Terry Pratchett, the bestselling author and creator of the Discworld series who died in March last year, was a famous wit and wordsmith. His inimitable turn of phrase has just been celebrated in Seriously Funny, the Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett, which is prefaced by an address he gave in Trinity College Dublin in 2010, which encapsulates his passion for language.
“For the whole of my life since I was nine years old I have enjoyed words… Words turn us from monkeys into me. We make them, change them, trace them around, eat them and live by them - they are workhorses, carrying any burden, and their usage is the skill of the author’s trade, hugely versatile; there are times when the wrong word is the right word, and times when words can be manipulated so that silence shouts. Their care, feeding and indeed breeding is part of the craft of which I am a journeyman.”
Lisa McInerney, winner this month of both the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize for The Glorious Heresies, is a devotee of Pratchett’s work. Asked for her favourite, she responded: “Oh God, so many. One that I almost tweeted earlier: ‘May you live in interesting times’ which you’ll probably know is a reference to a myth about there being such a curse in China. And right now I think we’re living in interesting times.
“My other favourite Pratchett quote is from Soul Music, where Death is collecting money and someone gives him a penny, just for this line: THANK YOU, said the grateful Death. I honestly think that that’s a case of an author coming up with a killer pun and writing an entire book around it. And one from Reaper Man, which always makes me think of my enthusiastically Facebooking uncle: ‘Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.’
“Other than that, of course, there’s this, which isn’t funny, but...
Mort . . . shook his head. ‘There’s no justice.’
Death sighed. ‘NO,’ he said, ...’THERE’S JUST ME.’
They’re all Discworld quotes, in fairness.”
Colin Smythe, the Trinity College Dublin graduate who published Pratchett’s first five books and has been his agent since 1987, admitted: “I can’t remember Terry telling me any jokes. Both poor memory and because he must have kept them to put in his books. Over the last decade, I think we talked about facts, research for the book he was working on, that sort of thing.”
In his tribute to his friend in The Irish Times, Smythe wrote: "It is hard to look at a future without Terry, his humour, wicked bubble-pricking comments, his amazing inventiveness, his style, the deftness of his puns, and the deep moral sense that pervaded all of the books, without being obtrusive."
So what is his favourite Terry Pratchett quotation? “Too many to choose from. But how about...?
Susan... it wasn’t a good name, was it? It wasn’t a truly bad name, it wasn’t like poor Iodine in the fourth form, or Nigella, a name which means ‘oops, we wanted a boy’. But it was dull. Susan. Sue. Good old Sue. It was a name that made sandwiches, kept its head in difficult circumstances, and could reliably look after other people’s children.
It was a name used by no queens or goddesses anywhere.
And you couldn't do much even with the spelling. You could turn it into Suzi, and it sounded as though you danced on tables for a living. You could put in a Z and a couple of Ns and an E, but it still looked like a name with extensions built on. It was as bad as Sara, a name that cried out for a prosthetic H.
Soul Music
“Far too long, I know. How about a talking raven on a battle-field, looking for eyeballs and other scraps, saying ‘Carrion regardless. That’s what I say.’?
“Or the cleric in a band that went off with all its takings, and was arrested. ‘And what did they do with that felonious monk?’ [Only for jazz lovers, I suspect].”
Here are a few more for your amusement I came across that I'd put away in a file.
"A weapon you held and didn't know how to use belonged to your enemy."
Making Money
"Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known."
Going Postal
"Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero."
Going Postal
"It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus."
Jingo
"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo."
Jingo
"Mention has already been made of an attempt to inject a little honesty into reporting on the Disc, and how poets and bards were banned on pain of - well, pain - from going on about babbling brooks and rosy-fingered dawn and could only say for example, that a face had launched a thousand ships if they were able to produce certified dockyard accounts."
The Light Fantastic
Twenty more killer Terry Pratchett quotations
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
Hogfather
Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.
Thief of Time
Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beaheading. People like a show.
Going Postal
The phrase "Someone ought to do something" was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used it never added the rider "and that someone is me".
Hogfather
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
Eric
Education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
Hogfather
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
The Truth
But we're a university! We have to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?"
"Students," said the Senior Wrangler morosely.
The Last Continent
If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star … you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
The Wee Free Men
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Jingo
The wholf 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.
Moving Pictures
* A film in Discworld terminology
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools - the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans - and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."
Small Gods
No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life…is only the core of their actual existence.
Reaper Man
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
Good Omens
Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too.
Small Gods
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
The God Moment, Mail on Sunday
Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.
Small Gods
Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.
Night Watch
The pen is mightier than the sword… if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.
The Light Fantastic
Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
Introduction to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy
Seriously Funny, the Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, £9.99)
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