My favorite Discworld Quotes

[slightlyweemary]

After I worked on the play Guards! Guards! I felt inspired to reread all of the Discworld.

For a lot of the books it has been over a decade since I last read them and I found myself bookmarking a lot of quotes that stood out to me.

It seemed fun to save them somewhere which is why I started this tumblr 🐘🐢🦧

Reading list (the crossed out ones I already finished)

1. The Colour of Magic

2. The Light Fantastic

3. Equal Rites

4. Mort

5. Sourcery

6. Wyrd Sisters

7. Pyramids

8. Guards! Guards! (After seeing it as a play like 8 times it might be a while before I can reread this one)

9. Faust Eric

10. Moving Pictures

11. Reaper Man

12. Witches Abroad

13. Small Gods

14. Lords and Ladies

15. Men at Arms

16. Soul Music

17. Interesting times

18. Maskerade

19. Feet of Clay

20. Hogfather

21. Jingo

22. The Last Continent

23. Carpe Jugulum

24. The Fifth Elephant

25. The Truth

26. Thief of Time

27. The Last Hero

28. The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents

29. Night Watch

30. The Wee Free Men

31. Monstrous Regiment

32. A Hat Full of Sky

33. Going Postal

34. Thud!

35. Wintersmith

36. Making Money

37. Unseen Academicals

38. I Shall Wear Midnight

39. Snuff

40. Raising Steam (currently reading)

41. The Shepherd's Crown

[slightlyweemary]

That's old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. And treads on it. It's right what Cohen said. He just looks at things, but nothing he looks at is ever the same again.

The light fantastic ~Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

Ankh-Morpork!

Pearl of cities!

This is not a completely accurate description, of course – it was not round and shiny – but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.

The light fantastic ~Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything.

A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself.

From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

'This box,' said Cohen, 'this box is—'he waved his arms vaguely.

'Oblong?'

'Eldritch,' said Cohen mysteriously.

'Eldritch?'

'Yup.'

'Oh,' said the dwarf. They stood looking at the box for a moment.

'Cohen?'

'Yes?'

'What does eldritch mean?'

'Well, eldritch is—' Cohen paused and looked down irritably. 'Give it a kick and you'll see.'

Lockjaw's steel-capped dwarfboot whammed into the side of the box. Cohen flinched. Nothing else happened.

'I see,' said the dwarf. 'Eldritch means wooden?'

'No,' said Cohen. 'It – it oughtn't to have done that.'

'I see,' said Lackjaw, who didn't, and was beginning to wish Cohen hadn't gone out into all this hot sunlight. 'It ought to have run away, you think?'

'Yes. Or bitten your leg off.'

'Ah,' said the dwarf. He took Cohen gently by the arm. 'It's nice and shady over here,' he said. 'Why don't you just have a little —'

Cohen shook him off.

'It's watching that wall,' he said. 'Look, that's why it's not taking any notice of us. It's staring at the wall.'

'Yes, that's right,' said Lackjaw soothingly. 'Of course it's watching that wall with its little eyes —'

'Don't be an idiot, it hasn't got any eyes,' snapped Cohen.

'Sorry, sorry,' said Lackjaw hurriedly. 'It's watching the wall without eyes, sorry.'

'I think it's worried about something,' said Cohen.

'Well, it would be, wouldn't it,' said Lackjaw. 'I expect it just wants us to go off somewhere and leave it alone.'

'I think it's very puzzled,' Cohen added.

'Yes, it certainly looks puzzled,' said the dwarf. Cohen glared at him.

'How can you tell?' he snapped.

It struck Lackjaw that the roles were unfairly reversing. He looked from Cohen to the box, his mouth opening and shutting.

'How can you tell?' he said. But Cohen wasn't listening anyway. He sat down in front of the box, assuming that the bit with the keyhole was the front, and watched it intently. Lackjaw backed away. Funny, said his mind, but the damn thing is looking at me.

'All right,' said Cohen, 'I know you and me don't see eye to eye, but we're all trying to find someone we care for, okay?'

'I'm—' said Lackjaw, and realised that Cohen was talking to the box.

'So tell me where they've gone.'

As Lackjaw looked on in horror the Luggage extended 161 its little legs, braced itself, and ran full tilt at the nearest wall. Clay bricks and dusty mortar exploded around it.

Cohen peered through the hole. There was a small grubby storeroom on the other side. The Luggage stood in the middle of the floor, radiating extreme bafflement.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

I said, where's the Luggage?'

