Quotes from Terry Pratchett Books
Once upon a time, there was Discworld. There still is an adequate supply.
--First two sentences of The Science of Discworld
--The Science of Discworld, page 9
To a scientist, a thought experiment is an argument that you can run through in your head, after which you understand what's going on so well that there's no need to do a real experiment, which is of course a great saving in time and money and prevents you from getting embarrasslingly inconvenient results.
--The Science of Discworld, page 11
With the senior wizards, though, he'd need to explain the meaning of every word. In some cases this would mean words like "the" and "and".
--Ponder Stibbons, head of research at the Unseen University, while thinking of how to explain splitting the thaum
--The Science of Discworld, page 17
Given the choice between our blowing up the world and the enemy blowing up the world, it was obvious what to do.
--description of the resolution of the worries about trying nuclear fission with uranium-235
--The Science of Discworld, page 23
"Yes, sir," Ponder disagreed.
--The Science of Discworld, page 107
The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheeedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap betwee, kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles - kingons, or possibly gueons - that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, republicon. His ambiious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the carful tortuing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expoinded because, at that point, the bar closed.
--Faster than light communications by monarchy
--Mort, pg 16
... transferred to his ears by a convenient system of air compression, as nature intended. Nature had gone to a lot of trouble for six words with a slightly petulant tone to them.
--description of the speach of Ysabell, Death's daughter, after the character had been listening to Death
--Mort, pg 24
For more quotes from Mort, see also pg 72-3, with a description of the listening monks.
Old shoes always turn up in the bottom of every wardrobe. If a mermaid had a wardrobe, old shoes would turn up in the bottom of it.
--Description of Death's wardrobe
--Soul Music, pg 285
"One out of three ain't bad!"
"Yes it is, it's only thirty-three per--"
"Shut up!"
--Discussion of why to play Music With Rocks In
--Soul Music, pg 335
More quotes from Soul Music can be found on pages 106-7 and 230-1.
"... Theft of jewelry from-"
"Yes! Yes! We did it!" shouted a voice from the building.
"I think that you ought to be able to tell me what you stole," said Carrot
"Er... rings? Gold rings?"
"Ooo, you're so close," said Carrot encouragingly.
"A crown, was it? Maybe a coronet?"
Carrot leaned down to the constable. "Says here a tiara, Reg, can we let-?" He stood up. "We're prepared to accept 'coronet.' Well done!"
--Carrot to a group of theives who had attempted to take Corporal Angua hostage. Given that she is a werewolf, they were trying to get arrested and away as soon as possible.
--Jingo, page 39-40
"Well, that's a nice start to the day," said Carrot.
"Thank you, yes, I wasn't hurt," said Angua."
"It makes it all seem worthwhile, somehow."
"Just my hair messed up and another shirt ruined."
"Well done."
"Sometimes i might supsect that you don't listen to anything I say," said Angua.
"Glad to hear it," said Carrot.
--Captain Carrot to Corporal Angua as they are leaving the robbery where the robbers unknowingly took her, a werewolf, hostage, to their own misfortune
--Jingo, page 42-3
"The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn't lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes.
--Jingo, pg 387
"Vimes, you have gone insane. You can't arrest the commander of an army."
"Actually, Mr. Vimes, I think we could. And the army, too. I mean, I don't see why we can't. We could charge them with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir. I mean, that's what warfare is."
--Lord Rust and Carrot, on whether or not Vimes can arrest the Klatchian and Ankh-Morporkian armies
--Jingo, pg 387
"Auditors"
"What?"
"Here to take inventory."
"Where's your auth--"
"Oh? Oh? He says where's my authority? Oh? Keeps me hanging around here while his cronies can nip out the back to bring the stuff back out of hock, eh?"
--Nobby to the head of the Ankh-Morpork city armory, while trying to get in
--Men at Arms, pg 245
Despite his deep distrust of magic, he quite liked the wizards. They didn't cause trouble. At least, they didn't cause his kind of trouble. True, occasionally they fractured the time/space continuum or took the canoe of reality too close to the white waters of chaos, but they never broke the actual law.
--Vimes, on the wizards
--Men at Arms, pg 319