Terry Pratchett

When people talk about their great past they're usually trying to excuse the mediocre present.

Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.

And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?

It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

Why us?" he said. "Why is it happening to us?""Everything has to happen to someone," said Ginger.

I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.

Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.

The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home.

The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.

You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant... If I don't help them, who will?

You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.Vimes blinked at her.Pardon?' he said.It's wounded!'Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said

She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need.

A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves.

Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.__r_aren__ you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?_ said her mother, who__ never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.__o, Mum, I__ supposed not to,_ said Tiffany, still scrubbing.__ut can__ you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?___he trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,_ said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. __ heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.__rs. Aching backed away. __ thought you just had to wave your hands about,_ she mumbled nervously.__hat works,_ said Tiffany, __ut only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.

The sun set, which is everyday magic...

The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odor.The gray light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest.They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been.It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road toward Holy Wood and was soon out of sight. A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box.It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming.Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn.One of the farmers nudged the other."Oi've seen this on the clicks," he said. "It's always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens."His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe."It'd be a sight worth seeing that," he said."Sure would.""'Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage."There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly toward the road.The farmers looked at one another."Well, dang me," said one of them.

A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows.