Mort

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade
hopefully.
- I WOULDN'T KNOW. I HAVE DONE NEITHER.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
- NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"When a man is tired of Ankh-Morpork, he is tired of ankle-deep slurry."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

-- Death addresses his new apprentice (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

It is a fact that although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You're dead," he said. Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.

-- Princess Keli in trouble (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.

-- Death goes fishing (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

-- Discworld politics explained (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I
WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK
WOULD HOLD.
- "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"

-- Death consults a job broker (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

- "Sodomy non sapiens," said Albert under his breath.
- "What does that mean?"
- "Means I'm buggered if I know."

-- Mort and Albert are facing a problem (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much -- in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all -- but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.

-- Princess Keli prepares for her coronation (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- " He stopped talking.

-- Cutwell tries to reason with the Duke of Sto Helit (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.

-- Mort goes out for a drink (Terry Pratchett, Mort)

"You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"

-- Mort tastes scrumble for the first time (Terry Pratchett, Mort)