"The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal."
— Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon)

" You're probably wondering why there's never any good news.
I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral.
There's never any good news because they know you.
I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance.
No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 0: Tales of Human Waste)

"If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?"
— Warren Ellis

"There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long -- people.

No matter how big the idea is they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened.

It's people that kill every revolution."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 1: Back on the Street)

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard)

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it."
— Terry Pratchett

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."
— Terry Pratchett (Jingo)

"Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."
— Terry Pratchett (Eric)

"No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?"
— Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)

"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

"I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel."
— Terry Pratchett

"Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"

Mort thought for a moment.

"No," he said eventually, "what?"

There was silence.

Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right."
— 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)

"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.
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."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

"The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues."
— Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)

"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)

"He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower."
— Terry Pratchett (Mort)

"We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything."
— Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)

"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 treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide."
— Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

"She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."
— Terry Pratchett (Equal Rites)

"It's no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way"
— Terry Pratchett

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

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

"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,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version 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)

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. "
— Terry Pratchett (The Truth)

"'I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'
'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?'"
— Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)

"A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one."
— Richard K. Morgan (Broken Angels)

""War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off?"
- Quellcrist Falconer"
— Richard K. Morgan

"Listen up -- there's no war that will end all wars."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse."
— Thomas Stephen Szasz

"The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
— Douglas Adams

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer"
— Douglas Adams

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off."
— Stephen King (Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay)

"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)

"Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man ... living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money."
— George Carlin

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
— George Carlin

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it"
— George Carlin

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why?
Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?
Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."
— George Carlin

"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.'"
— George Carlin

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
— George Carlin

"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section? " She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose."
— George Carlin

"I'm completely in favor of the
separation of Church and State.
... These two institutions screw us up enough
on their own, so both of them together is
certain death."
— George Carlin

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."
— George Carlin

"People, generally, suck."
— Christopher Moore

"If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name."
— Christopher Moore (Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal)

"Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates."
— Christopher Moore (A Dirty Job)

"There's some heinous fuckery goin' on mon."
— Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings)

"Blessed are the dumbfucks."
— Christopher Moore (Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal)