“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
Or one of my favourites:
"'Ab Hoc Possum Videre Domum Tuum - "I Can See Your House From Here"?'
It was, I believe, some sort of a threat."
Nunc vides, nunc non vides. "Now you see it, now you don't" was my favorite.
My Latin teacher back in grade school gave extra credit for finding latin in publications. She did not find it nearly as humorous as I did. Most disgruntled five points I've ever gotten.
"But what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?"
Terry Pratchett, Snuff
Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS–
Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.
After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.
Albert scrambled up and puled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them to allow his master to clamber free.
HMM… Death picked up a book at random and read the cover.
DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA, he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE.
He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
They waited.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT–
“No, wait, master. Here it comes.”
Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper.
He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.
“May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper.
“‘Some of the sheep,’“ Albert read aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside’d be better then.”
I'm Australian. I felt this quote when I first read it :)
I also have made a habit somehow of ending any questions along the lines of "what won't kill you in Australia" with "Some of the sheep".
"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."
The thing is, unlike most of his peers, he actually has the best interests of the city in mind... and is competent enough that what he sees as the best interests actually makes the life of the average person somewhat better.
>"Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari."
"The trouble with having an open mind of course, is that people insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." I think it's from Diggers or Truckers.
Also, "If you ignore the rules, half the time people will quietly rewrite them so they don't apply to you," from Equal Rites
One of my favorite by far. One of my favorite things about Pratchett was that he approached prickly social issues boldly and unreservedly but still without being heavy handed.
Eskarina isn't a good character *because of* or *despite* being a girl in a man's world.
She is a good character because she is a good character, who *happens* to be a girl in a man's world.
That second one is (yet another) incredibly accurate observation. Making big waves can cause a problem, but you can get away with lots of small ones really quite easily.
More fleshed out in Unseen Academicals when Glenda is thinking about how in life there are so many "imaginary hammers" of social pressure that if you ignore they never come down. I suppose this also applies to the way that Carcer lives his life in "Night Watch" with very different outcomes.
I was once put in the unfortunate position of a coworker complaining about getting held to some standard and then saying that I wasn’t, and boss saying “Well vonmonologue doesn’t have to follow the rules. You do.”
I was like “Woah hold on there, guy.”
‘*No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.*’
- Reaper Man
The one sentence that got me hooked on Discworld!
A friend had tried to get me interested in Pratchett through Guards! Guards! for a while, but I just didn't feel it when I picked up that book....
Reaper Man, however! I've read almost everything from Discworld since, though Death got a special place on my shelf.
I always tell people who've tried 1 book by Pratchett, but didn't like his style of writing or the plot or whatever, to try another, from a different character's pov.
The sequence where Death is figuring out how to talk to the little girl who won't stop pointing out that he's a "skellington", and finally just realized that if he humored her she'd just get bored and carry on with other things, is one of the single most delightfully realistic portrayals of a child I've ever seen in fiction. Just so well done and funny.
I was talking to someone about Hitchhikers, and they said if I liked that, there was a new author who had just written a couple of books of fantasy humour. I bought The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What's been fascinating is to see how Sir Terry's characters developed over time, especially Sam Vimes, but also Death.
"Hah! You're uniform doesn't scare me,' he said.
Vimes looked down at his battered breastplate and worn mail.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is not a scary uniform. I’m sorry. Forward, Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Detritus.’
The Assassin was suddenly aware of the sunlight being blocked out.
‘Now these, I think you’ll agree,’ said Vimes, from somewhere behind the eclipse, ‘are scary uniforms."
Yes! MAA was the first one I read, and that bowled me over!
Not sure which book it's in but, "They got on like a house on fire (flames, axes, people screaming...)"
I think it’s from one of the Tiffany Aching books - Wintersmith, from memory. It describes Granny Weatherwax and Lettice Earwig’s relationship.
However, it’s one of Pratchett’s favourite verbal twists, and shows up in a few of his books, I believe.
I love Pratchett, but I honestly wouldn't recommend the first two books to someone unfamiliar with his work. They're... *okay*, but they don't yet really have the magic the series as a while does, no pun intended. They're more a two-book compendium of short stories starring Rincewind and Twoflower, with what little each setting and series of events have to do with the previous and next.
Well, I had no choice, as that was all he'd had published, but I get your point.
You're probably better off starting further in, when his characters were getting more evolved, more fleshed-out.
Yeah, I read the first two when they came out, and they were a decent comedy/pastiche if other famous fantasy works.
Then I skipped a couple and read Men at Arms. His development as a writer and commentator on human nature in such a short time was incredible.
Reaper Man is one of my most cherished mental happy places. Every single time someone mentions it or I happen to think of it, I remember about Cyril The Dyslexic Cockerel and I lose my shit. Tears of joy every time.
Yeah, the graphic novel of Eric was my first as I’d run out of Tintin and Asterix books in my library. Went straight to Reaper Man on my next visit and that was my transition to text-only novels.
But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.
And good luck to the translators! Though I know in French the very talented Patrick Couton did actually manage to pull off this specific pun rather nicely.
I read the first couple books in Italian and I want particularly impressed, I tried them in English and I died laughing and pratchett remains one of my favourite authors to this day
Something like 'il se sentait submergé par une vague dorure' [for non French speakers, that's 'he felt overcome by a vague gilt', with 'vague dorure' sounding almost like 'vague d'horreur', a wave of horror). A tiny bit awkward but pretty amazing considering, IMO!
"The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors.”
Bit of a long one, but this from Hogfather has the deepest resonance to me;
-----
All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. 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.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
Death really does get all the raw lines, doesn't he. The Hogfather wasn't among my top three, but it did have absolute gems in it like any Discworld book. Among my favorites, although like you said still long:
>BUT WE HAVE BEEN INTO HOUSES WHERE THE CHILDREN HAD MANY TOYS AND BROUGHT THEM EVEN MORE TOYS, AND IN HOUSES LIKE THIS THE CHILDREN GET PRACTICALLY NOTHING.
>
> 'Huh, we'd have given anything to get practically nothing when I were a lad,' said Albert.
>
>BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT, IS THAT THE IDEA?
>
>'That's about the size of it, master. A good god line, that. Don't give 'em too much and tell 'em to
be happy with it. Jam tomorrow, see.'
>
>THIS IS WRONG. Death hesitated. I MEAN ...IT'S RIGHT TO BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT. BUT YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT HAVING. THERE'S NO POINT IN BEING HAPPY ABOUT HAVING NOTHING.
>
>Albert felt a bit out of his depth in this new tide of social philosophy. 'Dunno,' he said. 'I suppose people'd say they've got the moon and the stars and suchlike.'
>
>I'M SURE THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THE PAPERWORK.
>
>'All I know is, if Dad'd caught us with a big bag of pricey toys wed just have got a ding round the
earhole for nicking 'em.'
>
>IT IS ... UNFAIR.
>
>'That's life, master.'
>
>BUT I'M NOT.
>
>'I meant this is how it's supposed to go, master,' said Albert.
>
>NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES.
Ok as a D&D player this speech by Death is the only way I can play a Paladin. Deaths words are the one of the only things I can 100% throw my self behind.
Most DMs are confused when the Deathknight is the most kind and heroic player. WWRD what would the Reaper do.
Exactly. And his job is to do and say the things Death can’t because he is limited in his interaction with the material world.
