Discworld

"It occurred to him, not for the first time, that far too many people put their trust in iron and steel when gold made some of the best possible weapons. (p. 261)"

"C. M. O. T. Dibbler liked to be up at first light, in case there was an opportunity to sell a worm to the early bird. (p. 256)"

"It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or remember where they live. (p. 252)"

""Oh, my god," she said."

"Mr. Stibbons, I know you to be a man who seeks to understand the universe. Here's an important rule: never give a monkey the key to the banana plantation. (p. 218)"

""The money's not important? You keep on saying that! What kind of musician are you? (p. 212)"

"There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It's like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It's seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there's nothing much left but a faint smell. (p. 209)"

"I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf,"

"She'd save lives. The good could be spared, and the bad could die young. It would all balance up, too. She'd show him. As for responsibility, well...humans always made changes. That was what being human was all about. (p. 179)"

""Famous I don't know about," said Glod. "It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, ‘Thanks, that was great, here is some money, same time tomorrow, okay?'" (pp. 150-151)"

"Susan stared at herself critically."

""You've never been musical, Dean," said Ridcully. "It's one of your good points." (p. 128)"

"In his experience, anything really important never got written down, because by then people were too busy shouting. (p. 127)"

"The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain. (pp. 125-126)"

"The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that very reason."

"But this didn't feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music. (p. 121)"

""I'm not having this," he muttered. "Not in my damn university. It's worse than students." (p. 116)"

"You're a musician, ain't you?" said Glod. "What do you think you do?"

"It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the Universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters. (pp. 107-108)"

"This was music that had not only escaped but had robbed a bank on the way out. It was music with its sleeves rolled up and its top button undone, raising its hat and grinning and stealing the silver. (pp. 106-107)"

"The Death of Rats contrived to indicate, quite effectively, that in that case they could apply to the universe and point out that they didn't deserve to die. In which case it was up to the universe to say, oh, didn't you? oh, well, that's all right then, you can go on living. It was a remarkably succinct gesture. (p. 100)"

"Mounted on a horse almost as fine as Binky, was a woman. Very definitely. A lot of woman. She was as much woman as you could get in one place without getting two women. (p. 97)"

"The point was that people were dying and acts of incredibly stupid heroism were being performed. (p. 95)"

"After all, it was only wood. It'd rot in a few hundred years. By the measure of infinity, it hardly existed at all. On average, considered over the lifetime of the multiverse, most things didn't. (p. 92)"

"It was a slightly pretentious residence with more gables and mullions than it should rightly have, and this was a clue to its origins: it was the kind of house built for himself by a rich merchant when he goes respectable and needs to do something with the loot. (p. 91)"

"Now she came to think about that, she wasn't sure what her mother had told her. Parents were quite clever at not telling people things, even when they used a lot of words. (p. 86)"

"I mean I can't help it! That's not my fault! It's not fair!"

"The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up. (p. 82)"

"Then the skull said: "Kids today, eh?""

""Ah," said the raven. "Changing our tone, yes? Not so much of the emphatic declarative, yes? A bit less of the ‘There's no such thing' and a bit more of the ‘I didn't know,' yes?" (p. 63)"

"The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. (pp. 53-54)"

""Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say." (p. 49)"

"The window was open, because the school encouraged fresh air. It was available in large amounts for free. (p. 43)"

"The memory was creeping over her from somewhere that this one was not only real but on her side. It was an unfamiliar concept. Her side had normally consisted of her. (p. 40)"

"The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. (p. 39)"

""We'll practice as we go along," said Glod. "Welcome to the world of professional musicianship." (p. 39)"

"Although dwarfs did not, as a rule, play stringed instruments, Glod knew a guitar when he saw one. They were supposed to be shaped like a woman, but this was only the case if you thought a woman had no legs, a long neck, and too many ears. (p. 35)"

"Imp hesitated, as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they've been told to ‘say something'. (p. 35)"

"Musicians were often short of money; it was one definition of a musician. (p. 34)"

"He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal. (p. 27)"

"It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit. (p. 27)"

"The man gave a shrug that indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his. (p. 27)"

"The horse watched him warily. It was considerably more intelligent than most horses, although this was not a difficult achievement. (p. 20)"

"She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it. (p. 15)"

"Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book. (p. 15)"

"The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle. (p. 14)"

"But said, nevertheless. And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will re-form itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world."

"It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on its side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long. (p. 8)"

"Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice. (p. 7)"

"But if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed,‡ it's even more true that it changes the observer."