Terry Pratchett’s “The Color of Magic” Quotes (26 Quotes)

It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline.

Magic never dies. It merely fades away.

No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.

On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.

On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

Possession of the box conferred a kind of power on the wielder--which was that anyone, confronted with the hypnotic glass eye, would submissively obey the most peremptory orders about stance and expression.

Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.

Powiedzmy, z.e gdyby nadcia;ga? ca?kowity i absolutny chaos, on, w mokrym miedzianym pancerzu, stana;?by na szczycie wzgórza w czasie burzy z piorunami i wrzeszcza?: „Wszyscy bogowie to be;karty!

But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.

Rincewind tried to force the memory out of his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants and kicking over the furniture.

Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

Sometime later the islanders on a little rimward atoll were amazed to find, washed into their little local lagoon, the wave-rocked corpse of a hideous sea monster, all beaks, eyes and tentacles. They were further astonished at its size, since it was rather larger than their village. But their surprise was tiny compared to the huge, stricken expression on the face of the dead monster, which appeared to be have been trampled to death.

Fate can be one mean god at times.

That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.

He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.

The complete reverse was so often the case that he had come to think of it as a kind of natural law.

I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.

The demon coughed nervously. Demons do not breathe; however, every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life. And this was one of them as far as the demon was concerned.

If I were you, I'd sue my face for slander.

The flip side of the coin of which Good and Evil are but one side.

It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.

Usually he didn't bother the gods, and he hoped the gods wouldn't bother him. Life was quite complicated enough.

It is embarrassing to know that one is a god of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination. No wonder, then, that the Disc gods spend more time in bickering than in omnicognizance.

You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.