Twoflower looked around. The Luggage was missing.

'Well, where's it gone?'

'How should I know?' said Twoflower.

'It's your Luggage!'

'I often don't know where my Luggage is, that's what being a tourist is all about,' said Twoflower.

[slightlyweemary]

The sun rose.

However, the sunlight didn't. What did happen was that the famous Discworld sunlight, which as has already been indicated travels very slowly through the Disc's powerful magical field, sloshed gently over the lands around the Rim and began its soft, silent battle against the retreating armies of the night. It poured like molten gold* across the sleeping landscape – bright, clean and, above all, slow.

*Not precisely, of course. Trees didn't burst into flame, people didn't suddenly become very rich and extremely dead, and the seas didn't flash into steam. A better simile, in fact, would be 'not like molten gold'.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

Suddenly it looked as though that secretarial career was not such a bad option, at that.

Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.

But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.

[slightlyweemary]

She sighed. Suddenly it looked as though that secretarial career was not such a bad option, at that.

Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway. Then there was all the leather, which brought her out in a rash but seemed to be unbreakably traditional. And then there was the ale. It was all right for the likes of Hrun the Barbarian or Cimbar the Assassin to carouse all night in low bars, but Herrena drew the line at it unless they sold proper drinks in small glasses, preferably with a cherry in. As for the toilet facilities . . .

But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.

So she'd become a swordswoman and had been a good one, amassing a modest fortune that she was carefully husbanding for a future that she hadn't quite worked out yet but which would certainly include a bidet if she had anything to say about it.

[slightlyweemary]

'Legend?' he said. 'What legend?'

'It's been handed down from mountain to gravel since the sunset* of time,' said the first troll

*An interesting metaphor. To nocturnal trolls, of course, the dawn of time lies in the future.

[slightlyweemary]

'He'sh mad?'

'Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.'

'Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.'

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

He paused uncertainly, although that isn't precisely true because he was totally certain of several things, for example that he didn't want to jump, and that he certainly didn't want to face whatever it was coming up behind him, and that there were worse things than being dead.

'Name two,' he muttered, and jumped.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

This particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one.

Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades.

Words like 'full', 'round' and even 'pert' creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold hower and a lie down.

Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer.

Oh well, all right. 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 Hun 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.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

So... where did it go wrong?

[slightlyweemary]

This particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one.

Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades.

Words like 'full', 'round' and even 'pert' creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down.

Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer.

Oh well, all right. 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 Hun 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.

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

The man had only one eye; the other was covered by a black patch. His thin body was a network of scars and, currently, twanging white-hot with tendonitis. His teeth had obviously decided to quit long ago.One star-bright eye looked up at him.

'Cohen ish my name, boy.'

'Cohen?' she said. 'Cohen the Barbarian?'

'The very shame.'

'Hang on, hang on,' said Rincewind. 'Cohen's a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he's the Disc's greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime. I remember my grandad telling me he saw him . . . my grandad telling me he . . . my grandad . . .'

He faltered under the gimlet gaze.

'Oh,' he said. 'Oh. Of course. Sorry.'

'Yesh,' said Cohen, and sighed. Thatsh right, boy. I'm a lifetime in my own legend.'

'Gosh,' said Rincewind. 'How old are you, exactly?'

'Eighty-sheven.'

'But you were the greatest!' said Bethan. 'Bards still sing songs about you.'

Cohen shrugged, and gave a little yelp of pain.

'I never get any royaltiesh,' he said. He looked moodily at the snow. That'sh the shaga of my life. Eighty yearsh in the bushiness and what have I got to show for it? Backache, pilesh, bad digeshtion and a hundred different recipesh for shoop. Shoop! I hate shoop!'

[slightlyweemary]

All this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time.'

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett

[slightlyweemary]

'but they're going to sacrifice her, if you must know.'

Twoflower looked at him in astonishment.

'What, kill her?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Don't ask me. To make the crops grow or the moon rise or something. Or maybe they're just keen on killing people. That's religion for you.'

'Can't they just use flowers and berries and things?' he said. 'Sort of symbolic?'

'Nope.'

'Has anyone ever tried?'

Rincewind sighed. 'Look,' he said. 'No self-respecting High Priest is going to go through all the business with the trumpets and the processions and the banners and everything, and then shove his knife into a daffodil and a couple of plums. You've got to face it, all this stuff about golden boughs and the cycles of nature and stuff just boils down to sex and violence, usually at the same time.'

The light fantastic ~ Terry Pratchett