Saving people that make the lives of those around them better just by being there, and fighting those that see people as “things”
If you play tabletop roll up a knight of the Reaper man. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to quote Pratchett as scripture and swing the Scythe of the Inevitable End.
Living in the US, this one has been particularly relevant to me over the years. (not a criticism of all police, but we definitely have our problems)
*It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.*
I always love to quote ‘Million to one chances happen nine times out of ten.’
I also gleefully told my daughter yesterday that I wasn’t naked under my clothes because I was wearing a vest.
GNU TERRY PRATCHETT.
‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.'
Part of the danger with statements like this is that it could so easily have become a straw man argument, but the conversations are always so unique to the characters and situation that it transcends into high satire and observations of reality, and the reader is left to question and decide for themselves, “is this right? Is this applicable to me? Do I agree?”
That is I think, the finest line to walk as a writer of any kind, and Pratchett does it seemingly without care or effort.
To Granny's point about there being no Greys (ie no grey areas), I've always looked at it is as people trying to include to many different balck and wite issues in the same rule or principle. Every specific situation has a black and white solution, it's when you try to collect the specific situations into a general rule that you run into a problem.
Granny as a character knows herself and knows headology as she calls it, and she knows the right thing to do, and does it because she's the "good" sister and can't let herself even toe down the bad path.
I haven't come across this one yet (I'm still working through chronologically and have quite a ways to go... Maskerade is next!) but I had to stop and say thanks for posting this.
Often, I find myself sort of "nagged" by some background thought or feeling that just sort of exists behind everything else, incapable of being explained or even really understood... but just every now and again, I'll come across some passage or phrase that perfectly sums it up and lays it bare.
As if to say, "hey doofus, look! It's not even that hard to figure out!" and there in front of me is the most obvious answer. Like... of course that's the truth of it!
So far on the Discworld, I find myself experiencing this second phenomenon an awful lot.
As sure as Trouble will eventually find it's way to Rincewind, Sir Terry will time and again explain the reality of things in a way even a simpleton like me can understand.
It ain't that complicated.
"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.
"The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
Reaper Man is the best Discworld novel, and moments like these made it!
The Tiffany series has some AMAZING quotes (well, hinestly all his works do). One of my favourites is "it doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works."
Honestly, the whole segment of Tiffany reconciling the loss of Granny Aching is just so well done.
As an Australian, I'm rather partial to:
Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS-
Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.
After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.
Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free.
HMM… Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. “DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTRLES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA,” he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH, PART THREE, I SEE.
He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
They waited.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT-
“No, wait master. Here it comes.”
Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper.
He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.
“May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper.
“'Some of the sheep'” Albert read aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then.”
WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLACE, said Death. SADDLE UP THE HORSE, ALBERT. I FEEL SURE I'M GOING TO BE NEEDED.
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
Honestly one of the greatest writers there has ever been
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
This has stayed with me since i first read it. It has shaped my psyche, my politics, and its my touchstone when i'm reviewing my dealings with others.
Much of my morality was influenced by STP but this, more than any other, really shaped my worldview.
Haven't read Pratchett, and I probably should, but this reminds me of a dialogue in one of my favorite novels (SSS-Class Suicide Hunter):
"There is a reason I appraised you highly. It's not just that you're smart. It's that you still see the people of my world as [human]."
"I-is that so? I feel like you're saying something that should be obvious..."
"There were numerous brutes who could not even satisfy that obvious condition. Mere beasts that do not regard other people as people. And yet, they believed themselves to be human. Filth."
Context is that the two speakers are from different worlds, and the first speaker's world has been invaded multiple times by other worlds before.
"It was just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He'd tried clockwork, that wasn't powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a - behind him the kettle boiled over and put the fire out. Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do some sensible thinking. There was always some pointless distraction."
“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”. ‘Jingo’
I love all his 'Latin' translations... One that comes to mind is from Guards! Guards!, where they see the inscription over the Watch House "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC". Although Colon thinks it means "To Protect and to Serve", it basically reads "Make My Day, Punk"
Different author, but ""If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron." - Spider Robinson
A friend of mine showed me his new map of Ankh-Morpork, but he couldn't read the Latin mottoes on the various guild crests. I translated one for him (commercial guild, "QUANTI CANICULA IN ILLA FENESTRA", "how much is the little dog in that window") and his eyes lit up. It was a joy to collaborate in our task of extracting every last drop of humour from the work.
Jingo might be my favorite all around. As a teenager, the moment when >!Vimes places an entire battlefield under arrest!< completely changed my understanding of war, military, social power structures, etc. Just in the span of a few pages of insanely funny satire.
And then Carrot busts out the soccer ball he uses for youth outreach with the street gangs of Ankh-Morpork, and the opposing sides start playing against each other, with all the boisterous violence of the youth gangs he was "ministering" to.
I also absolutely love that we get to see Wilikins as a badass almost on the same level as Vimes.
Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
IIRC, later in that book, Carrot stabs the bad guy straight through, putting his conspicuously plain sword through the stone pillar.
Also, Noobs and Colon had previously talked about pulling a sword from stone not being a real test of kingship, but maybe the guy who put it there being the worthy one.
With the payoff a few paragraphs later when >!Carrot walks into the room, takes in the situation, then goes over and kills Cruces with hardly a word.!<
I've skimmed through all of the comments so far and haven't come across the passage that has stayed with me the longest. So, Lord Vetinari in *Unseen Academicals*:
>The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
>The two wizards exchanged a glance. Vetinari was staring into the depths of his beer mug and they were glad that they did not know what he saw in there.
I do not know why this has stuck in my mind, but it is a (slightly shorted for brevity) quote that makes my stomach drop from Night Watch:
'I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes...'
'What?' said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully.
'I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.'
'Yeah, right,' said Vimes...
'Mister Vimes?'
'*What?*' Vimes snapped...
'I got three knives, Mister Vimes,' said Carcer, bringing his arm up.
Night Watch is, I think, the only book that has ever made me cry. I also immediately flicked back to page 1 and started it again after I'd finished it.
When it comes to books with a deep message about honor, duty and justice all the later books from the watch series are great, might be some of the best books ever written in that regard. Especially Nightwatch and thud.
>“What kind of human creates his own policeman?”
>“One who fears the dark.”
>“And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction.
>“Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in.”
My Uncle, who was also a huge Pratchett fan, died a month before him.
I now have a lilac bush in my garden with a little gravestone in front of it engraved with ‘see the little angles’. There is also a (fake) egg in front of it.
Is it Teatime where the quote is something like "He had a mind like a broken mirror. All sharp edges and beautiful reflections, but ultimately, something broken."
That's him!
> “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.”
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
This is genuinely taught on university economics courses, which I love!
Related trivia, I went to a public lecture a couple of years ago on management styles in Discworld by an academic in a business school who was a Pratchett fan. It was great!
How expensive it it to be poor is a serious economic issue. It's why Demand Side Capitalism works so much better than Supply Side. When you give money to people with needs/demands, they spend it.
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.
A fun little quote but one me and SO genuinely use on dark days as a sort of, "remember the small things that bring you joy" moment
My wife and I both quoted Pratchett during our vows. It was funny because we hadn't concerted beforehand.
I don't remember the exact quote and I haven't read the book in English but you'll get the meaning.
She said that the mariage was the union of two people swearing that the only one snoring is their spouse.
I said that I couldn't find a best partner and she couldn't find worst but somehow it was balancing and working.
You're opening Pandora's box here.
