Rincewind is one of those people who gets in the way of his own happiness. If it was raining kisses he'd be the only person with an umbrella.
(Terry Pratchett, CIX Pratchett Conference)

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and *I'm* me.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get *angry* when they lose a cow.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remainds perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Everywhere I've been in Manhattan the streets are called Walk and Don't Walk.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

One day I'll be dead and THEN you'll all be sorry.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I'm sure we can arrange an academic scholarship for Detritus. Troll cheerleaers would be nice: 'Two... four.... er.. many... lots'.
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I stroll along, talk, I sign books, people buy me drinks, I forget where my hotel is, I get lost and fall into some local body of water... done it hundreds of times.
Going to a convention is fun!
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

I've always thought the Patrician is a party animal. Can you imagine waking up next day and remembering all those witty things you said and did, and then realising that he was listening?
(Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad."
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in life?" very quickly lacked both.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

"Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum."
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh."
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

Carrot was two metres tall but he'd been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

"Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact."
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

The Patrician relaxed, in a way which only then drew gentle attention to the foregoing moment of tension.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

Being a werewolf meant having the dexterity and jaw power to instantly rip out a man's jugular. It was a trick of her father's that had always annoyed her mother, especially when he did it just before meals.
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

"It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with '?' on them."
The Unseen University Organ, as designed by B. S. Johnson
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

"It could be a torture chamber or a dungeon or a hideous pit or anything!"
"It's just a student's bedroom, sergeant."
"You see?"
(Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

Smoke was coming out of the stricken piano. The Librarian's hands were walking through the keys like Casanunda in a nunnery.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

They looked at one another in incomprehension, two minds driving opposite ways up a narrow street and waiting for the other man to reverse first.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The students were staring at her in the manner of those who have heard of the species 'female' but have never expected to get this close to one.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

The Patrician was a pragmatist. He never tried to fix things that worked. Things that didn't work, however, got broken.
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

"Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say."
(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overhelming majority of citizens.
[footnote: The overhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit]
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life. "Erm," he said, "excuse me..."
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."
The Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse encounter unexpected difficulties
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.
(Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment.
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

One day, if he could master GCSE maths and reliably pick up a soldering iron by the end that wasn't hot, he was going to be a Big Man in computers.
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked," said Johnny reproachfully.
"Doubtless it had a map," said the Captain.
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front.
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Wobbler thought that California was where good people went when they died.
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"Stuck? You're an alien," said Johnny. "Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact."
(Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain - the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

History, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"Eureka," he said.
"Going to have a bath then?"
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?"
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.
Death on symbolic last games
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"You're not one of us."
"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."
(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He was currently wondering vaguely who Moey and Chandon were.
Crowley listens to his favourite rock group
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He'd been particularly pleased with Manchester.
Crowley contemplating his achievements
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The only time Crowley had bought petrol was once in 1967, to get the free James Bond bullet-hole-in-the-windscreen transfers, which he rather fancied at the time.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

He wondered reflectively what would happen if you asked a nun where the Gents was. Probably the Pope sent you a sharp note or something.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Humans suffering from a conflict of signals aren't the best people to be holding guns, especially when they've just witnessed a natural childbirth, which definitely looked an un-American way of bringing new citizens into the world.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Of course he was all in favour of Armageddon in *general* terms.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"
Crowley the demon and Aziraphale the angel in conversation
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

On those occasions when the angel managed to get his mind into the twentieth century, it always gravitated to 1950.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

They drove back through the dawn, while the cassette player played J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor, vocals by F. Mercury.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Art thou a witch, *viva espana*?"
The Spanish Inquisition (Tadfield version) in action
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

English Burger Lords managed to take any American fast food virtues (the speed with which your food was delivered, for example) and carefully remove them; your food arrived after half an hour, at room temperature, and it was only because of the strip of warm lettuce between them that you could distinguish the burger from the bun. The Burger Lord pathfinder salesmen
had been shot 25 minutes after setting foot in France.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"?" he said.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Madame Tracy had even removed most of the Major Arcana from her Tarot card pack, because their appearance tended to upset people.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL."
"Yeah?"
"JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE."
"Ngk," said Crowley.
Crowley in conversation with his superiors
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.
The eight Bikers of the Apocalypse
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

R. P. Tyler was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call *dramatic*. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."
Armageddon delayed by technical difficulties
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

In the Beginning
It was a nice day.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

If you take the small view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it's given credit for, it does not have a large plastic snowman at the bottom.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?"
REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.
Death in conversation with a biker
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The lorry blocked the road. And the corrugated iron blocked the road. And a thirty-foot-high pile of fish blocked the road. It was one of the most effectively blocked roads the sergeant had ever seen.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Crowley was in Hell's bad books. Not that Hell has any other kind.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

It wasn't a dark and stormy night.
It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Many phenomena - wars, plagues, sudden audits - have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Sister Mary headed through the night-time hospital with the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness safely in her arms. She found a bassinet and laid him down in it. He gurgled. She gave him a tickle.
The antichrist is born
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Mr Young hadn't had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He'd never been much good at it to start with. He'd always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men - one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf - and it'll look up expectantly.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

A man threw himself through the window, a knife between his teeth, a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in one hand, a grenade in the other. "I glaim gis oteg in der gaing og der --" he paused. He tooke the knife out of his teeth and began again.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

"Surely you have considered terrorist activity?"
There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."
The BBC interviews a nuclear spokesperson
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

... walking like a man carrying a thermos flask of something that might cause, if he dropped it or even thought about dropping it, the sort of explosion that impels grey-beards to make statements like "And where this crater is now, once stood the city of Wah-Shing-Ton", in SF B-movies.
Crowley gets out the Holy Water
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

She'd stopped reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about romance and knitting and started reading the kind of women's magazine that talked about orgasms, but apart from making a mental note to have one if ever the occasion presented itself she dismissed them as only romance and knitting in a new form.
(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

The calender of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

"[...] a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting [...]"
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC.
The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

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

Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpock. Well technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders found, after a few days, that they didn't own their horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

It was true about the time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realized long ago that everything was steadily getting worse and, having a terrible little-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was.
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

"There's a door"
"Where does it go?"
"It stays where it is, I think."
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

"So we're surrounded by absolutely nothing. There's a word for it. It's what you get when there's nothing left and everything's been used up."
"Yes. I think it's called the bill."
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

"What're quantum mechanics?"
"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptiously looked very hard for one.
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

The sergeant put on the poker face which has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach.
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

"What shall I do?"
"Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother."
Rincewind and Eric at the Beginning of Time
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)

It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbours preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up on you.
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

Most alchemists were nervous, in any case; it came from not knowing what the crucible of bubbling stuff they were experimenting with was going to do next.
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

"Students?" barked the Archchancellor.
"Yes, Master. You know? They're the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we're a university? They come with the whole thing, like rats --"
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

"I'm a cat person, myself," she said, vaguely. A low-level voice said: "Yeah? Yeah? Wash in your own spit, do you?"
It's a dog's life
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

Azhural raised his staff. "It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork," he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes..."
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You're dead," he said. Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.
Death goes fishing
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"I wouldn't give it to a dog, and I *am* one."
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

"Well, 'scuse me. I was jus' tryin' to save the world."
(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands.
"It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."
(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean that the water's fresh and drinkable, and in all that time never asked themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.
(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.
(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant "idiot".
(Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic)

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, 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 Colour of Magic)

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.
(Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)

The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.
(Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)

There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.
(Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
"Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- " He stopped talking.
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
(Terry Pratchett, Mort)