Date: Tue, 14 Sep 93 06:00:05 -0400
From: jgm (Jonathan Monsarrat)
Message-Id: <9309141000.AA01776@tahoe.cs.brown.edu>
To: jgm@cs.brown.edu
Subject: Yet another Quotation

From: leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart)
Subject: The Pratchett Quote File -- Recent Additions
Followup-To: alt.fan.pratchett
Nntp-Posting-Host: cygnus.cp.tn.tudelft.nl
Reply-To: leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl
Organization: Delft University of Technology
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 11:28:45 GMT

Here are a few dozen more Terry Pratchett Quotes. The entire PQF file
has been accordingly updated (to v1.5) and is still available by ftp
>from the Pratchett Archives (ftp.cp.tn.tudelft.nl).

Apart from the 45 or so new quotes I have also removed a few dud
quotes, fixed a couple of typo's and mistakes, and added a few
clarifying 'subtitles' here and there (thanks to Nathan Torkington and
Phil Richards for suggesting that to me).

Just in case you missed my post last week, I'll also repeat part of the
introductory blurb here:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The PQF is a collection of one-liners, catchphrases, general quotes, pieces
of dialogue, and running gags, all culled from Terry Pratchett's novels and
other writings.

Most of the quotes should be funny in their own right, but some of them may
not make much sense if you have not read the book or are not familiar with
the Discworld universe.

If there are any questions, problems, or comments, please contact Leo
Breebaart at leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl. New Terry Pratchett quotes are also
welcome at that address.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's
the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city
with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who
prefer daffodils and no wonder.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)


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

A number of religions in Ank-Morpork still practised 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!)
		

The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of
the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in
their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they
don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot
missionaries on sight.
	-- (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)


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.
	-- Discworld politics explained 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
		

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.
	-- Unseen University politics at work 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Eric)


'I HOPE WE ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANY OF THIS "FOUL FIEND" BUSINESS AGAIN.'
	-- DEATH gets summoned by the college council 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Eric)


There had been some desultory talk about putting up a statue to Rincewind
but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in these sensitive issues,
this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the Roll of Honour, and
finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed.
	-- Unseen University politics at work 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Eric)
		

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed
record for the nonchalant walk.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


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)


- 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?"
	-- Death consults a job broker 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Mort)


'Students made it long ago,' said Rincewind. Handy way in and out after
lights out.'
'Ah,' said Twoflower, 'I *understand*. Over the wall and out to
brightly-lit tavernas to drink and sing and recite poetry, yes?'
'Nearly right except for the singings and the poetry, yes,' said Rincewind.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy,
according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you
can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap
between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to
the heir *instantaneously*.  Presumeably, he said, there must be some
elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job,
but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an
anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to
send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to
modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the
bar closed.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

		
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
	-- Death addresses his new apprentice 
	   (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.
	-- Princess Keli in trouble 
	   (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)
		

- "Sodomy non sapiens", said Albert under his breath.
- "What does that mean?"
- "Means I'm buggered if I know."
	-- Mort and Albert are facing a problem 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Mort)


Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much -- in
fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom
included any clothes at all -- but the vision in front of him really did
take his breath away.
	-- Princess Keli prepares for her coronation 
	   (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.
	-- Cutwell tries to reason with the Duke of Sto Helit
	   (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
		

"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 Apocralyse encounter
	   unexpected difficulties
	   (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)


"There is nothing that can be in our way, for this is Jekub, that
Laughs at Barriers, and says brrm-brrm.
	-- From the Book Of Nome, Jekub, Chap. 3, v. V 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Diggers)


A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally
established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon
or three normal sized billiard balls.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)
		

- "What is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?"
- "Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper."
	-- Cohen the Barbarian in conversation with Discworld nomads
	   (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)
		  
		  
The old shaman said carefully, 'You didn't just see two men go through
upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did
you?' The boy looked at him levelly. 'Certainly not,' he said.	The
old man heaved a sigh of relief. 'Thank goodness for that,' he said.
'Neither did I.'
	-- Rincewind and Twoflower take up broomstick flying
	   (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds
of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and
clear. 'You said you could fly one of these things!'  'No I didn't; I just
said *you* couldn't!'
	-- Rincewind and Twoflower attempt broomstick flying
	   (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


"Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead."
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


The druid stiffened. '*Nice?*' he said. 'A triumph of the silicon chunk, a
miracle of modern masonic technology -- *nice*?	 'Oh, yes,' said Twoflower,
to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


'Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!'	
'No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I --' 
The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided 
to give logic a miss.
	-- Cohen the Barbarian interrogates Rincewind
	   (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired
Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty
manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental
Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly
dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.  All right,
maybe the boots were leather. But not black.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


- 'Pull me up, then,' he hinted.
- 'I think that might be sort of difficult,' grunted Twoflower. 'I don't
  actually think I can do it, in fact.'
- 'What are you holding on to, then?'
- 'You.'
- 'I mean besides me.'
- 'What do you mean, besides you?' said Twoflower.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


- 'If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark
  tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might
  not even still be there, you can forget it,' said Rincewind sharply.
- 'There is an alternative, then.'
- 'Out with it, man.'
- 'You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones 
  which certainly are there,' said Twoflower.
Dead silence from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, 'That
was sarcasm.'
	-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)


Any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough
to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the
demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to
death with a rattlesnake.
	-- Why summoning demons is a Bad Idea 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Eric)
		

'You mean mysterious ancient races of Amazonian princesses who subject all
male prisoners to strange and exhausting progenitative rites?' said Eric,
his glasses beginning to fog.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, Eric)
		

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


There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren
mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and
put themselves on the appropriate side.
	-- The Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated 
	   Brethren see the light
	   (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)


All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is
more or less optional.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
		

All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and
thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink,
to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the
knee.
	-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
		

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across
the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from
behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone
else."
	-- Carrot travels to Ankh-Morpork 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
	

He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter
[footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force].
	-- Nobby takes Carrot for a drink in The Mended Drum
	   (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)


It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military
manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the
Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
	-- The City Watch takes action 
	   (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
		

'Oook?'


It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad
enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.
	-- Captain Vimes ponders his problems 
	   (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!)
		

-- 
Leo Breebaart  (leo @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl)

>From u2nmh@csc.liv.ac.uk Mon Apr 19 19:08:33 1993