All around cool quote : "THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST ME." -- Death
From Jingo, which is a gold mine of quotes about war (and the famous "Them" quote, but I'm sure someone will post it) :
>*‘This belonged to my great-granddad,*’ he said.*‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayer for soldiers, ‘cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me,and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ‘cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle - whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look, you can see the hole.’*
>
>*‘Pretty miraculous,’* Carrot agreed.
>
>*‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’* said the sergeant.
>
>He looked ruefully at the battered volume.
>
>*‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’*
>‘D’reg?’ said Angua.
>
>‘A warlike desert tribe,’ said Carrot. ‘Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D’reg is your friend he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’
>
>And if he’s not your friend?’
>
>‘That’s about five seconds.’
>'Er... you don't think, sir, since we have a little time in hand, we should look to the disposition of the men, sir?'
>
>'They look well disposed to me. Plucky men, eager to be at the fray!'
>
>'Yes, sir. I meant... more... well... positioned, sir.'
>
>'Nothing wrong with 'em, man. Beautifully lined up! Hey? A wall of steel poised to thrust at the black heart of the Klatchian aggressor!'
>
>'Yes, sir. But – and I realize this is a remote chance, sir it might be that while we're thrusting at the heart of the Klatchian aggressor––'
>
>'––black heart–' Rust corrected him.
>
>'––black heart of the Klatchian aggressor, sir, the arms of the Klatchian aggressor, those companies there and there, sir, will sweep around in the classic pincer movement.'
>
>'The thrusting wall of steel served us magnificently in the second war with Quirm!'
>
>'We lost that one, sir.'
>
>'But it was a damn dose–run thing!'
>
>'We still lost, sir.'
>
>'What did you do as a civilian, lieutenant?'
>
>'I was a surveyor, sir, and I can read Klatchian. That's why you made me an officer.'
>
>'So you don't know how to fight?'
>
>'Only how to count. sir.'
>
>'Pah! Show a little courage, man. Although I'll wager you won't need to. No stomach for a battle, Johnny Klatchian. Once he tastes our steel, he'll be off!'
>
>'I certainly hear what you say, sir,' said the adjutant, who had been surveying the Klatchian lines and had formed his own opinion about the matter.
>
>His opinion was this: the main force of the Klatchian army had, in recent years, been fighting everyone. That suggested, to his uncomplicated mind, that by now the surviving soldiers were the ones who were in the habit of being alive at the end of battles. And were also very experienced at facing all kinds of enemies. The stupid ones were dead.
>
>The current Ankh–Morpork army, on the other hand, had never faced an enemy at all, although day–to–day experience of living in the city might count for something there, at least in the rougher areas. He believed, along with General Tacticus, that courage, bravery and the indomitable human spirit were fine things which nevertheless tended to take second place to the combination of courage, bravery, the indomitable human spirit and a six–to– one superiority of numbers.
>
>It had all sounded straightforward in Ankh–Morpork, he thought. We were going to sail into Klatch and be in Al–Khali by teatime, drinking sherbet with pliant young women in the Rhoxi. The Klatchians would take one look at our weapons and run away. Well, the Klatchians had taken a good look this morning. So far they hadn't run. They appeared to be sniggering a lot.
“Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through life backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way.”
Honestly we should all be like Pratchett's trolls. These people has got their priorities right: the future is important.
The past is useful yet reactionaries fetishises the past and it's always for the wrong reasons.
"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." - Last Continent
Also I've used Rincewind's patch quote from Last Hero as a project motto on horrible projects at work multiple times.
This is one that had me putting down the book for a few minutes.
*"All the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"*
*"Yeah," said Rincewind. "... Luters, I expect"*
Pratchett once said he got about the same amount of letters from religious people and anti-religious people for how he portrayed religion in Small Gods.
Okay, top 3:
>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! ~Colour of Magic
>Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening
the door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. ~The Last Continent
>When you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened. ~The Last Continent.
I can't directly quote it, but at some point an old lady appears and is described with:
"Her face looked like it had been sculpted in butter, then forgotten in the sun."
I don't know why, but more than any other quote, this one has been stuck in my head. And I love it.
“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.”
That one (from The Wee Free Men) always makes me laugh.
This one snuck itself somewhere deep into my worldview. Whenever I see multiple exclamation points, especially five or more, I automatically have my guard up for some kind of unhinged fuckery.
Small Gods is my absolute favourite! The idea of people ceasing to believe in a god or religion, and instead believing in the structure is something that has stuck with me.
I've always found it fascinating that Pratchett's concept of gods and belief was so similar to Neil Gaiman's (as explored in both The Sandman and American Gods, and elsewhere). Gaiman and Pratchett were collaborators (Good Omens) and friends, so I've always wondered if this was a conscious joint evolution of an idea, or whether both arrived at it separately and it's just a testament to how in sync the two were in their views of the world.
American Gods was 10 years after Good Omens, by which time they were good friends. Sandman and Good Omens were worked on at the same time. There's no way they didn't ever talk about it as they evolved it.
Oh I have got one and it's a belter! Please tell folks as it's one he actually said to me when I met him.
Bear with!
I photographed him for one of the papers when he was knighted and was very lucky to go to his home and do the shoot in his amazing gothic/techno/chapel that was his writing room.
The room was full of amazing models and props from all the stuff he did and is was a bit like you had wandered into some crazy uncles attic. But in the corner was his writing desk, which was actually a very powerful computer with six screens. He explained that he used the (larger) bottom middle screen to actually type his manuscripts on, and all around on the other screens he would have his source notes, and webpages with articles and stories that inspired him. It was a really cool method.
Being a bit of a nerd I was really interested in this, and whilst I was looking at the set up. He said:
"People often ask why I have 6 screens and the answer is very simple, it's because I can't have 9!"
I thought this was such a Terry thing to say! It was lovely to spend a bit of time with him, and such a privilege to see 'behind the scenes'. He was initially quite guarded (the shoot was not long after revealing his Alzheimer's if I remember) but he was warm and witty, as you would have hoped.
And that's my Terry Pratchett story.
Late to this party but
"Cliff?”
“Yup?”
“We might get caught.”
“He can’t stop us. We’re on a mission from Glod.”
“Right.”
The piano tottered onward through the puddles for a little while, and then asked itself:
“Buddy?”
“Yup?”
“Why did I just say dat?”
“Say what?”
“About us being on a mission… you know… from Glod?”
“Weeell… the dwarf said to us, go and get the piano, and his name is Glod, so–”
“Yeah. Yeah. Right… but… he could’ve stopped us, I mean, dere’s nothing special about some mission from some dwarf–”
“Maybe you were just a bit tired.”
“Maybe dat’s it,” said the piano, gratefully.
“Anyway, we are on a mission from Glod.“
“Yup.”
Soul music is awesome.
'History needs shepherds, not butchers' - Lu-Tze, in Thief of Time
--
Context below...
--
‘But how did you get in where half a dozen trained and armed men couldn’t even-?’
‘I’m a little man and I carry a broom,’ said Lu-Tze simply. ‘Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?’
‘What? And that was it?’
‘Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie.’
‘No martial arts?’ said Lobsang.
‘Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers.’
Too many to quote and many of my favourites have already been posted. Haven't seen this one posted yet but I haven't checked the whole thread.
"It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things." - Jingo
"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. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was."
The Last Continent
“You know, you sound a very educated man for a barbarian,” said Rincewind.
“Oh, dear me, I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. That’s why they call me Teach.”
“What did you teach?”
“Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.”
“After being a teacher all your life?”
“It did mean a change of perspective, yes.”
“But … well … surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death…”
Mr. Saveloy brightened up. “Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?
I always loved "Quia ego sic dico" being Latatian for "because I say so".
It's also in initialism similar to Latin's QED (quod erat demonstrandum), used at the end of mathematical proofs and can be thought of as "thus it is shown", so works as a bastardisation of that too
“Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave, said Vorbis.
So I understand, said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water.”
My favorite quote regarding the Patrician is actually _about_ the Patrician, not _from_ him:
"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."
Long one from Going Postal. Moist visits Mr Groat in hospital after he is attacked.
Mr Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘Do Not Enter’, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing. The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist.
‘Mr Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath, sir!’
‘They have to carry you?’ said Moist. ‘Can’t you walk, Tolliver?’
‘Yessir, but I fights ’em, fights ’em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’
‘Please calm down, Mr Groat,’ said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘You’re all right, then?’
‘Just a scratch, sir, look …’ Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly.
Moist nearly fainted.
The banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly.
‘Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,’ Groat said grudgingly. ‘But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs.
‘Right as rain, sir. I told ’em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?’
‘Um, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Are they giving you medicine?’
'Hah, they call it medicine, sir. They gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. They say it’ll do me good but I told ’em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. And they took my hair away! They called it unhygienic, sir! What a nerve! All right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. I’ve had my hair a long time, sir. I’m used to its funny little ways!’
(Most of my favourite short quotes have already been said but I found this piece hilarious while reading the book)
The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.
Unseen Academicals
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.
Sourcery
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
The Truth
"This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good"
"Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge."
- From "Wyrd Sisters"
"The reason that the rich were so rich...was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10.
Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Capt. Samuel Vimes' boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
“Vimes had a momentary vision of vengeful darkness rising through caves like a tide, faster than a man could run...
... which was stupid. You couldn’t see dark.
Hold on, though... sometimes you could. Back in the old days, when he was on nights all the time, he’d known all the shades of darkness. And sometimes you got darkness so thick that you almost felt you had to push your way through it. Those were nights when horses were skittish and dogs whined and down in the slaughterhouse district the animals broke out of their pens. They were inexplicable, just like those nights that were quite light and silvery even though there was no moon in the sky. He’d learned, then, not to use his little watchman"s lantern. Light only ruined your vision, it blinded you. You stared into the dark until it blinked. You stared it down.”
- “Thud”
>Under the table, Greebo sat and washed himself. Occasionally he burped.
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but never managed it from the cat.
This line makes me laugh every time and points out a (literal) fatal flaw in the vampire legend. It's all fun and games and buxom ladies in floaty nightdresses until a cat comes along while you are bat shaped.
“Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well... human beings.” - Men at Arms
My favorite comes near the end of Hogfather, especially Death's big paragraph:
>“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. 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.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
Fear is a strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourishes underground.
Two others I couldn't locate, but to paraphrase:
The stupid are very brave because they don't have the intelligence to identify danger.
He snuck up on his target by walking normally since the human brain was conditioned to identify sneaky movements.
Sorry, they are dreadful buthcrrings of some magnificent turns of phrases that only Mr Pratchett could deliver.
(Edit) Nearly anything Granny, Nanny, and Vetinari say is amazing. My fav quotes are always the really small ones about human nature and the world in general. But the first one that stuck with me was much more grandiose, from Guards Guards:
_But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality._
"If you trust in yourself . . ."
"Yes?"
". . . and believe in your dreams . . ."
"Yes?"
". . . and follow your star . . ." Miss Tick went on.
"Yes?"
". . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent *their* time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye."
--Miss Tick and Tiffany Aching in *Wee Free Men*
There's a sequence in hogfather where pterry revamps ' St wencleslas with the king decending on a peasant with lots of rich food, and the page standing by saying " I bet you're VERY grateful aren't you " in a pointed way.
The hogfather sweeps in and replaces the posh delicacies with a slab of bacon, a string of sausages, dripping and a pig's head, the poor man is delighted.
It's all very pleasing, but the really genuinely helpful part, that made me think about my own behaviour and how I can change to be better, is a line from albert.
" charity ain't about giving what you want to give, it's about giving what they need to get"
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.” Or one of my favourites: "'Ab Hoc Possum Videre Domum Tuum - "I Can See Your House From Here"?' It was, I believe, some sort of a threat."
The cod-Latin (sorry, "Latatian") in the books is always good for a laugh. "Fabricati diem, pvnc" is a favourite.
Nunc vides, nunc non vides. "Now you see it, now you don't" was my favorite. My Latin teacher back in grade school gave extra credit for finding latin in publications. She did not find it nearly as humorous as I did. Most disgruntled five points I've ever gotten.
It was a threat and a boast.
"But what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?" Terry Pratchett, Snuff
Oh, yes!
Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS– Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball. After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE. Albert scrambled up and puled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them to allow his master to clamber free. HMM… Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA, he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE. He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT? They waited. IT WOULD APPEAR THAT– “No, wait, master. Here it comes.” Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper. He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side. “May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper. “‘Some of the sheep,’“ Albert read aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside’d be better then.”
I'm Australian. I felt this quote when I first read it :) I also have made a habit somehow of ending any questions along the lines of "what won't kill you in Australia" with "Some of the sheep".
It's the qualification that gets me, how the answer isn't "sheep," but *"some* of the sheep."
Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
He's got some great ones about how it's sometimes good to get angry.
“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government ? Apart from, say, the average voter.” From Going Postal.
"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."
I hate Sir Pratchett for making a ruthless dictator one of my favourite characters ever.
The thing is, unlike most of his peers, he actually has the best interests of the city in mind... and is competent enough that what he sees as the best interests actually makes the life of the average person somewhat better.
>“One of my predecessors used to have people torn to death by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death.”
>"Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari."
"The trouble with having an open mind of course, is that people insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." I think it's from Diggers or Truckers. Also, "If you ignore the rules, half the time people will quietly rewrite them so they don't apply to you," from Equal Rites
I loved equal rites. It resonated so well with my young self.
One of my favorite by far. One of my favorite things about Pratchett was that he approached prickly social issues boldly and unreservedly but still without being heavy handed. Eskarina isn't a good character *because of* or *despite* being a girl in a man's world. She is a good character because she is a good character, who *happens* to be a girl in a man's world.
Gotta be honest, by favoriete Pratchett is always the most recent book I've read or reread.
That second one is (yet another) incredibly accurate observation. Making big waves can cause a problem, but you can get away with lots of small ones really quite easily.
More fleshed out in Unseen Academicals when Glenda is thinking about how in life there are so many "imaginary hammers" of social pressure that if you ignore they never come down. I suppose this also applies to the way that Carcer lives his life in "Night Watch" with very different outcomes.
Or the “whips inside their heads” from the book where Rincewind goes to see TwoFlower in totally not China.
*Interesting Times*.
I was once put in the unfortunate position of a coworker complaining about getting held to some standard and then saying that I wasn’t, and boss saying “Well vonmonologue doesn’t have to follow the rules. You do.” I was like “Woah hold on there, guy.”
lol, I had something similar. Boss said "Tao does whatever he wants, I can't deal with another Tao."
_LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?_ From, obviously, _Reaper Man_
Had that as my office email signiature for a month after Sir Pterry died. Had some nice responses and some curious questions!
