Wyrd Sisters Quotes

“This book was written using 100% recycled words.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“I hate cats."
Death's face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant.
"I SEE," he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat haters.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Granny Weatherwax was not lost. She wasn't the kind of person who ever became lost. It was just that, at the moment, while she knew exactly where SHE was, she didn't know the position of anywhere else.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ...

Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Witches aren’t like that. We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Ninety percent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarrassment.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It had spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful work as a squall, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small oak trees. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to strut its hour, and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“But I think you have a right to know what it is you’re not being told.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“She'd never mastered the talent for apologizing, but she appreciated it in other people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Granny turned slowly in her seat to look at the audience. They were staring at the performance, their faces rapt. The words washed over them in the breathless air. 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.

Granny had never had much time for words. They were so insubstantial. Now she wished that she had found the time. Words were indeed insubstantial. They were as soft as water, but they were also as powerful as water and now they were rushing over the audience, eroding the levees of veracity, and carrying away the past.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.'
Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening.
Excursions', said Magrat patienly.
Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said.
Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Someone has to do it. It's all very well calling for eye of newt, but do you mean Common, Spotted or Great Crested? Which eye, anyway? Will tapioca do just as well? If we substitute egg white will the spell a) work b) fail or c) melt the bottom out of the cauldron? Goodie Whemper's curiosity about such things was huge and insatiable*.



* Nearly insatiable. It was probably satiated in her last flight to test whether a broomstick could survive having its bristles pulled out one by one in mid-air. According to the small black raven she had trained as a flight recorder, the answer was almost certainly no.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn’t want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Don't you want to die nobly for a just cause?"

"I'd much rather live quietly for one.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“Granny’s implicit belief that everything should get out of her way extended to other witches, very tall trees and, on occasion, mountains.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters