Sheila > Sheila's Quotes

“Sometimes its necessary to embrace the magic, to find out what's real in life, and in one's own heart.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Oh, please. Everyone in this town always says that, like you have to be born here to understand things. I understand plenty. You're only as weird as you want to be.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Was it really that simple? Choosing a life? ...
Maybe you don't fall in love. Maybe you jump.
Maybe, just maybe, it's all a choice.
(Josh Matteson)”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.”
― Terry Pratchett, Eric

“Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.”
― Terry Pratchett, Eric

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thud!

“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“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, Moving Pictures

“Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. [...]

I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.”
― Terry Pratchett

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight