"Fear is a 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. (p. 30)"

"He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways. (pp. 26-27)"

"The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done. (p. 23)"

"The Omnians were a God-fearing people."

"Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a plowman like your father?" (p. 21)"

""How many talking tortoises have you met?" it said sarcastically."

"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. (p. 20)"

"Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn't turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn't be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise. (p. 18)"

"Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey. (p. 17)"

"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. (p. 15)"

"You do not ask people like that what they are thinking about in case they turn around very slowly and say "You." (p. 12)"

"The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to. (p. 11)"

"No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel."

"There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening. (p. 7)"

"Because what gods need is belief, and what humans want is gods. (p. 7)"

"And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular religions. There's a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose. (p. 5)"

"And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:"

"Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you. (p. 3)"

"Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history...ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just...well, things happening one after another. (p. 2)"

"Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. (p. 2)"

"The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat. (p. 1)"

"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)"