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A Witch Who Is Bored Might Do Anything. People Said Things Like 'we Had To Make Our Own Amusements In Those Days' As If This Signified Some Kind Of Moral Worth, And Perhaps It Did, But The Last Thing You Wanted A Witch To Do Was Get Bored And Start Making Her Own Amusements, Because Witches Sometimes Had Famously Erratic Ideas About What Was Amusing.

-Terry Pratchett

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A Witch Who Is

Terry Pratchett

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A Witch Who Is Bored Might Do Anything. People Said Things Like 'we Had To Make Our Own Amusements In Those Days' As If This Signified Some Kind Of Moral Worth, And Perhaps It Did, But The Last Thing You Wanted A Witch To Do Was Get Bored And Start Making Her Own Amusements, Because Witches Sometimes Had Famously Erratic Ideas About What Was Amusing.

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I Used To Like Reading And You Read Enough Books And You Overflow And Then You Start Writing.

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People Couldn't Become Truly Holy, He Said, Unless They Also Had The Opportunity To Be Definitively Wicked.

Real Education Happens When You Pick Up A Fact Here, And Another Fact There, And Put Them Together And Get An Insight.

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No One Thinks That Young Adults Read Hooks For Young Adults, Books For Young Adults Are Read By Kids.

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Just Because It's Not Nice Doesn't Mean It's Not Miraculous.

I Think You Should Be Proud Of Not Being Worse Than Just Deeply Introverted And Socially Maladjusted.

It's Not Worth Doing Something Unless You Were Doing Something That Someone, Somewere, Would Much Rather You Weren't Doing.

Were You Proposing To Shoot These People In Cold Blood, Sergeant?" "nossir. Just A Warning Shot Inna Head, Sir.

Million-to-one Chances...crop Up Nine Times Out Of Ten.

But Of Course, What The Eagle Does Not Realize Is That It Is Participating In A Very Crude Form Of Natural Selection.one Day A Tortoise Will Learn How To Fly.

He'd Noticed That Sex Bore Some Resemblance To Cookery: It Fascinated People, They Sometimes Bought Books Full Of Complicated Recipes And Interesting Pictures, And Sometimes When They Were Really Hungry They Created Vast Banquets In Their Imagination - But At The End Of The Day They'd Settle Quite Happily For Egg And Chips. If It Was Well Done And Maybe Had A Slice Of Tomato.

Who Shall I Shoot? You Choose. Now, Listen Very Carefully: Where's Your Coffee? You've Got Coffee, Haven't You? C'mon, Everyone's Got Coffee! Spill The Beans!

We're Philosophers. We Think, Therefore We Am.

Perhaps, If You Knew You Were Going To Die, Your Senses Crammed In As Much Detail As They Could While They Still Had The Chance.

…we Were Born Vampires." "i Thought You Became –" "— Vampires By Being Bitten? Dear Me, No. Oh, We Can Turn People Into Vampires, It’s An Easy Technique, But What Would Be The Point? When You Eat… Now What Is It You Eat? Oh Yes, Chocolate… You Don’t Want To Turn It Into Another Agnes Nitt, Do You? Less Chocolate To Go Around." He Sighed. "oh Dear, Superstition, Superstition Everywhere We Turn.

And He Dreamed The Dream Of All Those Who Publish Books, Which Was To Have So Much Gold In Your Pockets That You Would Have To Employ Two People Just To Hold Your Trousers Up.

The Kraken Stirs. And Ten Billion Sushi Dinners Cry Out For Vengeance.

They Say That The Prospect Of Being Hanged In The Morning Concentrates A Man's Mind Wonderfully; Unfortunately, What The Mind Inevitably Concentrates On Is That, In The Morning, It Will Be In A Body That Is Going To Be Hanged.

As Far As I'm Concerned, I'm A Writer Who's Writing Books, And Therefore, I Don't Want To Die. You'd Miss The End Of The Book, Wouldn't You? You Can't Die With An Unfinished Book.

Rincewind Tried To Force The Memory Out Of His Mind, But It Was Rather Enjoying Itself There, Terrorizing The Other Occupants And Kicking Over The Furniture.

The Jurisdiction Of A Good Man Extends To The End Of The World.

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I Don't Regret It, You Know. I Would Do It All Again. Children Are Our Hope For The Future." There Is No Hope For The Future, Said Death. "what Does It Contain, Then?" Me.

Light Thinks It Travels Faster Than Anything But It Is Wrong. No Matter How Fast Light Travels, It Finds The Darkness Has Always Got There First, And Is Waiting For It.

The Baby Boomers Are Getting Older, And Will Stay Older For Longer. And They Will Run Right Into The Dementia Firing Range. How Will A Society Cope? Especially A Society That Can't So Readily Rely On Those Stable Family Relationships That Traditionally Provided The Backbone Of Care?

Colon Has Always Thought That Heroes Had Some Special Kind Of Clockwork That Made Them Go Out And Die Famously For God, Country And Apple Pie, Or Whatever Particular Delicacy Their Mother Made. It Had Never Occurred To Him That They Might Do It Because They'd Get Yelled At If They Didn't.

You Can't Remember The Plot Of The Dr Who Movie Because It Didn't Have One, Just A Lot Of Plot Holes Strung Together. It Did Have A Lot Of Flashing Lights, Though.

Money Is An Unavoidable Consequence, But It Isn't The Reason I Write; If It Was, I Wouldn't Have Written Any Of The Ya Books, Because Advances In That Field Are Small Compared To What I'd Got Now For An 'adult' Dw.

Bishops Move Diagonally. That's Why They Often Turn Up Where The Kings Don't Expect Them To Be.

Reality Is Not Digital, An On-off State, But Analog. Something Gradual. In Other Words, Reality Is A Quality That Things Possess In The Same Way That They Possess, Say, Weight. Some People Are More Real Than Others, For Example. It Has Been Estimated That There Are Only About Five Hundred Real People On Any Given Planet, Which Is Why They Keep Unexpectedly Running Into One Another All The Time.

No More Words. We Know Them All, All The Words That Should Not Be Said. But You Have Made My World More Perfect.

The Book Is Not Completely Written Until Someone Else Has Read It.

There Are, Almost By Definition, An Unlimited Number Of Hells - Potentially At Least A Personal One For Every Living Sapient Being.

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.

And At The Other End Of The Bar The World Is Full Of The Other Type Of Person, Who Has A Broken Glass, Or A Glass That Has Been Carelessly Knocked Over (usually By One Of The People Calling For A Larger Glass) Or Who Had No Glass At All, Because He Was At The Back Of The Crowd And Had Failed To Catch The Barman's Eye.

They Say That The Eyes Of Some Paintings Can Follow You Around The Room, A Fact That I Doubt, But I Am Wondering Whether Some Music Can Follow You For Ever.

If You Have Enough Book Space, I Don't Want To Talk To You.

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.

That's The Ankh-morpork Instinct, Vimes Thought. Run Away, And Then Stop And See If Anything Interesting Is Going To Happen To Other People.

Around It Are Those Countries Which, According To History, Constitute The Civilised World Ie, A World That Can Support Historians

The Purpose Of This Lectchoor Is To Let You Know Where We Are. We Are In The Deep Cack. It Couldn't Be Worse If It Was Raining Arseholes. Any Questions?

A Horse's Skull Always Looks Scary, Even If Someone Has Put Lipstick On It.

Shoes, Men, Coffins; Never Accept The First One You See.

There Are Some People Who Hate My Guts. But That Goes With The Territory.

Take The Universe And Grind It Down To The Finest Powder And Sieve It Through The Finest Sieve And Then Show Me One Atom Of Justice, One Molecule Of Mercy. And Yet... And Yet You Act As If There Is Some Ideal Order In The World, As If There Is Some... Some Rightness In The Universe By Which It May Be Judged.

Cake Is Not The Issue Here.

I Don't See What's So Triffic About Creating People As People And Then Gettin' Upset Cos' They Act Like People", Said Adam Severely. "anyway, If You Stopped Tellin' People It's All Sorted Out After They're Dead, They Might Try Sorting It All Out While They're Alive.

The Library Didn't Only Contain Magical Books, The Ones Which Are Chained To Their Shelves And Are Very Dangerous. It Also Contained Perfectly Ordinary Books, Printed On Commonplace Paper In Mundane Ink. It Would Be A Mistake To Think That They Weren't Also Dangerous, Just Because Reading Them Didn't Make Fireworks Go Off In The Sky. Reading Them Sometimes Did The More Dangeous Trick Of Making Fireworks Go Off In The Privacy Of The Reader's Brain.

That's One Form Of Magic, Of Course." "what, Just Knowing Things?" "knowing Things That Other People Don't Know.

No Real Sunrise Could Paint The Sky Surgical Appliance Pink.

Contrary To Popular Belief And Hope, People Don't Usually Come Running When They Hear A Scream. That's Not How Humans Work. Humans Look At Other Humans And Say, 'did You Hear A Scream?' Because The First Scream Might Have Been You Screaming Inside Your Head, Or A Horse Backfiring.

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.

Books Bend Space And Time. One Reason The Owners Of Those Aforesaid Little Rambling, Poky Secondhand Bookshops Always Seem Slightly Unearthly Is That Many Of Them Really Are, Having Strayed Into This World After Taking A Wrong Turning In Their Own Bookshops In Worlds Where It Is Considered Commendable Business Practice To Wear Carpet Slippers All The Time And Open Your Shop Only When You Feel Like It.

They Know That People Need Witches; They Need The Unofficial People Who Understand The Difference Between Right And Wrong, And When Right Is Wrong And When Wrong Is Right. The World Needs The People Who Work Around The Edges. They Need The People Who Can Deal With The Little Bumps And Inconveniences. And Little Problems. After All, We Are Almost All Human. Almost All Of The Time.

Anger Is Wonderful. It Keeps You Going. I'm Angry About Bankers. About The Government.

It Takes Forty Men With Their Feet On The Ground To Keep One Man With His Head In The Air.

You Do Know You Could Find Yourself Charged With Being A Dominant Species While Under The Influence Of Impulse-driven Consumerism, Don't You?

Finding Yourself

This Is Where The Gods Play Games With The Lives Of Men, On A Board Which Is At One And The Same Time A Simple Playing Area And The Whole World. And Fate Always Wins.

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