“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out. It's all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It's all the wasted chances.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off.
A dog's wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It's like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Chances are where you find them”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
(Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate . . .)”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it's just another job.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“The Necrotelicomnicon was written by a Klatchian necromancer known to the world as Achmed the Mad, although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches. It is said that the book was written in one day after Achmed drank too much of the strange thick Klatchian coffee which doesn't just sober you up, but takes you through sobriety and out the other side, so that you glimpse the real universe beyond the clouds of warm self-delusion that sapient life usually generates around itself to stop it turning into a nutcake. Little is known about his life prior to this event, because the page headed 'About The Author' spontaneously combusted shortly after his death. However, a section headed 'Other Books By the Same Author' indicates that his previous published work was Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches's Book of Humorous Cat Stories, which might explain a lot.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“at least nine-tenths of all the original reality ever created lies outside the multiverse, and since the multiverse by definition includes absolutely everything that is anything, this puts a bit of a strain on things.
Outside the boundaries of the universes lie the raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas, all being created and uncreated chaotically like elements in fermenting supernovas.
Just occasionally where the walls of the worlds have worn a bit thin, they can leak in.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“The moments that change your life are the ones that happen suddenly, like the one where you die.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that the often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“en el interior de cada anciano, hay un joven preguntándose qué demonios ha pasado.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Believe it. That was the way. Never stop believing. Fool the eye, fool the brain.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Trolls have 5,400 words for rocks and one for vegetation. "Oograah" means everything from moss to giant redwoods. The way trolls see it, if you can't eat it, it's not worth naming it.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“He gave Gaspode a long, slow stare, which was like challenging a centipede to an arse-kicking contest.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Can you swim?" said Victor. One of the cavern's rotting pillars crashed down behind them. From the pit itself came a terrible wailing.
"Not very well," said Ginger.
"Me neither," he said. The commotion behind them was getting worse.
"Still," he said, taking her hand. "We could look on this as a great opportunity to improve really quickly.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?” said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. “It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it’s even possible to find out.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“They weren't looking at him as if he was their only hope. They were looking at him as if he was their Certainty.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labor.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“Well, at least he keeps himself fit," said the Archchancellor nastily. "Not like the rest of you fellows. I went into the Uncommon Room this morning, and it was full of chaps snoring!"
"That would be the senior masters, Master," said the Bursar. "I would say they are supremely fit, myself."
"Fit? The Dean looks like a man who's swallered a bed!"
"Ah, but Master," said the Bursar, smiling indulgently, "the word 'fit,' as I understand it, means 'appropriate to a purpose,' and I would say the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting around all day and eating big heavy meals.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“If the abnormal goes on long enough it becomes the normal.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
“This is Holy Wood. To pass the time quickly, you just film the clock hands moving fast...”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Moving Pictures
Terry Pratchett
Born place: in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date April 28, 1948
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“And now, thanks to Cooper, I didn't even know what world I belong in.”
― Claudia Lefeve, quote from Parallel
“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Letters to Milena: Expanded and Revised in a New Translation
“Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do,” said Valmorain. “Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur,” the physician countered. “Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Island Beneath the Sea
“Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world. You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.”
― Gary Vaynerchuk, quote from Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
“She felt as if she was standing at the edge of an abyss, but she was in no way counting on God to rescue her. On the contrary. I don’t believe in any of it. Not anymore.”
― Lene Kaaberbøl, quote from The Boy in the Suitcase
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The Plot Against Ame...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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