Terry Pratchett Quotes

That Martí is a madman — but a dangerous madman.

No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?

I mean, if you're gonna purposely lose your mind, you want to get it back some day. Don't you? Okay, maybe not.

Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman.

I started pulling gags on Al [Pachino]. That was the moment I realized that he was absolutely out of his mind. I mean that he's certifiably insane. I wouldn't spend a night in a room where he's at.

I think every genius person has a bit of insanity.

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is: what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problems of the modern novel is: what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

And of course you are mad, if by a madman we mean a mind that questions and rejects every civilized norm.

You mean to say he became mad deliberately?' ...Nothing is more likely,' said the duke.

The tiny madman in his padded cell.

Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments.

He stares at me, and then leans back in his chair. "He's ill, Jacob." I say nothing. "He's a paragon schnitzophonic." "He's what?!" "Paragon schnitzophonic," repeats Uncle Al. "You mean paranoid schizophrenic?" "Sure. Whatever. But the bottom line is he's mad as a hatter.

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

I might really have gone round the bend. I mean people who get visions and see a gigantic light descend on them from the sky can't be all there but if so I feel mighty happy. If one is happy and cracked it's much better than being unhappy and sane.

The fellow is either a madman or a poet.

Is the Master out of his mind?' she asked me. I nodded. 'And he's taking you with him?' I nodded again. 'Where?' she asked. I pointed towards the centre of the earth. 'Into the cellar?' exclaimed the old servant. 'No,' I said, 'farther down than that.

What does it mean, to lose one's mind? Where does it go? If a man is out of his mind, where is he? What is insane when the world is mad by contrast?

I've written this song called 'Insania' - it's a mix of Insane and Mania, and even though it's a made up word you instantly know what it means!

It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.

But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")

In India when we meet and part we often say, "Namaste," which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us�.. "Namaste."

A man is an angel that has gone deranged.

A crazy person doesn't really lose his mind. It just becomes something more entertaining.

We should try to learn the nature of [the spirit of revelation]. . . . This is the grand means that the Lord has provided for us, that we may know the light, and not be groveling continually in the dark.