Glen > Glen's Quotes

“There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“I believe I have the right to think and say the wrong things. I believe your remedy for that should be to argue with me or to ignore me, and that I should have the same remedy for the wrong things that I believe you think.”
― Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

“[A]s someone who has seen living forms changed and twisted beyond recognition...' She trailed off awkwardly.

'Yeah?'

'I hate to say it, but this dress is the worst crime against nature I have ever seen in my life.'

Felicity cringed a little. The dress lay on the bed, malignant and resentful, like an angry jellyfish. It was technically an evening grown, in the same way that dirt is technically edible.”
― Daniel O'Malley, Stiletto

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”
― Pearl S. Buck

“I noticed that the [drawing] teacher didn't tell people much... Instead, he tried to inspire us to experiment with new approaches. I thought of how we teach physics: We have so many techniques - so many mathematical methods - that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything. If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can't say, "Your lines are too heavy." because *some* artist has figured out a way of making great pictures using heavy lines. The teacher doesn't want to push you in some particular direction. So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“I should mention here that librarians tell me never to tell this story, and especially never to paint myself as a feral child who was raised in libraries by patient librarians; the tell me they are worried that people will misinterpret my story and use it as an excuse to use their libraries as free day care for their children.”
― Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction

“No," Cath said, "Seriously. Look at you. You’ve got your shit together, you’re not scared of anything. I’m scared of everything. And I’m crazy. Like maybe you think I’m a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, I’m a complete disaster.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“It’s messed up that the most rational explanation for what does go on in this ship is that a television show intrudes on our reality and warps it. But that’s not the worst thing about it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Finn said. “If that’s not the worst thing, what is?”
“That as far as I can tell,” Jenkins said, “it’s not actually a very good show.”
― John Scalzi

“Priests!" said Mr. Shoe. "They're all the same. Always telling you that you're going to live again after you're dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“A real alchemical laboratory should be full of the kind of glassware that looked as if it were produced during the Guild of Glassblowers All-Comers Hiccuping Contest.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“Look, what I'm saying is, you're the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you're doing, okay? If the leader doesn't know what he's doing, no one else does, either."

"I only know what I'm doing when I'm dismantling traps," said Darktan.

"All right, think of the future as a great big trap," said Sardines. "With no cheese.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“There's no subtext, no social commentary," Malicia went on, still twiddling. "The most interesting thing that happens at all is when Doris the Duck loses a shoe - a *duck* losing a *shoe*, right? - and it turns up under the bed after they've spent the entire story looking for it. Do you call that narrative tension? Because I don't. If people are going to make up stupid stories about animals pretending to be human, at least there could be a bit of interesting violence-”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“[A] painfully loud sound, like an air horn being fed into a wood chipper, tore through the hallways, and Odette and the nurse and everyone else clapped their hands over their ears.”
― Daniel O'Malley, Stiletto

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“The only thing more alarming that what is in that cave will be your punishment if we somehow survive.”
― Brandon Mull, Fablehaven: The Complete Series Boxed Set

“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“Here's what I suggest," he said. "You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling *sorry*! Or guilty! We never *regret* anything! Do you know what it feels like saying, 'Hello food, can you talk?' That's not how a cat is supposed to behave!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

“The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you'd rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“You said there's been another murder?"

"At the Dwarf Bread Museum. Someone killed Mr. Hopkinson with his own bread!"

"Made him eat it?"

"Hit him with it, sir," said Carrot reproachfully. "Battle Bread, sir.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“This should be a pleasant little interview. All I have to do is put on my scary face."
"You have a scary face?" Ingrid sounded skeptical.
"Yes," said Myfanwy indignantly. "I have a very scary face."
Ingrid surveyed her for a moment. "You may wish to take off the cardigan then, Rook Thomas," she advised tactfully. "The flowers on the pocket detract somewhat from your menace.”
― Daniel O'Malley, The Rook

“So she was well proportioned. So her hair was all glossy. So she looked as if her lips had never been the wrong side of a second doughnut in her life. What was any of that to me?”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Hollow Boy

“I believe there's nothing in hallucinations that has anything to do with anything external to the internal psychological state of the person who's got the hallucination.”
― Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“The thing about elves is they've got no... begins with m," Granny snapped her fingers irritably.

"Manners?"

"Hah! Right, but no"

"Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?"

"No. No. No. Means like... seein' the other person's point of view."

Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective and suspicion dawned. "Empathy?"

"Right. None at all.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor.”
― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

“The remainder of the opera passed without anyone dying, except where the score required them to do so at some length.”
― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade