"Gods didn't mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief."

"Are we entirely ready, sir?" said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means "We are not entirely ready, sir."We had better be. Glory awaits, gentlemen. In the words of General Tacticus, 'let us take history by the scrotum.' Of course, he was not a very honourable fighter."

"I hope you're not proposing to enslave us,' said Twoflower.Marchesa looked genuinely shocked. 'Certainly not! Whatever could have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and comfortable-''Oh, good,' said Rincewind.'-just not very long."

"And one day Amber takes her troll's dinner down to the cave and finds him- Rock waved his hands in vague yet thoroughly descriptive motions "-with another lady troll. So she go home and get her club and come back and beat him to death, thump, thump, thump. 'Cos he was her troll and he done her wrong. Is very romantic song."

"In my heart, I'm just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I'm not a rich man."

"Magrat liked to think she was good with children, and worried that she wasn't. She didn't like them very much, and worried about this too. Nanny Ogg seemed to be effortlessly good with children by alternately and randomly giving them either a sweet or a thick ear, while Granny Weatherwax ignored them for most of the time and that seemed to work just as well."

"You Say To People 'Throw Off Your Chains' And They Make New Chains For Themselves?"

"No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops."

"Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods."

"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living."

"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages."

"If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail."

"Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges."

"Oh, that's just Thud! That's easy!" yapped a voice.Both men turned to look at Horsefry, who had been made perky by sheer relief."I used to play it when I was a kid," he burbled. It's boring. The dwarfs always win!"Gilt and Vetinari shared a look. It said: While I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplummable by any line, I'll credit you at least with not being Crispin Horsefry."

"It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to 'serve the community' by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways."

"You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape " the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes " we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality."

"Revenge is not redress. Revenge is a wheel, and it turns backwards."

"When you break rules, break 'em good and hard."

"Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because-what with trolls and dwarfs and so on-speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green."

"A witch ought never to be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her."

"But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."

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

"Whole new theories of money were growing here like mushrooms: in the dark and based on bullshit."

"Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide."

"I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND."

"Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere," said the toad. "You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs."But this is a real place!"So? That's what they believe. Besides, they're only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there's room? I'm a toad, so you'll appreciate that I'm having to guess a lot here."

"If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother."

"Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, atbirthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweetdeprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took anysweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not takingall the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eatthem all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burstinto tears."

"It might have interested Newt to know that, of the thirty-nine thousand women tested with the pin during the centuries of witch-hunting, twenty-nine thousand said "ouch, nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine didn't feel anything because of the use of the aforesaid retractable pins, and one witch declared that it had miraculously cleared up the arthritis in her leg."

"The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can't shut your mind."

"Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying."

"Ridcully sighed.'All right, you fellows,' he said. 'No magic at Table, you know the rules. Who's playing silly buggers?'The other senior wizards stared at him.'I, I, I don't think we can play it any more,' said the Bursar, who at the moment was only occasionally bouncing off the sides of sanity, 'I, I, I think we lost some of the pieces..."

"That's what being alive is, Thing! It's being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!"

"Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewelry into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic."

"You are in favour of the common people? said Dragon mildly.The common people? said Vimes. "They're nothing special. They're no different from the rich and powerful except they've got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I've got to be on their side."

"His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old."

"Even the pious Scots, locked throughout history in a long-drawn-out battle with their arch-enemies the Scots, managed a few burnings to while away the long winter evenings."

"Veil, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like "zer dark eyes of zer mind" back home in Uberwald, zer would be a sudden crash of thunder,' said Otto. 'And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say "Yonder is . . . zer castle" a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.' He sighed. 'In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay."

"You're wondering if I really would slit your throat. To tell the truth, I don't know either, but think of the fun we could have finding out."

"If women were as good as men they'd be a lot better!"

"I HAVE MADE THIS FOR YOU. She reached out and took a damp square of cardboard. Water dripped off the bottom. Somewhere in the middle, a few brown feathers seemed to have been glued on. 'Thank you. Er ... what is it?'ALBERT SAID THERE OUGHT TO BE SNOW ON IT, BUT IT APPEARS TO HAVE MELTED, said Death. IT IS, OF COURSE, A HOGSWATCH CARD.'Oh ...' THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROBIN ON IT AS WELL, BUT I HAD CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY IN GETTING IT TO STAY ON. 'Ah...'IT WAS NOT AT ALL COOPERATIVE.'Really ...?'IT DID NOT SEEM TO GET INTO THE HOGSWATCH SPIRIT AT ALL."

"It is possibly worth mentioning at this point that Mr. Young thought that paparazzi was a kind of Italian linoleum."

"It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys."

"People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people."

"If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty."

"There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld c."

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

"Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!"

"It's madness, of course', thought Moist. 'But now I've got it, too."

"I know it's not the right thing to say to a lady, miss, but you are sweating like a pig!"My mother always said that horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies merely glow"Is that so? Well, miss, you are glowing like a pig!"