Nate > Nate's Quotes

“Endings to be useful must be inconclusive.”
― Samuel R. Delaney

“I could hear you not saying anything! You’ve got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn’t dead!”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“The price for being the best is always... having to be the best.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don’t die can’t live. What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You’re right. I’m older. You’ve lived longer than me but I’m older than you. And better’n you. And, madam, that ain’t hard.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Then she wound up the clock. Witches didn’t have much use for clocks, but she kept it for the tick…well, mainly for the tick. It made a place seem lived in. It had belonged to her mother, who’d wound it up every day. It hadn’t come as a surprise to her when her mother died, firstly because Esme Weatherwax was a witch and witches have an insight into the future and secondly because she was already pretty experienced in medicine and knew the signs. So she’d had a chance to prepare herself, and hadn’t cried at all until the day afterward, when the clock stopped right in the middle of the funeral lunch. She’d dropped a tray of ham rolls and then had to go and sit by herself in the privy for a while, so that no one would see.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Greebo had spent an irritating two minutes in that box. Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“She's a queen. That's pretty high,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Almost as high as witches.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“So I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way. I learned.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Some people might say this is important.” “No. It’s just personal. Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“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

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

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

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

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

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

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

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“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

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“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