Quotes from Sourcery

“Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you're told and didn't try to understand things.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocalypse.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“It was quite impossible to describe.

Here is what it looked like.

It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon. ”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist=s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.

This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.

Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one.

For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck.

By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry.

Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,” said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. “Been completely at a loss my whole life.” He hesitated. “I think it’s called being human, or something.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“I don't regret it, you know. I would do it all again. Children are our hope for the future."
THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.
"What does it contain, then?"
ME.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Talent just defines what you do,” he said. “It doesn’t define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Oh, there's plenty of reasons. I just don't know which one.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Not much call for a barbarian hairdresser, I expect,' said Rincewind. 'I mean, no-one wants a shampoo-and-beheading.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Of course, like all the informal inhabitants of the University the roaches were a little unusual, but there was something particularly unpleasant about the sound of billions of very small feet hitting the stones in perfect time.

Rincewind stepped gingerly over the marching column. The Librarian jumped it.

The Luggage, of course, followed them with a noise like someone tapdancing over a bag of crisps.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“It didn't look like the kind of snow that whispers down gently in the pit of the night and in the morning turns the landscape into a glittering wonderland of uncommon and ethereal beauty. It looked like the kind of snow that intends to make the world as bloody cold as possible.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“The gods," he said. "Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn’t mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“Despite rumor, Death isn’t cruel—merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“He had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?” Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

“For example, a popular spell at the time was Pelepel’s Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Sourcery

About the author

Popular quotes

“Under the disguise amulet, Jenks looked very different with black hair and a darker complexion. He had his new aviator jacket on over the T-shirt he had bought in the previous store, making him a sexy, leggy, hunk o’ pixy ass in jeans. No wonder he had fifty-four kids and Matalina smiled like Mona Lisa.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from A Fistful of Charms

“We all make mistakes.
The people who love us forgive the mistakes.
The people who won't forgive don't really matter”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Temple of the Winds

“There is a thing called the blood feud. All societies have them, even the West Saxons have them, despite their vaunted piety. Kill a member of my family and I shall kill one of yours, and so it goes on, generation after generation or until one family is all dead, and Kjartan had just wished a blood feud on himself. I did not know how, I did not know where, I could not know when, but I would revenge Ragnar. I swore it that night.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from The Last Kingdom

“A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
― Carl Sagan, quote from Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Walden & Civil Disobedience

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.