"He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways..."

"Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography."

"ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.Death took a step backwards.It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.Death glanced sideways at the servants. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"

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

"History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."

"You want fantasy? Here's one... There's this species that lives on a planet a few miles above molten rock and a few miles below a vacuum that'd suck the air right out of them. They live in a brief geological period between ice ages, when giant asteroids have temporarily stopped smacking into the surface. As far as they can tell, there's nowhere else in the universe where they could stay alive for ten seconds. And what do they call their fragile little slice of space and time? They call it real life."

"She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn't going."

"The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so."

"He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity."

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

"There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise."

"That's No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress,' said Not-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock. 'Ye were one jock short,' he added helpfully."

"But I see you're not standing in a bleedin' shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin' shape, you're silhouetted against the bleedin' light and your sabre's shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep's bleedin' ear'ole! Explain!"It's because of the one C, sarge!" said Polly, still staring straight ahead. "And that is?" "Colour, sarge! I'm wearing bleedin' red and white in a bleedin' grey forest, sarge!"

"Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that makes us human."

"Big fat hairy monkey, hands a couple of octaves wide?"

"Yes, she'd made a mistake... but she wasn't going to be bullied. You couldn't let boys go around raining on your lava and ogling other people's watercolors."

"The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, "What about me? and you can just hear the universe replying, "Well, what about you?"

"Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along."

"You could bounce rocks off her pride."

"Adora Belle fought back, and to make sure fought back even before she was attacked."

"Mums are mums, lance-constable. They don't like to see men managing by themselves, in case that sort of thing catches on."

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."

"Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it."

"Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle."

"They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money."

"A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath."

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life."

"That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said - one of the famous lady novelists - 'unhappy is the family that contains an author'?"

"Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure."

"If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light, He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern."

"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."

"That's the fashion. Fast as the speed of light, they say. Ha! It's got no soul, sir, no heart."

"I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense."

"When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary."

"Well, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!"

"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage."

"You mean it's my destiny? she said at last.Granny shrugged. Something like that. Probably. Who knows?"

"Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you."Sir?"It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority."Sir?"That's practically zen."

"Even our fears make us feel important, because we fear we might not be."

"He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato."

"Looking out the window, Moist saw a small swarm of goblins leave the train and at first he thought, ha! Trust the buggers to run away, and then he mentally corrected himself: that was storybook thinking and with clearer eyesight and a bit of understanding he realized that the goblins were scrambling up to the delvers on the rocks and beating the shit out of them by diving into the multiple layers of dwarf clothing. The delvers discovered all too rapidly that trying to fight while a busy goblin was in your underwear was very bad for the concentration."

"Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong."

"He stared at his feet. "I'm still very ignorant, he said, "but at least I'm ignorant about really important things."

"He only drinks when he gets depressed,' said Carrot. 'Why does he get depressed?' 'Sometimes it's because he hasn't had a drink."