Terry Pratchett

Supposing there was somewhere reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn't do it. Even ordinary theater wouldn't do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it. (p. 286)

He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. (p. 282)

Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people. (p. 93)

"What did she just say to that troll?" he said, as a deep wave of laughter rolled across the room.

"Why us?" he said. "Why is it happening to us?"

"You know what the greatest tragedy in the whole world is?" said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. "It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out." (pp. 141-142)

The Bursar locked his study door behind him. You had to do that. The Archchancellor thought that knocking on doors was something that happened to other people. (p. 224)

The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.

According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles. (p. 216)

The important thing to remember was that Holy Wood wasn't a real place at all. (p. 179)

"I heard once where there was this city that was so wicked that the gods turned it into a puddle of molten glass," said Gaspode, apropos of nothing. "And the only person who saw it happen was turned into a pillar of salt by day and a cheese shaker by night."

Fate doesn't like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everybody knows that. (p. 178)