Stephen > Stephen's Quotes

“He gazed out to sea for a moment, then added, “One should never mistake pattern … for meaning.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Desiderata was a kindly soul. Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful. She was not someone to use extreme language, but it was possible to be sure that when she deployed a mild term like ‘a bee in her bonnet’ she was using it to define someone whom she believed to be several miles over the madness horizon and accelerating.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“It was annoying. More than that, it was demeaning. Surely Desiderata and Mrs Gogol could have achieved something better than this. You derived status by the strength of your enemies.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Asking someone to repeat a phrase you’d not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No-one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Excuse me,’ said Granny, empowering the words with much the same undertones as are carried by words like ‘Charge!’ and ‘Kill!’, ‘Excuse me, but does this pointy hat I’m wearing mean anything to you?”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“When stupid people find themselves powerless, when they fume in their futility, when they’re beaten and they’ve got nothing but that yawning in the acid pit of their stomachs – well, to be honest, it’s like a prayer. And the stories . . . to ride on stories . . . to borrow the strength of them . . . the comfort of them . . . to be in the hidden centre of them . . . Can you understand that? The sheer pleasure of seeing the patterns repeat themselves?”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“It was a dark night, the kind of darkness which is not simply explainable by absence of moon or stars, but the darkness that appears to flow in from somewhere else – so thick and tangible that maybe you could snatch a handful of air and squeeze the night out of it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomized guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“But there was a price. No-one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared; not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. You left nothing but memories, you took nothing but experience.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“Hair so blond it was nearly white. And eyes like gimlets,”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“That was a long time ago. And, my lady, old I may be, and hag I may be, but stupid I ain’t. You’re no kind of goddess. I ain’t against gods and goddesses, in their place. But they’ve got to be the ones we make ourselves. Then we can take ’em to bits for the parts when we don’t need ’em any more, see? And elves far away in fairyland, well, maybe that’s something people need”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“to get ’emselves through the iron times. But I ain’t having elves here. You make us want what we can’t have and what you give us is worth nothing and what you take is everything and all there is left for us is the cold hillside, and emptiness, and the laughter of the elves.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So bugger off.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“But I hated her and hated her and now she’s dead!”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“That’s the way of it,’ she said. ‘It’s not what you’ve got that matters, it’s how you’ve got it. Well, we’re just about ready, then.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“And it all meant this: that 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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Fear is 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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Besides, the Ephebian garrison commander had declared somewhat nervously that slavery would henceforth be abolished, which infuriated the slaves. What would be the point of saving up to become free if you couldn’t own slaves afterwards? Besides, how’d they eat?”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum. When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“You had to laugh. Otherwise you’d go mad.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“I was told it was the finest thing to die for a god,’ he mumbled. ‘Vorbis said that. And he was … stupid. You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“From everyone’s. You will probably defeat us. But not all of us. And then what will you do? Leave a garrison? For ever? And eventually a new generation will retaliate. Why you did this won’t mean anything to them. You’ll be the oppressors. They’ll fight. They might even win. And there’ll be another war. And one day people will say: why didn’t they sort it all out, back then? On the beach. Before it all started. Before all those people died. Now we have that chance. Aren’t we lucky?”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Do you really think so? I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?’ Didactylos shrugged. ‘Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“He had been just another servant in the maze of the university, but now he was a friend of Nutt, and Nutt was important. He was also wrong. He had no place in the world, but he was in it, and the world was becoming aware of him soon enough. The Librarian knew all about this sort of thing. There had been no space in the fabric of reality marked ‘simian librarian’ until he’d been dropped into one, and the ripples had made his life a very strange one.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“Don’t be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. Try intelligence. It will surely see you through.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals