Top 500 Terry Pratchett Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The significant owl hoots in the night.”

— Terry Pratchett

252. “First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.”

— Terry Pratchett

253. “I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It’s generally a better bet. There’s more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say “it was god’s will” when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.”

— Terry Pratchett

254. “Fascism may be good at making the trains run on time, but you wouldn’t like some of the destinations.”

— Terry Pratchett

255. “Either all days are holy or none are.”

— Terry Pratchett

256. “Sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.”

— Terry Pratchett

257. “I discovered fantasy and science fiction when I was about 10, and read nothing else for about three years. I ran out of all the books that there were to read in the library. I was keen on reading stuff that took me to other places.”

— Terry Pratchett

258. “And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”

— Terry Pratchett

259. “One person is nothing. Two people are a nation.”

— Terry Pratchett

260. “For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.”

— Terry Pratchett

261. “One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”

— Terry Pratchett

262. “We live in a science fiction universe. We have done for a long time.”

— Terry Pratchett

263. “Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.”

— Terry Pratchett

264. “The reaper does not listen to the harvest.”

— Terry Pratchett

265. “The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

— Terry Pratchett

266. “Cats will amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.”

— Terry Pratchett

267. “Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.”

— Terry Pratchett

268. “I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.”

— Terry Pratchett

269. “And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.”

— Terry Pratchett

270. “Remember – that which does not kill us can only make us stronger. And that which does kill us leaves us dead!”

— Terry Pratchett

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

— Terry Pratchett

272. “You can’t second-guess ineffability, I always say.”

— Terry Pratchett

273. “Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant ’idiot.”

— Terry Pratchett

274. “Hell wasn’t a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley’s opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.”

— Terry Pratchett

275. “We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.”

— Terry Pratchett

276. “Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.”

— Terry Pratchett

277. “I’ve seen excitement, and I’ve seen boredom. And boredom was best.”

— Terry Pratchett

278. “Other people salted away money for their old age, but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories.”

— Terry Pratchett

279. “People couldn’t become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.”

— Terry Pratchett

280. “Building a temple didn’t mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.”

— Terry Pratchett

281. “The fastest way to travel is to be there already.”

— Terry Pratchett

282. “He said it was better to belong where you don’t belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there.”

— Terry Pratchett

283. “You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.”

— Terry Pratchett

284. “But that was just it – hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.”

— Terry Pratchett

285. “His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.”

— Terry Pratchett

286. “Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead.”

— Terry Pratchett

287. “Nanny’s philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.”

— Terry Pratchett

288. “The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.”

— Terry Pratchett

289. “You can’t inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.”

— Terry Pratchett

290. “First of all you are a writer, a writer is what you are, so it doesn’t actually stop the moment you leave your desk, your computer, your keyboard, whatever. Something is operating the back of your mind.”

— Terry Pratchett

291. “I wouldn’t trust you with a bucket of water if my knickers were on fire!”

— Terry Pratchett

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

— Terry Pratchett

293. “It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.”

— Terry Pratchett

294. “I am a great fan of science, but I cannot do a quadratic equation.”

— Terry Pratchett

295. “Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.”

— Terry Pratchett

296. “Quick, someone’s coming! Look real!”

— Terry Pratchett

297. “I don’t really plan. I’m almost intuitive about things.”

— Terry Pratchett

298. “Theres no stink more sorrorful than the stink of wet, burnt paper. It means: the end.”

— Terry Pratchett

299. “There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That’s what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.”

— Terry Pratchett

300. “Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.”

— Terry Pratchett