A Hat Full of Sky Quotes

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. You do. You call it 'opening your eyes again.' But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless... endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless deeps of space! You have this thing you call... boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song — it went 'Twinkle twinkle little star....' What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. [...]

I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company, but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Always face what you fear. Have just enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open your eyes, and then open your eyes again.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Witches were a bit like cats. They didn’t much like one another’s company but they did like to know where all the other witches were, just in case they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a friend, that you were beginning to cackle.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, "It shouldn't be like this." Her mentor replies, "There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!" which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“You couldn’t say: It’s not my fault. You couldn’t say: It’s not my responsibility. You could say: I will deal with this. You didn’t have to want to. But you had to do it.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Taint what a horse looks like, it’s what a horse be.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It's an unfair world, Child. Be glad you have friends.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’ then he’ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it, ‘tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?’
'Oh no!’ said Miss Level, looking shocked. 'Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.’
'Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany.
'Besides,’ Miss Level added, 'Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“She strode across the moors as if distance was a personal insult.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky