
The English were notoriously unenthusiastic about burning witches. I suppose ours were too soggy.
The Captain of the Watch says if you're still in the City by sunrise he will personally have you buried alive.
Do you know how wizards like to be buried?" "Yes!" "Well how?" Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Reluctantly.
What do you call those things at the bottom of rivers? Frogs? Stones? Unsuccessful gangsters?
It's tough at the top. It's tough at the bottom. But in between you could use them for horse-shoes.
Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.
Banana daiquiris aren't knock-'em-back-by-the-flagon.
Nanny Ogg knew how to start spelling 'banana' but didn't know how you stopped.
Soon to come in licorice orange cinnamon and banana but not strawberry because I hate strawberries.
A good banana daiquiri is hard to come by. I've only ever found one place in this country that makes a proper one and that's in Leeds.
If you try to to take my bananas from me I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.
What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles circles planets stars bananas chants runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.
Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?
If it wasn't for the fun and money I really don't know why I'd bother.
The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.
Stand before your god bow before your king kneel before your man.
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.
It's either because of the number of times the scholar puts the boot into Peter Jackson the director of The Lord of the Rings films or is making a point they have never heard of.
I used to like reading and you read enough books and you overflow and then you start writing.
Out of Print is bookseller speak for "We can't be hedgehogged".
I'd like to sell a lot of books.
You couldn't get a decent drink in either of them for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.
Every procedure for getting a cat to take a pill works fine - once. Like the Borg they learn...
I've seen excitement and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.
Some people believe that when you die you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don't seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there's a bridge now.
Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.
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.
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror all marvellous facets and rainbows but ultimately also something that was broken.
Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped.
It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
You are very clever " said the old man shyly. "I would like to eat your brains one day.
He helped the Librarian up. There was a red glow in the ape's eyes. It had tried to steal his books. This was probably the best proof any wizard could require that the trolleys were brainless.
Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!
The brain works fast when it thinks it's about to be cut in half.
One of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged either.
Look that's why there's rules understand? So that you think before you break 'em.
Strength enough to build a home Time enough to hold a child Love enough to break a heart
When you break rules break 'em good and hard
Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful because life was too full of the boring and mundane.
We are here and it is now. The way I see it is after that everything tends towards guesswork.
And never resist a perfect moment.
Five exclamation marks the sure sign of an insane mind.
I think it's IMPOSSIBLE for anyone famous to come from here because everyone around here is insane.
No what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?
You can't die with an unfinished book.
I can't stand any music that requires its singers to be so dumb they wear their baseball caps backwards.
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.
Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.
If Not You Who Else?
Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee haven't you? C'mon everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!
I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.
Quick someone's coming! Look real!
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Revenge is not redress. Revenge is a wheel and it turns backwards.
Most horses don't walk backwards voluntarily because what they can't see doesn't exist.
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.
History contrary to popular theories is kings and dates and battles.
Men marched away Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!
The face you wear in a battlefield should be a solemn one until the time when things are cleaned up and the real world drips its way in.
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
Never cross a woman with a star on a stick young lady. They've got a mean streak.
The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.
A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
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.
And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.
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.
If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
It was sad like those businessmen who came to work in serious clothes but wore colorful ties in a mad desperate attempt to show there was a free spirit in there somewhere.
I've often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street.
I write books back to back and I work very hard on them.
I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes I write books back to back and I work very hard on them.
Belief was never mentioned at home but right actions were taught by daily example.
But of course what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.
Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.
Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
But ye gotta know where ye're just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad havin' to rush oout again straight awa'.
Luck is my middle name. Mind you my first name is Bad.
I think you should be proud of not being worse than just deeply introverted and socially maladjusted.
You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism don't you?
The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.
The price of being the best is having to be the best.
Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.
Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.
When all else failed she tried being reasonable.
If you don't know when to be a human being you don't know when to be a witch.
One of the important things about being a small-town reporter is knowing what not to put in the paper.
I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.
Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.
Every intelligent being whether it breathes or not coughs nervously at some time in its life.
This time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.
Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.
A weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy.
Oh come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.
In defiance of Miss Maccalariat I'd like to commit hanky-panky with you Miss Adora Belle Dearheart... well certainly hanky and possibly panky when we get to know one another better.
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.
Progress just means bad things happen faster.
Seeing contrary to popular wisdom isn't believing. It's where belief stops because it isn't needed any more.
I don't believe in the war god of the Israelites. He's a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule by and large.
Why not? If enough people believe you can be god of anythingâ?¦
People needed to believe in gods if only because it was so hard to believe in people.
The universe was bad enough without people poking it.
