# Amazing bits of Pratchett **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 11, 2013, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910 "2013-01-11T22:36:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2013, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/1 "2013-01-11T22:36:43Z")
I was re-reading _I Shall Wear Midnight_, and a phrase just hit me particularly hard. Tiffany has been told that she must return an abused girl to her home: > [@](#): > > What was it that Granny Weatherwax had said once? ‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.’ And right now it would happen if you thought there was a thing called a father, and a thing called a mother, and a thing called a daughter, and a thing called a cottage, and told yourself that if you put them all together you had a thing called a happy family. For some reason, that one just brought tears to my eyes. Short quotes only please. We don’t wish to violate copyright. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/2 "2013-01-12T00:46:52Z")
There are so, so many. One that sticks out for me is from _“Small Gods”_ “There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/3 "2013-01-12T00:54:32Z")
One I like from _Men At Arms_: > [@](#): > > ``` > If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. > > So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word. > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/4 "2013-01-12T01:00:45Z")
Ok, I have to write myself a note to go pick it up tomorrow. I keep noticing this gap in my Pratchett, and I keep failing to fill it. From the movie _Hogfather_, since I am lacking the book; Death: Humans need fantasy to _be_ human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies. Susan: So we can believe the big ones? Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing. Susan: They’re not the same at all. Death: 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, you try to 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. Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point? Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/5 "2013-01-12T01:12:33Z")
Oh, goodness. There are too many. Pratchett has too much empathy for humanity and too strong a grasp of the language to pick out specifics more than ten minutes after I read one of his works. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/6 "2013-01-12T01:22:38Z")
Oh. I’m now not thinking about a specific quote, but Night Watch is my favourite Pratchett novel. When Vimes realizes who he is in the story, and goes ahead anyway. I have rarely read as powerful a story about courage as that. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/7 "2013-01-12T01:44:58Z")
“Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think.” Small Gods “It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.” Jingo ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/8 "2013-01-12T02:39:52Z")
Some more: [QUOTE=The Colour of Magic] At the back of his mind a bad feeling began to grow. He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep, moreover, that could afford to employ wolves. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Mort] Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass. A library is just a genteel black hole that can read. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Mort] The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can’t have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between 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 queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Eric] Interestingly enough, 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 think they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Witches Abroad] The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Witches Abroad] Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Small Gods] Fear is a strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Lords and Ladies] Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Carpe Jugulum] “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black-and-white issue. There are so many shades of gray.” “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” “It’s a lot more complicated than that-” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes-” “But they starts with thinking about people as things…” [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/9 "2013-01-12T02:42:28Z")
From _The Wee Free Men_: “Open your eyes. Then open your eyes again.” Great advice, especially for an author. ---
**Author:** ![Skara\_Brae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Skara\_Brae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skara_Brae)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/10 "2013-01-12T02:48:40Z")
“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.” -from _Reaper_ _Man_ ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/11 "2013-01-12T02:49:29Z")
From _Thud!_: What kind of human creates his own policeman? One who fears the dark. And so he should, said the entity, with satisfaction. Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in. That, and anything involving Feegles. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/12 "2013-01-12T03:03:07Z")
“Now … if you trust in yourself …” “Yes?” “… and believe in your dreams …” “Yes?” “… and follow your star…” “Yes?” “… you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” As for the Nac Mac Feegles… “An’ things ha’ come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off’f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!” ---
**Author:** ![Beastly\_Rotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Beastly\_Rotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beastly_Rotter)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/13 "2013-01-12T04:02:43Z")
"We used tae live in the Quin’s country, ye ken, but we rebelled against her evil rule - " “And we did that, an’ then she threw us out on account o’ bein’ drunk an’ stealin’ an fightin’ a’ the time” ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/14 "2013-01-12T04:30:55Z")
[QUOTE=Der Trihs] Originally Posted by Lords and Ladies Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. [/quote] You left off the paragraphs that really MAKE that quote… > [@](#): > > The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. > No one ever said elves are nice. > Elves are bad. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/15 "2013-01-12T05:43:29Z")
“THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST ME.” Can’t remember where I saw it first. “SQUEAK” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/16 "2013-01-12T05:47:07Z")
From _The Art of Discworld:_ “Death turned up in the Discworld books in order to make a joke work. That was in _The Colour of Magic._ Suddenly he was and, twenty-one years later, still is one of the most popular characters in the series. People ask me to forge his signature in books. Sometimes I get nice letters from people who know they’re due to meet him soon, and hope I’ve got him right. Those are the kind of letters that cause me to stare at the wall for some time . . .” ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/17 "2013-01-12T06:02:09Z")
This bit, from _Thief of Time_, has been on my Facebook profile for a while: “Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called ‘How to be an Interesting Person’ and then see whether there were any courses available.” ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/18 "2013-01-12T06:20:44Z")
“Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.” ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/19 "2013-01-12T07:22:56Z")
> [@ENugent](#): > > “Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.” That’s one of my favorites, too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2013, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910/20 "2013-01-12T13:17:49Z")
I prefer … [QUOTE=Mort] “THERE’S NO JUSTICE, said Mort. JUST US.” [/QUOTE] also … > [@](#): > > “Death: “THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT.” > Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazing-bits-of-pratchett/646910.md?page=2)