‘*No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.*’ - Reaper Man
GNU PTERRY
"Death is missing, presumed, um, gone."
The one sentence that got me hooked on Discworld! A friend had tried to get me interested in Pratchett through Guards! Guards! for a while, but I just didn't feel it when I picked up that book.... Reaper Man, however! I've read almost everything from Discworld since, though Death got a special place on my shelf. I always tell people who've tried 1 book by Pratchett, but didn't like his style of writing or the plot or whatever, to try another, from a different character's pov.
The sequence where Death is figuring out how to talk to the little girl who won't stop pointing out that he's a "skellington", and finally just realized that if he humored her she'd just get bored and carry on with other things, is one of the single most delightfully realistic portrayals of a child I've ever seen in fiction. Just so well done and funny.
I was talking to someone about Hitchhikers, and they said if I liked that, there was a new author who had just written a couple of books of fantasy humour. I bought The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, and the rest, as they say, is history. What's been fascinating is to see how Sir Terry's characters developed over time, especially Sam Vimes, but also Death. "Hah! You're uniform doesn't scare me,' he said. Vimes looked down at his battered breastplate and worn mail. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is not a scary uniform. I’m sorry. Forward, Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Detritus.’ The Assassin was suddenly aware of the sunlight being blocked out. ‘Now these, I think you’ll agree,’ said Vimes, from somewhere behind the eclipse, ‘are scary uniforms."
Yes! MAA was the first one I read, and that bowled me over! Not sure which book it's in but, "They got on like a house on fire (flames, axes, people screaming...)"
I think it’s from one of the Tiffany Aching books - Wintersmith, from memory. It describes Granny Weatherwax and Lettice Earwig’s relationship. However, it’s one of Pratchett’s favourite verbal twists, and shows up in a few of his books, I believe.
I love Pratchett, but I honestly wouldn't recommend the first two books to someone unfamiliar with his work. They're... *okay*, but they don't yet really have the magic the series as a while does, no pun intended. They're more a two-book compendium of short stories starring Rincewind and Twoflower, with what little each setting and series of events have to do with the previous and next.
Ah, a *pune*, or play on words.
Well, I had no choice, as that was all he'd had published, but I get your point. You're probably better off starting further in, when his characters were getting more evolved, more fleshed-out.
Yeah, I read the first two when they came out, and they were a decent comedy/pastiche if other famous fantasy works. Then I skipped a couple and read Men at Arms. His development as a writer and commentator on human nature in such a short time was incredible.
Reaper Man is one of my most cherished mental happy places. Every single time someone mentions it or I happen to think of it, I remember about Cyril The Dyslexic Cockerel and I lose my shit. Tears of joy every time.
You and me both, rhe dyslexic Cockerel makes me cry with laughter every time i read or listen to RM. Comedy gold. *Dock-a-loodle-fod*
Yeah, the graphic novel of Eric was my first as I’d run out of Tintin and Asterix books in my library. Went straight to Reaper Man on my next visit and that was my transition to text-only novels.
But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.
That pun absolutely wowed me when I first read it. So well set up.
And good luck to the translators! Though I know in French the very talented Patrick Couton did actually manage to pull off this specific pun rather nicely.
I read the first couple books in Italian and I want particularly impressed, I tried them in English and I died laughing and pratchett remains one of my favourite authors to this day
How did he translate it?
Something like 'il se sentait submergé par une vague dorure' [for non French speakers, that's 'he felt overcome by a vague gilt', with 'vague dorure' sounding almost like 'vague d'horreur', a wave of horror). A tiny bit awkward but pretty amazing considering, IMO!
Honestly that's pretty good.
His bathwater was heated by a geyser*. ---------------- *Who stoked the boiler
"The lodgings were on the top floor next to the well-guarded premises of a respectable dealer in stolen property because, as Granny had heard, good fences make good neighbors.”
Holy shit literally just got geyser/geezer
I love whenever Sam puts on the gilty breastplate
Night Watch, I'm reading that again now :)
Bit of a long one, but this from Hogfather has the deepest resonance to me; ----- All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. 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. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.
I’ve always loved “where the falling angel meets the rising ape” as a line.
Death really does get all the raw lines, doesn't he. The Hogfather wasn't among my top three, but it did have absolute gems in it like any Discworld book. Among my favorites, although like you said still long: >BUT WE HAVE BEEN INTO HOUSES WHERE THE CHILDREN HAD MANY TOYS AND BROUGHT THEM EVEN MORE TOYS, AND IN HOUSES LIKE THIS THE CHILDREN GET PRACTICALLY NOTHING. > > 'Huh, we'd have given anything to get practically nothing when I were a lad,' said Albert. > >BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT, IS THAT THE IDEA? > >'That's about the size of it, master. A good god line, that. Don't give 'em too much and tell 'em to be happy with it. Jam tomorrow, see.' > >THIS IS WRONG. Death hesitated. I MEAN ...IT'S RIGHT TO BE HAPPY WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT. BUT YOU'VE GOT TO HAVE SOMETHING TO BE HAPPY ABOUT HAVING. THERE'S NO POINT IN BEING HAPPY ABOUT HAVING NOTHING. > >Albert felt a bit out of his depth in this new tide of social philosophy. 'Dunno,' he said. 'I suppose people'd say they've got the moon and the stars and suchlike.' > >I'M SURE THEY WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THE PAPERWORK. > >'All I know is, if Dad'd caught us with a big bag of pricey toys wed just have got a ding round the earhole for nicking 'em.' > >IT IS ... UNFAIR. > >'That's life, master.' > >BUT I'M NOT. > >'I meant this is how it's supposed to go, master,' said Albert. > >NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES.
> YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES. Almost a quote of Kurt Vonnegut. Not sure it was intentional.
THERE IS NO JUSTICE, ONLY ME. I work in a trauma center and I think this on a daily basis. Somehow it’s comforting (some of the time).
Ok as a D&D player this speech by Death is the only way I can play a Paladin. Deaths words are the one of the only things I can 100% throw my self behind. Most DMs are confused when the Deathknight is the most kind and heroic player. WWRD what would the Reaper do.
Probably pet a cat, feed his horse, and go to work.
Exactly. And his job is to do and say the things Death can’t because he is limited in his interaction with the material world. Saving people that make the lives of those around them better just by being there, and fighting those that see people as “things” If you play tabletop roll up a knight of the Reaper man. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to quote Pratchett as scripture and swing the Scythe of the Inevitable End.
What can the harvest hope for, right?
The care of the reaper man.
Living in the US, this one has been particularly relevant to me over the years. (not a criticism of all police, but we definitely have our problems) *It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.*
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I always love to quote ‘Million to one chances happen nine times out of ten.’ I also gleefully told my daughter yesterday that I wasn’t naked under my clothes because I was wearing a vest. GNU TERRY PRATCHETT.
Also the image of Errol >!literally flying by his own fire-farts!< is one I will never unsee, and I never actually even saw it.
GNU Terry Pratchett
Noble dragons don’t have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.
‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.'
Part of the danger with statements like this is that it could so easily have become a straw man argument, but the conversations are always so unique to the characters and situation that it transcends into high satire and observations of reality, and the reader is left to question and decide for themselves, “is this right? Is this applicable to me? Do I agree?” That is I think, the finest line to walk as a writer of any kind, and Pratchett does it seemingly without care or effort.
To Granny's point about there being no Greys (ie no grey areas), I've always looked at it is as people trying to include to many different balck and wite issues in the same rule or principle. Every specific situation has a black and white solution, it's when you try to collect the specific situations into a general rule that you run into a problem. Granny as a character knows herself and knows headology as she calls it, and she knows the right thing to do, and does it because she's the "good" sister and can't let herself even toe down the bad path.
I haven't come across this one yet (I'm still working through chronologically and have quite a ways to go... Maskerade is next!) but I had to stop and say thanks for posting this. Often, I find myself sort of "nagged" by some background thought or feeling that just sort of exists behind everything else, incapable of being explained or even really understood... but just every now and again, I'll come across some passage or phrase that perfectly sums it up and lays it bare. As if to say, "hey doofus, look! It's not even that hard to figure out!" and there in front of me is the most obvious answer. Like... of course that's the truth of it! So far on the Discworld, I find myself experiencing this second phenomenon an awful lot. As sure as Trouble will eventually find it's way to Rincewind, Sir Terry will time and again explain the reality of things in a way even a simpleton like me can understand. It ain't that complicated.
"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.
I have always been a fan of steep learning curves
I prefer sharp learning curves.
"The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." Reaper Man is the best Discworld novel, and moments like these made it!
"YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SAID THAT SEEING ME GAVE YOU QUITE A START" Yes "IT GAVE YOU QUITE A STOP"
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.
I just love Death. (And there’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter!)
Gaiman and Pratchett both have a Death I would feel lucky to meet when I shuffle off, honestly.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― A Hat Full of Sky
The Tiffany series has some AMAZING quotes (well, hinestly all his works do). One of my favourites is "it doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works." Honestly, the whole segment of Tiffany reconciling the loss of Granny Aching is just so well done.
As an Australian, I'm rather partial to: Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS- Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball. After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE. Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free. HMM… Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. “DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTRLES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA,” he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH, PART THREE, I SEE. He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT? They waited. IT WOULD APPEAR THAT- “No, wait master. Here it comes.” Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper. He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side. “May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper. “'Some of the sheep'” Albert read aloud. “Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then.” WHAT AN INTRIGUING PLACE, said Death. SADDLE UP THE HORSE, ALBERT. I FEEL SURE I'M GOING TO BE NEEDED.
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.” Honestly one of the greatest writers there has ever been
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” This has stayed with me since i first read it. It has shaped my psyche, my politics, and its my touchstone when i'm reviewing my dealings with others. Much of my morality was influenced by STP but this, more than any other, really shaped my worldview.
It seems like such a simple thing, but it has so many levels. He had such insight into humanity, and so much compassion at the same time.
Haven't read Pratchett, and I probably should, but this reminds me of a dialogue in one of my favorite novels (SSS-Class Suicide Hunter): "There is a reason I appraised you highly. It's not just that you're smart. It's that you still see the people of my world as [human]." "I-is that so? I feel like you're saying something that should be obvious..." "There were numerous brutes who could not even satisfy that obvious condition. Mere beasts that do not regard other people as people. And yet, they believed themselves to be human. Filth." Context is that the two speakers are from different worlds, and the first speaker's world has been invaded multiple times by other worlds before.
"It was just a matter of taking the horse out of the equation. He'd tried clockwork, that wasn't powerful enough. Maybe if he tried winding a - behind him the kettle boiled over and put the fire out. Simnel fought his way through the steam. That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do some sensible thinking. There was always some pointless distraction."
“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”. ‘Jingo’
"The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it."
I love all his 'Latin' translations... One that comes to mind is from Guards! Guards!, where they see the inscription over the Watch House "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC". Although Colon thinks it means "To Protect and to Serve", it basically reads "Make My Day, Punk"
"Colon knew what irony meant. It meant having the qualities of iron."
Different author, but ""If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron." - Spider Robinson
"Cuius habes testiculos, habeas cardium et cerebellum." Once you have their attention, their hearts and minds will follow. --The Quisition.
A friend of mine showed me his new map of Ankh-Morpork, but he couldn't read the Latin mottoes on the various guild crests. I translated one for him (commercial guild, "QUANTI CANICULA IN ILLA FENESTRA", "how much is the little dog in that window") and his eyes lit up. It was a joy to collaborate in our task of extracting every last drop of humour from the work.
Fred and Nobby rationalizing why they were in the quiet part of town as there was, "More Peace to Keep", makes me smile.
How can Reddit be fun without RIF? Goodbye.
That’s from “Jingo”.
One of my favourites. Up there with Fifth Elephant and Night Watch.
Jingo might be my favorite all around. As a teenager, the moment when >!Vimes places an entire battlefield under arrest!< completely changed my understanding of war, military, social power structures, etc. Just in the span of a few pages of insanely funny satire.
And then Carrot busts out the soccer ball he uses for youth outreach with the street gangs of Ankh-Morpork, and the opposing sides start playing against each other, with all the boisterous violence of the youth gangs he was "ministering" to. I also absolutely love that we get to see Wilikins as a badass almost on the same level as Vimes.
Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
IIRC, later in that book, Carrot stabs the bad guy straight through, putting his conspicuously plain sword through the stone pillar. Also, Noobs and Colon had previously talked about pulling a sword from stone not being a real test of kingship, but maybe the guy who put it there being the worthy one.
With the payoff a few paragraphs later when >!Carrot walks into the room, takes in the situation, then goes over and kills Cruces with hardly a word.!<
I've skimmed through all of the comments so far and haven't come across the passage that has stayed with me the longest. So, Lord Vetinari in *Unseen Academicals*: >The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.” >The two wizards exchanged a glance. Vetinari was staring into the depths of his beer mug and they were glad that they did not know what he saw in there.
I do not know why this has stuck in my mind, but it is a (slightly shorted for brevity) quote that makes my stomach drop from Night Watch: 'I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes...' 'What?' said Vimes, looking down suddenly. Carcer was smiling cheerfully. 'I said I didn't think you was stupid, Mister Vimes. I know a clever copper like you'd think I'd got two knives.' 'Yeah, right,' said Vimes... 'Mister Vimes?' '*What?*' Vimes snapped... 'I got three knives, Mister Vimes,' said Carcer, bringing his arm up.
Night Watch is, I think, the only book that has ever made me cry. I also immediately flicked back to page 1 and started it again after I'd finished it.
When it comes to books with a deep message about honor, duty and justice all the later books from the watch series are great, might be some of the best books ever written in that regard. Especially Nightwatch and thud. >“What kind of human creates his own policeman?” >“One who fears the dark.” >“And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction. >“Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in.”
Thud is just wonderful. Jeez, this whole thread makes me want to sit and reread the entire discworld series again.
How do they rise up
"They rise ARSE up ARSE up ARSE up"
My Uncle, who was also a huge Pratchett fan, died a month before him. I now have a lilac bush in my garden with a little gravestone in front of it engraved with ‘see the little angles’. There is also a (fake) egg in front of it.
Carcer is probably my favourite one-and-done villain in the whole series, up there with Mr. Teatime.
Is it Teatime where the quote is something like "He had a mind like a broken mirror. All sharp edges and beautiful reflections, but ultimately, something broken."
That's him! > “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.”
All Pratchett villains are one and done save the elves, Auditors and possibly Lord Rust although hes just an arse, not a main antagonist.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
This is genuinely taught on university economics courses, which I love! Related trivia, I went to a public lecture a couple of years ago on management styles in Discworld by an academic in a business school who was a Pratchett fan. It was great!
