Lauryn > Lauryn's Quotes

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“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

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
― 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

“All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

I have a duty!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“The thing about witchcraft," said Mistress Weatherwax, "is that it's not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin' out how you passed it. It's a bit like life in that respect”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“[Y]ou weren't born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn't come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and always will be high... People say you don't find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you've found it, even if at the time you didn't know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“And that was fine, except that she didn't have any old friends anymore. Kids back home who'd been friendly were now...respectful, because of the hat. There was a kind of wall, as if she'd grown up and they hadn't. What could they talk about? She'd been to places they couldn't even imagine. Most of them hadn't even been to Twoshirts, which was only half a day away. And this didn't worry them at all. They were going to do the jobs their fathers did, or raise children like their mothers did. And that was fine, Tiffany added hurriedly to herself. But they hadn't decided. It was just happening to them, and they didn't notice.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“Tiffany got up early and lit the fires. When her mother came down, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, very hard.

“Er…aren’t you supposed to do that sort of thing by magic, dear?” said her mother, who’d never really got the hang of what witchcraft was all about.

“No, Mum, I’m supposed not to,” said Tiffany, still scrubbing.

“But can’t you just wave your hand and make all the dirt fly away, then?”

“The trouble is getting the magic to understand what dirt is,” said Tiffany, scrubbing hard at a stain. “I heard of a witch over in Escrow who got it wrong and ended up losing the entire floor and her sandals and nearly a toe.”

Mrs. Aching backed away. “I thought you just had to wave your hands about,” she mumbled nervously.

“That works,” said Tiffany, “but only if you wave them about on the floor with a scrubbing brush.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“You made a choice, you get what you choose.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

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

“She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“Oh, I feel very angry a lot of the time," said Tiffany, "but I just put it away somewhere until I can do something useful with it.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“People aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“When I am old I shall wear midnight.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“They know that people need witches; they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is
wrong and when wrong is right. The world needs the people who work around the edges. They need the people who can deal with the little bumps and inconveniences. And little problems. After all, we are almost all human. Almost all of the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“It felt like being a child again, though it was not. Being a child is like nothing. It's only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion.”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...”
― China Miéville, Embassytown

“People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.”
― China Miéville, Railsea