Quotes From "The Fifth Elephant" By Terry Pratchett

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back. He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body. G O O D MORNING.Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.' Are you Death?'IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.'I'm going to die?' P O S S I B L Y.' Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?' O H, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.'What's that?' I' M NOT SURE.'That's very helpful. . Terry Pratchett

Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell… And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war." And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf, " said Cheery sadly. "There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs, " she said, "but relations are strained. Terry Pratchett

He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato. Terry Pratchett

There were a lot of things he could say. "Son of a bitch! " would have been a good one. Or he could say, "Welcome to civilization! " He could have said, "Laugh this one off! " He might have said, "Fetch! " But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder. Terry Pratchett

Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away. Terry Pratchett

That was messages without meaning: telepathy without brains. Terry Pratchett

It wasn't that dwarfs weren't interested in sex. They saw the vital need for fresh dwarfs to leave their goods to and continue the mining work after they had gone. It was simply that they also saw no point in distinguishing between the sexes anywhere but in private. There was no such thing as a Dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work. Terry Pratchett

You're free to wear whatever you want, you know Terry Pratchett