Talk:Terry Pratchett

Quote File

I'd like to point peoples attention to the Pratchett Quote File for whatever reason. Quoth 13:43, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Reorganizing this?

Some of the books have so many quotes, I'd like to split this up into several pages (while adding more quotes), any objections to that?

I haven't been one of those who have worked heavily on this page, but I actually tend to prefer having related quotes all on one page, when possible, rather than having them spread out over several. A couple of these sections might be a bit long, but I'd still like to see them remain all in one place. ~ Achilles 19:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Would you still like it if there was a *long* list of quotes for each of these books? And some books are still missing, and it doesn't seem like he's going to stop writing new ones any time soon.

I've seen that for Shakespeare the pages are split up.... I like that better. Any more opinions? Anke 17:46, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to split this out into a section "The Discworld Novels" within a week, barring objections. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I will attempt to do a lot of work on the Pratchett pages today, and will probably move the remaining Discworld titles here over to the Discworld novels page sometime in the next few hours for consistency of the division that was made by MosheZadka. ~ Kalki 00:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Terry Pratchett.

• Brave men make good soldiers, but cowards make better strategists.
  • From Eric see Discworld

• Librarians rule, Ook!

• The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so.

• Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
• Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

• 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.

• "She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied quietly. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away the grief; that is what they are for'" -> is from I shall wear midnight

• Silverfish looked down. "Oh. Are you a dwarf?" Cuddy gave him a blank stare. "Are you a giant?" He said. "Me? Of course not!" "Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes."

   "Right!"
   "Right!"

--> is from Moving Pictures

• "You can get there!"

   "I can get there!"
   "You're a natural at counting to two!"
   "I'm a nat'ral at coutnting to two!"
   "If you can count to two, you can count to anything!"
   "If I can count to two, I can count to anything!"
   "And then the world is your mollusc!"
   "My mollusc! What's a mollusc?"

--> is from Men At Arms

"Discworld" Series - unsourced

• Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

• Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

• And the new day was a great big fish.

• It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.

• 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. Would you like the rest of the story? 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 color of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.'

—> This is Tiffany Aching in A Hat Full of Sky.

• [Y]ou might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

—> This is from Jingo.

• Silverfish looked down. "Oh. Are you a dwarf?" Cuddy gave him a blank stare. "Are you a giant?" He said. "Me? Of course not!" "Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes."
  "Right!"
  "Right!"

—> This is from Men at Arms.

• "You can get there!"
  "I can get there!"
  "You're a natural at counting to two!"
  "I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!"
  "If you can count to two, you can count to anything!"
  "If I can count to two, I can count to anything!"
  "And then the world is your mollusc!"
  "My mollusc! What's a mollusc?"

—> Also from Men at Arms; dialogue between Cuddy and Detritus.

• "You try to make plans for people, and the people make other plans"

• "She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied quietly. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away the grief; that is what they are for'"

• "These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what we are."

• "There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do."

• "Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all."

Unsourced quote about satire

This quote is often attributed to Terry, but without a source.

Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it‘s not satire, it’s bullying.

It seemed useful to have a talk page section here so we can try and nail down where it might have come from. JesseW (talk) 03:18, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Previous analysis here: https://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/9y9b7d/source_needed_satire_is_meant_to_ridicule_power/ and https://louderyay.blogspot.com/2018/02/can-anyone-source-this-quote.html

FOUND THE SOURCE! It is explained here, by the actual author: http://vrabia.tumblr.com/post/180186839716/hello-friends-let-me-take-you-on-a-journey-a And this is the original source: http://vrabia.tumblr.com/post/138157340406/bogleech-exeggcute-satire-is-im-going-to .

The Quote also very much reads like it was taken from this article from 2015 about satire and Charlie Hebdo: http://socialistreview.org.uk/399/satire-should-spear-powerful

Instances

• https://twitter.com/drshannak/status/706549282485071872?lang=en March 6, 2016
• https://espanolbot2.tumblr.com/post/169686187896/satire-is-meant-to-ridicule-power-if-you-are January 14, 2018
• https://www.delta.tudelft.nl/article/letter-free-speech May 18, 2018

Science fiction?

One editor keeps on reverting the category Science fiction authors. In my opinion we should respect Wikipedia's categorizing.--Risto hot sir (talk) 22:21, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

Cats

All the sources mentioned for "In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this." in #1.1 General sources are secondary. Entering ancient, times, worship, worshiped, worshipped, god and gods, as well as Egypt in the search box of The unadulterated cat don't lead to the quote. Nor does entering Worship, worshiped or cats in the search box of Pyramids. The quote's non-appearance there and elsewhere was noted in reddit 2 years ago. Is there a primary source for its use by Pratchett? Mcljlm (talk) 17:23, 2 April 2022 (UTC)