Terry Pratchett

The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.

Things like crowns had a troublesome effect on clever folk; it was best to leave all the reigning to the kind of people whose eyebrows met in the middle when they tried to think. In a funny sort of way, they were much better at it.

You take a bunch of people who don't seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.

...the little man's total obliviousness to all forms of danger somehow made danger so discouraged that it gave up and went away.

If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them... you could use them, you could change them.

[...] the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks.

He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.

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!

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.

Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.

Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.

And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?" "Can't girls seek their fortune?" "I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.

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.

(About a cookbook...) - What about this one? Maids of Honor? - Weeelll, they starts OUT as Maids of Honor...but they ends up Tarts.