Ine Gundersveen > Ine's Quotes

“Some people are born to command. Some people achieve command. And others have command thrust upon them ...”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Knowledge equals power...
The string was important. After a while the Librarian stopped. He concentrated all his powers of librarianship.
Power equals energy...
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
Energy equals matter...
He swung into an avenue of shelving that was apparently a few feet long and walked along it briskly for half an hour.
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you're setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Thunder rolled . . It rolled a six.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“You're saying,' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That's oppression, that is. If I'm not under the heel of the oppressor, I don't know who is.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I mean, it's a good job we've got a last desperate million-to-one chance to rely on, or we'd really be in trouble!”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“But we don't do things like that!" said Vimes. "You can't go around arresting the Thieves' Guild. I mean, we'd be at it all day!”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.”
― James Crumley

“Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Ach, noo yer talkin’ oour language,” said Rob Anybody. “Not…quite,” said Tiffany.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

“How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are these gaps in speech where you just have to put a "fuck." I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, "And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers." How could you not, if you're a human being? Maybe they're not so admirable. Maybe they're robot zombies.”
― Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

“Finally, a bit of luck. Rat bastard,' I hissed down at Montmartre. 'Mangy dog of a scurvy goat.'
'That doesn’t even make sense,' Isabeau murmured.
'Feels good though. Try it.'
She narrowed her eyes at the top of Montmartre’s perfectly groomed hair. 'Balding donkey’s ass.'
'Nice.'
'Sniveling flea-bitten rabid monkey droppings.'
'Clearly, you’re a natural.”
― Alyxandra Harvey, Blood Feud

“Cause if you shoot a bullet someone dies. If you drop a bomb many die. You hit a woman, love dies. But if you say the F-word... nothing actually happens.”
― Richard Curtis

“She hit us,” the woman shrieked. That was the gist of it anyway. There were a lot of unladylike words that began with “F,” with various “C” words thrown in for leavening.
…
“Ben’s better,” I murmured. “He’s more creative when he swears.”
“He does it in that English accent, which is too cool.”
― Patricia Briggs, Frost Burned