There are always and only the bad people but some of them are on opposite sides.
It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death they worry about a bad death.
There's no point in believing in things that exist.
I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help rather than suffer.
You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
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.
Yes sir thank you sir and I wouldn't trust me one little inch sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.
Good or bad do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.
The harder I work the luckier I become.
It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.
A bad hunter chases. A good hunter waits.
If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
Look he said to his imagination if this is how you're going to behave I shan't bring you again.
I like being a writer.
Siren voices tell me 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.
The Librarian liked being best man. You were allowed to kiss bridesmaids and they weren't allowed to run away.
I keep vaguely wondering what Macs are like but the ones I've seen spend too much time being friendly.
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.
Your whole life passes in front of your eyes before you die. This is called living.
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.
You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy humourless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.
I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that.
By the time you've reached your sixties you do know that one day you will die and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.
Knowing that you are going to die is I suspect the beginning of wisdom.
In the beginning there was nothing which exploded.
Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.
My programming language was solder.
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.
I'm sorry I just got carried away hissed Aziraphale.
There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door and you were carried every time.
Knowledge is dangerous which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.
Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.
Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well you never knew your luck.
This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.
Man just went past with a cat on his head
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.
Insanity is catching.
In her own special category she was quite beautiful. This was the category of all the women in his entire life who had ever thought he was worth smiling at.
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.
Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks gravitate to gravity.
Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.
Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. But they don't so that's all right.
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned by no later than the date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil but by people being fundamentally people.
I'm not really good at fun-to-know human interest stuff. We're not 'celebrities' whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly we are our words. They're what people meet.
He moved on in the centre of a widening circle. He wasn't an enemy he was a nemesis.
That was the very centre of his genius - he invented things that anyone could have thought of and men who can invent things that anyone could have thought of are very rare men.
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.
When it's time to stop living I will certainly make Death my number one choice!
This is a lovely party " said the Bursar to a chair "I wish I was here.
They may have been ugly. They may have been evil. But when it came to poetry in motion the Things had all the grace and coordination of a deck-chair.
He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is of course absolutely true.
Life is a trick and you get one chance to learn it.
Chances are where you find them
Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten.
Last hopeless chances have got to work. Nothing makes sense otherwise. You might as well not be alive.
There's always a story. It's all stories really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story change the world.
History tends to change people who think they're changing it.
Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought.
History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it
If you kept changing the way people saw the world you ended up changing the way you saw yourself.
Life doesn't happen in chapters - at least not regular ones.
Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge godsdammit!" "Can't we do anything about it?" "No!" "Then I can't see the sense in panicking " said Twoflower calmly.
Vimes struggled to his feet shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.
We are monkeys. We like to chatter. Chattering doesn't cost us anything.
SOONER OR LATER ALL MEN MUST DIE. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE END. I CAN BE ROBBED BUT NEVER DENIED I TOLD MYSELF. WHY WORRY? "I too cannot be cheated " snapped Fate.
Ingenuity and incongruity always cheer me up.
These people were not only cheering they were throwing flowers and hats. The hats were made of stone but the thought was there.
The second mouse gets the cheese!
Because no man wants to be a coward in front of a cheese.
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.
I know it's a very human thing to say 'Is there anything I can do ' but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.
Most gods throw dice but Fate plays chess and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
When in doubt choose to live.
gold gold gold gold gold gold"'Is there a chorus?'"Gold gold gold gold gold".' said Hwel.'You left out a "gold" there.
And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha the Chosen One: "Psst!
The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead it is between stupid people and other stupid people.
I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence.
I get it ' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop Bad Cop eh?'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?
The worst thing you can do is nothing.
The best research you can do is to talk to people.
I've never really liked the Yanks. ... You can't trust people who pick up the ball all the time when they play football.
He had done regular live concerts from San Quentin jail until the civil rights people got him under the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause.
Around it are those countries which according to History constitute the civilised world ie a world that can support historians
Neither claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes but both reported it as a success.
Genius is always allowed some leeway once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
Juliet's version of cleanliness was next to godliness which was to say it was erratic past all understanding and was seldom seen.
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and like a clock it regularly went cuckoo.
The world is a globe ? the farther you sail the closer to home you are.
Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in and then immediately clouds.
Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime.
Inside every lump of coal there's a diamond waiting to get out.
There are some laws that are coded into the very nature of the universe and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space.
Given enough coffee I could rule the world
People don't like to say Horror so they say Dark Fantasy because that's Horror wearing a collar and tie.
I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat. -Lord Vetinari
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.
But here's some advice boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.
In Genua someone set out to make dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams?