But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

My dear little man," said the dragon solemnly, "just understand, once for all, that I can't fight and I won't fight. I've never fought in my life, and I'm not going to begin now, just to give you a Roman holiday. In old days I always let the other fellows — the earnest fellows — do all the fighting, and no doubt that's why I have the pleasure of being here now.

Things are not always as old songs tell them to be—especially when it is concerning dragons.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.

We think, sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure ...not only are they here-and-now, they're all that ever lived on earth! Our century, they've changed clothes, of course. Dragons wear government-costumes, today, and failure-suits and disaster-outfits. Society's demons screech, whirl down on us should we lift our eyes from the ground, dare we turn right at corners we've been told to turn left. So crafty have appearances become that princesses and knights can be hidden from each other, can be hidden from themselves.

You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons? On the Discworld we know that There Be Dragons Everywhere. They might not all have scales and forked tongues, but they Be Here all right, grinning and jostling and trying to sell you souvenirs.

Every treasure is guarded by dragons. That's how you can tell it's valuable.

If a dragon comes to you and says, “Arw sobriost!” you don’t ask questions. You do what it says. There is a great taloned foot, set like a step in front of you; and above it, the crook of the elbow joint; and above that, the jutting shoulder blade: a stairway. You clamber up that stairway, feeling the fiery inner heat of the dragon’s body. You settle yourself between the vast wings, take hold of the big spine-thorn before you. And the dragon lifts, takes off, takes you where you and it must go, flying on the other wind, flying free.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

The will to victory may be demonstrated in places other than actual battle.

A life fueled by passions is like riding on the back of a dragon.

To search out the dragon in his true greatness is to learn strange things.

...Perhaps someday they would grow as dragons.

We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.