So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

History is more or less bunk.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Once upon a time, novelists of the 19th century, such as Charles Dickens, published in serial form.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

‚I am‘ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‚I do‘ is the longest sentence?

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

I cannot live without books.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

He who hath many friends hath none.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.