... a metaphor ... is like lying but more decorative.

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?

Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of time.

But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.

Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir, ’ said Carrot‘What, in Ankh-Morpork?’‘Yes, sir.’‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

You're saying, ' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.

Power has always corrupted, my dear. Even the promise of power. It is a hard thing to look at through the fence for hundreds of years without wondering what it would be like on the other side.

I have always drawn strength from being close to home.

Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined.

Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it.

[I]n his presence I thoroughly lived.

The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.

Another stupid party . . . with six people to look on, and talk nonsense to each other.

An abundance of Twitter users believe they can troll and rant with impunity, no matter how debasing or even threatening their 140-character posts pose.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.

Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?