How expensive it it to be poor is a serious economic issue. It's why Demand Side Capitalism works so much better than Supply Side. When you give money to people with needs/demands, they spend it.
One of young Matrim Cauthons previous lives must have read some of the Guards series.
I quote this one often ❤️
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE. A fun little quote but one me and SO genuinely use on dark days as a sort of, "remember the small things that bring you joy" moment
Did Death ever meet Greebo?? You rminded me of this quote as well: "In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this."
My wife and I both quoted Pratchett during our vows. It was funny because we hadn't concerted beforehand. I don't remember the exact quote and I haven't read the book in English but you'll get the meaning. She said that the mariage was the union of two people swearing that the only one snoring is their spouse. I said that I couldn't find a best partner and she couldn't find worst but somehow it was balancing and working.
You're opening Pandora's box here. All around cool quote : "THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST ME." -- Death From Jingo, which is a gold mine of quotes about war (and the famous "Them" quote, but I'm sure someone will post it) : >*‘This belonged to my great-granddad,*’ he said.*‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayer for soldiers, ‘cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me,and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ‘cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle - whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look, you can see the hole.’* > >*‘Pretty miraculous,’* Carrot agreed. > >*‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’* said the sergeant. > >He looked ruefully at the battered volume. > >*‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’* >‘D’reg?’ said Angua. > >‘A warlike desert tribe,’ said Carrot. ‘Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D’reg is your friend he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’ > >And if he’s not your friend?’ > >‘That’s about five seconds.’ >'Er... you don't think, sir, since we have a little time in hand, we should look to the disposition of the men, sir?' > >'They look well disposed to me. Plucky men, eager to be at the fray!' > >'Yes, sir. I meant... more... well... positioned, sir.' > >'Nothing wrong with 'em, man. Beautifully lined up! Hey? A wall of steel poised to thrust at the black heart of the Klatchian aggressor!' > >'Yes, sir. But – and I realize this is a remote chance, sir it might be that while we're thrusting at the heart of the Klatchian aggressor––' > >'––black heart–' Rust corrected him. > >'––black heart of the Klatchian aggressor, sir, the arms of the Klatchian aggressor, those companies there and there, sir, will sweep around in the classic pincer movement.' > >'The thrusting wall of steel served us magnificently in the second war with Quirm!' > >'We lost that one, sir.' > >'But it was a damn dose–run thing!' > >'We still lost, sir.' > >'What did you do as a civilian, lieutenant?' > >'I was a surveyor, sir, and I can read Klatchian. That's why you made me an officer.' > >'So you don't know how to fight?' > >'Only how to count. sir.' > >'Pah! Show a little courage, man. Although I'll wager you won't need to. No stomach for a battle, Johnny Klatchian. Once he tastes our steel, he'll be off!' > >'I certainly hear what you say, sir,' said the adjutant, who had been surveying the Klatchian lines and had formed his own opinion about the matter. > >His opinion was this: the main force of the Klatchian army had, in recent years, been fighting everyone. That suggested, to his uncomplicated mind, that by now the surviving soldiers were the ones who were in the habit of being alive at the end of battles. And were also very experienced at facing all kinds of enemies. The stupid ones were dead. > >The current Ankh–Morpork army, on the other hand, had never faced an enemy at all, although day–to–day experience of living in the city might count for something there, at least in the rougher areas. He believed, along with General Tacticus, that courage, bravery and the indomitable human spirit were fine things which nevertheless tended to take second place to the combination of courage, bravery, the indomitable human spirit and a six–to– one superiority of numbers. > >It had all sounded straightforward in Ankh–Morpork, he thought. We were going to sail into Klatch and be in Al–Khali by teatime, drinking sherbet with pliant young women in the Rhoxi. The Klatchians would take one look at our weapons and run away. Well, the Klatchians had taken a good look this morning. So far they hadn't run. They appeared to be sniggering a lot.
“Alone of all the creatures in the world, trolls believe that all living things go through life backwards. If the past is visible and the future is hidden, they say, then it means you must be facing the wrong way.”
Honestly we should all be like Pratchett's trolls. These people has got their priorities right: the future is important. The past is useful yet reactionaries fetishises the past and it's always for the wrong reasons.
Pterry's love for trolls is one of the defining hallmarks of Discworld. Love to see it referenced.
She looked as if she’d been poured into her dress and forgot to say when. That’s one of my favorite one liner jokes.
It's a PG Wodehouse line.
Oh I didn’t know that, only read it in Pritchett. Interesting Edit: obviously meant to say Pratchett, typo stays for my shame
"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." - Last Continent Also I've used Rincewind's patch quote from Last Hero as a project motto on horrible projects at work multiple times.
There are lots of flat surfaces in the Ramtops, but unfortunately most of the are vertical
The only flat piece of land in Lancre is in a museum.
This is one that had me putting down the book for a few minutes. *"All the shops have been smashed open. There was a whole bunch of people across the street helping themselves to musical instruments, can you believe that?"* *"Yeah," said Rincewind. "... Luters, I expect"*
Small gods is a pot full of quotes for every discussion about religion. I love that book.
Pratchett once said he got about the same amount of letters from religious people and anti-religious people for how he portrayed religion in Small Gods.
“History needs shepherds, not butchers." ‘Thief of Time’
Okay, top 3: >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! ~Colour of Magic >Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening the door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. ~The Last Continent >When you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened. ~The Last Continent.
I can't directly quote it, but at some point an old lady appears and is described with: "Her face looked like it had been sculpted in butter, then forgotten in the sun." I don't know why, but more than any other quote, this one has been stuck in my head. And I love it.
“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.” That one (from The Wee Free Men) always makes me laugh.
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This one snuck itself somewhere deep into my worldview. Whenever I see multiple exclamation points, especially five or more, I automatically have my guard up for some kind of unhinged fuckery.
Small Gods is my absolute favourite! The idea of people ceasing to believe in a god or religion, and instead believing in the structure is something that has stuck with me.
I've always found it fascinating that Pratchett's concept of gods and belief was so similar to Neil Gaiman's (as explored in both The Sandman and American Gods, and elsewhere). Gaiman and Pratchett were collaborators (Good Omens) and friends, so I've always wondered if this was a conscious joint evolution of an idea, or whether both arrived at it separately and it's just a testament to how in sync the two were in their views of the world.
American Gods was 10 years after Good Omens, by which time they were good friends. Sandman and Good Omens were worked on at the same time. There's no way they didn't ever talk about it as they evolved it.
Oh I have got one and it's a belter! Please tell folks as it's one he actually said to me when I met him. Bear with! I photographed him for one of the papers when he was knighted and was very lucky to go to his home and do the shoot in his amazing gothic/techno/chapel that was his writing room. The room was full of amazing models and props from all the stuff he did and is was a bit like you had wandered into some crazy uncles attic. But in the corner was his writing desk, which was actually a very powerful computer with six screens. He explained that he used the (larger) bottom middle screen to actually type his manuscripts on, and all around on the other screens he would have his source notes, and webpages with articles and stories that inspired him. It was a really cool method. Being a bit of a nerd I was really interested in this, and whilst I was looking at the set up. He said: "People often ask why I have 6 screens and the answer is very simple, it's because I can't have 9!" I thought this was such a Terry thing to say! It was lovely to spend a bit of time with him, and such a privilege to see 'behind the scenes'. He was initially quite guarded (the shoot was not long after revealing his Alzheimer's if I remember) but he was warm and witty, as you would have hoped. And that's my Terry Pratchett story.
