The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who’s suddenly found in his schedule a reminder...

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...

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

Your average witch is not, by nature, a social animal as far as other witches are concerned. There’s a conflict of dominant personalities. There’s a group of ringleaders without a ring. There’s the basic unwritten...

Never build a dungeon YOU can’t get out of.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar.

And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.

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

On the Disc, the Gods aren’t so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

He enjoyed reading and writing. He liked words. Words didn’t shout or make loud noises, which pretty much defined the rest of his family. They didn’t involve getting muddy in the freezing cold. They didn’t...

To him, the pain was a bully, and what did you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule....

It’s lies. It’s all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there.

Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was...

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.

Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder–which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.

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.

The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until...

A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish or the woman

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,...

. . . and what are you exactly, my friend? Their subordinate? Their employee? Or, I would suggest, their equal? That’s what young Karl would certainly have said, and probably still does. Unless he’s no...

A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,” Carrot drew himself up proudly, “because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?”The Librarian gave him the kind...

Los historiadores han observado que es en las épocas de abundancia cuando se siente el deseo de ir a la guerra. En tiempos de hambruna, la gente está demasiado ocupada intentando encontrar algo que comer....

Upstairs, in what had been until then the cash office, Young Sam slept peacefully in a makeshift bed. One day, Vimes hoped, he would be able to tell him that on one special night he’d...

We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner,” he said. There was a general groan. “And it was rat.” He raised his voice against the complaining. “You can’t use anything...

It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history.

Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where’s your coffee? You’ve got coffee, haven’t you? C’mon, everyone’s got coffee! Spill the beans!

It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and...

It hardly ever works if they don’t know you’ve done it.

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

An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)

Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you’re told and didn’t try to understand things.

How do you get all those coins?” asked Mort.IN PAIRS.

Cheese runners shouted at it, tried to grab it, and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onward, reaching the bottom just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as...

Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.””That’s what my grandmother used to say,” said Brutha automatically.”Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable...

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

You Say To People ‘Throw Off Your Chains’ And They Make New Chains For Themselves?

Humanity’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

I would like you to teach [the orcs] civilised behaviour,” said Ladyship coldly.He appeared to consider this. “Yes of course, I think that would be quite possible,” he said. “And who would you send to...

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

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was...

If you have a purpose in life, you can feel six inches tall.

She sniffed, and smiled a bit, but not too much because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesn’t understand you it’s someone who understands perfectly, before you’ve had a chance to have...

Walking purposefully, in the knowledge that no one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged, he set off across the wood...

The only thing more dangerous then a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window...

Cats do not hunt seals. They would hunt them if they knew what seals and where to find them. But they do not know, so it’s okay.

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It’s what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it’s...