"Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner's canary, and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained."

"'This is fun,' said Creosote. 'Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.'"

"'I can't hear anything,' said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who, if you say "don't look now", would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable."

"Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes."

"They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt."

"'Poor I don't mind,' said the Seriph. 'It's sobriety that is giving me difficulties.'"

"Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour."

"Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'."

"'Quick, you must come with me,' she said. 'You're in great danger!'"

"'I meant,' said Ipslore, bitterly, 'what is there in this world that makes living worth while?'"

"The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe."

"Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and terrorizing them into feeding it crisps."

"The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like."

"How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced by a beautiful young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh is suddenly as willing as the spirit."

"And I didn't bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I'd just stick with the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl."

"Death isn't cruel – merely terribly, terribly good at his job."

"It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong."

"Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library. Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot. Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing. Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until the end fell off. Then he ate it."

"A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past."

"No gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs."

"The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out."

"It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all."

"Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn't like its expression at all."

"The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked."

"Demons were like genies or philosophy professors—if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers."

"Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence."

"This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it."

"This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round."

"Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the other way round."

"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

"The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo."

"There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."

"I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because—well, June 12th was quite nice, and...Oh. You've gone."

"'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself."

"The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and outgeneralled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man's brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles."

"It occurred to her that in addition to being a collection of other things, the forest was a thing in itself. Alive, only not alive in the way that, say, a shrew was alive."

"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men. (Dedication)"

"The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. (p. 3)"

"To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height. (p. 5)"

"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. (pp. 13-14)"

"It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are—who knows?"

"He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious circumstances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn't magical. It hasn't got a name. When you wield it you don't get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could believe it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn't got destiny written all over it."

"Vimes opened his eyes. There was a moment of empty peace before memory hit him like a shovel. (p. 22)"

""In a manner of speaking, yes," said his father. "In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no." (p. 23)"

"All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional. (p. 25)"

"I don't think they have a king there," said Varneshi. "Just some man who tells them what to do."

"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. (p. 28)"