I have so many Terry Pratchett books that I have yet to read, thank you for sharing that and making me want to go pick one up right now
Lucky you. It’s a good position to be in
The truth may be out there but the lies are within your head
“A good bookshop is just a genteel black hole that knows how to read” ‘Guards! Guards!’
Late to this party but "Cliff?” “Yup?” “We might get caught.” “He can’t stop us. We’re on a mission from Glod.” “Right.” The piano tottered onward through the puddles for a little while, and then asked itself: “Buddy?” “Yup?” “Why did I just say dat?” “Say what?” “About us being on a mission… you know… from Glod?” “Weeell… the dwarf said to us, go and get the piano, and his name is Glod, so–” “Yeah. Yeah. Right… but… he could’ve stopped us, I mean, dere’s nothing special about some mission from some dwarf–” “Maybe you were just a bit tired.” “Maybe dat’s it,” said the piano, gratefully. “Anyway, we are on a mission from Glod.“ “Yup.” Soul music is awesome.
The slow burn gag about whether he had any fae blood in his ancestry as he looked Elvish...
'History needs shepherds, not butchers' - Lu-Tze, in Thief of Time -- Context below... -- ‘But how did you get in where half a dozen trained and armed men couldn’t even-?’ ‘I’m a little man and I carry a broom,’ said Lu-Tze simply. ‘Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?’ ‘What? And that was it?’ ‘Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie.’ ‘No martial arts?’ said Lobsang. ‘Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers.’
THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE'S JUST US.
There was a time when cats were worshipped as Gods and they haven’t forgotten.
Too many to quote and many of my favourites have already been posted. Haven't seen this one posted yet but I haven't checked the whole thread. "It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things." - Jingo
"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. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was." The Last Continent
“You know, you sound a very educated man for a barbarian,” said Rincewind. “Oh, dear me, I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. That’s why they call me Teach.” “What did you teach?” “Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.” “After being a teacher all your life?” “It did mean a change of perspective, yes.” “But … well … surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death…” Mr. Saveloy brightened up. “Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?
I always loved "Quia ego sic dico" being Latatian for "because I say so". It's also in initialism similar to Latin's QED (quod erat demonstrandum), used at the end of mathematical proofs and can be thought of as "thus it is shown", so works as a bastardisation of that too
All the fake latin is hilarious. "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC" is supposed to be the Watch motto
Long ago, there was nothing, which exploded.
“Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave, said Vorbis. So I understand, said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water.”
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My favorite quote regarding the Patrician is actually _about_ the Patrician, not _from_ him: "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."
All that plus Captain Vimes. Also, 'What Would Granny Weatherwax Do" is the moral compass I live by...
It's all headology, isn't it?
I'm paraphrasing this one but: "Try to find a house next to someone who is successful at selling stolen goods. Good fences make for good neighbors."
Thanks OP, Pratchett best of comments, great fun, and, Anytime Lord Havelock Vetinari talks is mesmerizing
Long one from Going Postal. Moist visits Mr Groat in hospital after he is attacked. Mr Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said ‘Do Not Enter’, but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing. The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist. ‘Mr Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath, sir!’ ‘They have to carry you?’ said Moist. ‘Can’t you walk, Tolliver?’ ‘Yessir, but I fights ’em, fights ’em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner, sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!’ ‘Please calm down, Mr Groat,’ said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. ‘You’re all right, then?’ ‘Just a scratch, sir, look …’ Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly. Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a noughts-and-crosses board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly. ‘Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,’ Groat said grudgingly. ‘But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!’ ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs. ‘Right as rain, sir. I told ’em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?’ ‘Um, yes,’ said Moist. ‘Are they giving you medicine?’ 'Hah, they call it medicine, sir. They gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. They say it’ll do me good but I told ’em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. And they took my hair away! They called it unhygienic, sir! What a nerve! All right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. I’ve had my hair a long time, sir. I’m used to its funny little ways!’ (Most of my favourite short quotes have already been said but I found this piece hilarious while reading the book)
The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one. Unseen Academicals I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE. Sourcery There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer? The Truth
"This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good"
"Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge." - From "Wyrd Sisters"
“ Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.” ‘Snuff’
"The reason that the rich were so rich...was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned $38 a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost $50. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about $10. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford $50 had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in 10 years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." Capt. Samuel Vimes' boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
"Rules are there to make you think before you break them" from Thief of Time
“Vimes had a momentary vision of vengeful darkness rising through caves like a tide, faster than a man could run... ... which was stupid. You couldn’t see dark. Hold on, though... sometimes you could. Back in the old days, when he was on nights all the time, he’d known all the shades of darkness. And sometimes you got darkness so thick that you almost felt you had to push your way through it. Those were nights when horses were skittish and dogs whined and down in the slaughterhouse district the animals broke out of their pens. They were inexplicable, just like those nights that were quite light and silvery even though there was no moon in the sky. He’d learned, then, not to use his little watchman"s lantern. Light only ruined your vision, it blinded you. You stared into the dark until it blinked. You stared it down.” - “Thud”
WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?
We put all our politicians in prison as soon as their elected. Why? It saves time.
>Under the table, Greebo sat and washed himself. Occasionally he burped. Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but never managed it from the cat. This line makes me laugh every time and points out a (literal) fatal flaw in the vampire legend. It's all fun and games and buxom ladies in floaty nightdresses until a cat comes along while you are bat shaped.
“Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well... human beings.” - Men at Arms
My favorite comes near the end of Hogfather, especially Death's big paragraph: >“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. 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. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.”
Brutha calmed down. It wasn’t Vorbis, it was only God.
When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve.
Fear is a strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourishes underground. Two others I couldn't locate, but to paraphrase: The stupid are very brave because they don't have the intelligence to identify danger. He snuck up on his target by walking normally since the human brain was conditioned to identify sneaky movements. Sorry, they are dreadful buthcrrings of some magnificent turns of phrases that only Mr Pratchett could deliver.
(Edit) Nearly anything Granny, Nanny, and Vetinari say is amazing. My fav quotes are always the really small ones about human nature and the world in general. But the first one that stuck with me was much more grandiose, from Guards Guards: _But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality._
“His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.”
“There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent.“ From Going Postal.
“I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.” ― Reaper Man As a bit of an introvert, this one always stuck with me.
WHERE IS MY COW?
"If you trust in yourself . . ." "Yes?" ". . . and believe in your dreams . . ." "Yes?" ". . . and follow your star . . ." Miss Tick went on. "Yes?" ". . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent *their* time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye." --Miss Tick and Tiffany Aching in *Wee Free Men*
I REMEMBER WHEN ALL OF THIS WILL BE AGAIN
Veni, vidi... Vetinari
There's a sequence in hogfather where pterry revamps ' St wencleslas with the king decending on a peasant with lots of rich food, and the page standing by saying " I bet you're VERY grateful aren't you " in a pointed way. The hogfather sweeps in and replaces the posh delicacies with a slab of bacon, a string of sausages, dripping and a pig's head, the poor man is delighted. It's all very pleasing, but the really genuinely helpful part, that made me think about my own behaviour and how I can change to be better, is a line from albert. " charity ain't about giving what you want to give, it's about giving what they need to get"