Terry Pratchett

Sourcery

"'And what would humans be without love?'
RARE, said Death."
- Ipslore and Death

"NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE. SUCH TINKERING WITH DESTINY COULD MEAN THE DOWNFALL OF THE WORLD. THERE MUST BE A CHANCE, HOWEVER SMALL. THE LAWYERS OF FATE DEMAND A LOOPHOLE IN EVERY PROPHECY."
- guess who

" 'I meant,' said Ipslore, bitterly, 'what is there in this world that makes living worth while?'
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE."

" YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.
'That's what being alive is all about.'"
- Death and Ipslore

"Here and there a page rustled. From distant shelves came the ominous creak of a spine. After its initial panic the Library was now as alert and jittery as a long-tailed cat in a rocking-chair factory."

" Against one shadowy wall was a wardrobe. It wasn't one of your modern wardrobes, fit only for nervous adulterers to jump into when the husband returned home early, but an ancient oak affair, dark as night, in whose dusty depths coat-hangers lurked and bred; herds of flaking shoes roamed its floor. It was quite possible that it was a secret doorway to fabulous worlds, but no-one had ever tried to find out because of the distressing smell of mothballs."

"The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it."

"Eighths-levels were above magic, as a rule, spending most of their time in contemplation - normally of the next menu - and, of course, avoiding the attentions of ambitious wizards of the seventh-level."

"The octarines around its crown blazed in all eight colours of the spectrum, creating the kind of effects in the foggy alley that it would take a very clever special effects director and a whole battery of star filters to achieve by any non-magical means."
- the Archchancellor's hat

" 'Have you ever been bitten by a viper?'
'No.'
'In that case you'll understand exactly what it felt like.'
'Hmmm?'
'It wasn't like a snake bite at all.' "
- Carding and Spelter

"The people of Ankh are of a practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician's edict forbidding all street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn't administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower."

"It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting."
- Rincewind passes out

"It was fat, golden-brown and beautifully glazed. Just by looking at it Ardrothy knew it was packed edge to edge with prime lean pork, with none of those spacious areas of good fresh air under the lid that represented his own profit margin. It was the kind of pie piglets hope to be when they grew up."

"Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidney's, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed."

"Well, it was big, and it was impressive, and the architect had used every trick in the book to make it look even bigger and even more impressive than it was, and to impress upon everyone looking at it that they, on the other hand, were very small and ordinary and didn't have as many domes."
- a temple in Al Khali

"Adaption is a wonderful thing, and most Morporkians would be hard put to smell a burning feather mattress at five feet."

"No-one had tried to sell him anything for several minutes. In Al Khali, that probably meant you were dead."

" 'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.
Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.
'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arse-kicking contest with a porcupine.'"
- Conina and Rincewind

"The layout of the Library of Unseen University was a topographical nightmare, the sheer presence of so much stored magic twisting dimensions and gravity into the kind of spaghetti that would make M.C.Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways."

"Life can be very difficult for a little sub-atomic particle in a great big universe."

"He had spent years in search of boredom, but had never achieved it. Just when he thought he had it in his grasp his life would suddenly become full of near-terminal interest. The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form. There would be no end to the things he wouldn't do."
- Rincewind

" 'If we get a chance,' whispered Rincewind to Nijel, 'we run, right ?'
'Where to?'
'From,' said Rincewind, 'the important word is from.'"

" Rincewind was used to the dressy ways of wizards, but this one was really impressive, his robe so padded and crenellated and buttressed in fantastic folds and creases that it had probably been designed by an architect. The matching hat looked like a wedding cake that had collided intimately with a Christmas tree."

" Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it."

" If there are words to describe what happened to the wizard next then they're imprisoned inside a wild thesaurus in the Unseen University Library. Perhaps it's best left to the imagination, except that anyone able to imagine the kind of shape that Rincewind saw writhing painfully for a few seconds before it mercifully vanished must be a candidate for the famous white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves."

" 'I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!' he hissed. 'I'm afraid of grounds!'
'You mean heights,' said Conina. 'And stop being silly.'
'I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!' "
- Rincewind

" The area around the tower of Al Khali, under the relentless magical bombardment, was already drifting beyond that reality horizon where time, space and matter lose their separate identities and start wearing one another's clothes. 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 felt Paisley. It smelled like a total eclipse of the moon. Of course, nearer to the tower it got really weird."

"It was a Fullomyth, an invaluable aid for all whose business is with the arcane and hermetic. It contained lists of things that didn't exist and, in a very significant way, weren't important. Some of its pages could only be read after midnight, or by strange and improbable illuminations. There were descriptions of underground constellations and wines as yet unfermented. For the really up-to-the-epoch occultist, who could afford the version bound in spider skin, there was even an insert showing the London Underground with the three stations they never dare show on the public maps."