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Fantasy Is Escapism, But Wait... Why Is This Wrong? What Are You Escaping From, And Where Are You Escaping To? Is The Story Opening Windows Or Slamming Doors? The British Author G.k. Chesterton Summarized The Role Of Fantasy Very Well. He Said Its Purpose Was To Take The Everyday, Commonplace World And Lift It Up And Turn It Around And Show It To Us From A Different Perspective, So That Once Again We See It For The First Time And Realize How Marvelous It Is. Fantasy - The Ability To Envisage The World In Many Different Ways - Is One Of The Skills That Make Us Human.

-Terry Pratchett

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Fantasy Is Escapism, But

Terry Pratchett

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Fantasy Is Escapism, But Wait... Why Is This Wrong? What Are You Escaping From, And Where Are You Escaping To? Is The Story Opening Windows Or Slamming Doors? The British Author G.k. Chesterton Summarized The Role Of Fantasy Very Well. He Said Its Purpose Was To Take The Everyday, Commonplace World And Lift It Up And Turn It Around And Show It To Us From A Different Perspective, So That Once Again We See It For The First Time And Realize How Marvelous It Is. Fantasy - The Ability To Envisage The World In Many Different Ways - Is One Of The Skills That Make Us Human.

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Nigel Gave The Lamp A Cautious Buff And Small Smoking Red Letters Appeared In The Air. "hi," Nigel Read Aloud, "do Not Put Down The Lamp Because Your Custom Is Important To Us. Please Leave A Wish After The Tone And, Very Shortly, It Will Be Our Command. In The Meantime, Have A Nice Eternity."

The Calendar Of The Theocracy Of Muntab Counts Down, Not Up. No-one Knows Why, But It Might Not Be A Good Idea To Hang Around And Find Out.

And We Don't Often Get Any Wading Birds In The River Ankh, Mainly Because The Pollution Would Eat Their Legs Away And Anyway, It's Easier For Them To Walk On The Surface.

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Granny Weatherwax, Who Had Walked Nightly Without Fear In The Bandit-haunted Forests Of The Mountains All Her Life In The Certain Knowledge That The Darkness Held Nothing More Terrible Than She Was.

I [...] Vowed That Rather Than Let Alzheimer's Take Me, I Would Take It. I Would Live My Life As Ever To The Full And Die, before The Disease Mounted Its Last attack, In My Own Home, In A Chair On The Lawn, With A Brandy In My Hand To Wash Down Whatever Modern version Of The "brompton Cocktail" Some helpful Medic Could Supply. And With thomas Tallis On My Ipod, I Would Shake Hands With Death.

You Have Reached The End Of Cake

'educational' Refers To The Process, Not The Object. Although, Come To Think Of It, Some Of My Teachers Could Easily Have Been Replaced By A Cheeseburger.

There Are Some Things That Are More Appropriate To A Children's Than An Adult Book But There's A Huge Overlapping Area And Most Kids Read An Age Group Up Anyway.

Nanny Ogg Never Did Any Housework Herself, But She Was The Cause Of Housework In Other People.

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Voodoo Is A Very Interesting Religion For The Whole Family, Even Those Members Of It Who Are Dead.

They Were Small, Brightly Coloured, Happy Little Creatures Who Secreted Some Of The Nastiest Toxins In The World, Which Is Why The Job Of Looking After The Large Vivarium Where They Happily Passed Their Days Was Given To First-year Students, On The Basis That If They Got Things Wrong There Wouldn't Be Too Much Education Wasted.

Often I Sort Of Work Up And Down The Manuscript. I Sometimes Used To Go Ahead Of Myself To See What Was Going To Happen Next, To Make Certain It Fits What Was Going To Be Happening Soon.

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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.

The Space Between The Young Reader’s Eyeballs And The Printed Page Is A Holy Place And Officialdom Should Trample All Over It At Their Peril.’

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It Was So Much Easier To Blame It On Them. It Was Bleakly Depressing To Think That They Were Us. If It Was Them, Then Nothing Was Anyone's Fault. If It Was Us, What Did That Make Me? After All, I'm One Of Us. I Must Be. I've Certainly Never Thought Of Myself As One Of Them. No One Ever Thinks Of Themselves As One Of Them. We're Always One Of Us. It's Them That Do The Bad Things.

Gods Play Games With The Fates Of Men. But First They Have To Get All The Pieces On The Board And Look All Over The Place For The Dice.

This I Choose To Do. If There Is A Price, This I Choose To Pay. If It Is My Death, Then I Choose To Die. Where This Takes Me, There I Choose To Go. I Choose. This I Choose To Do.

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Joy Is To Fun What The Deep Sea Is To A Puddle. It’s A Feeling Inside That Can Hardly Be Contained.

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Sometimes The Only Thing You Could Do For People Was To Be There.

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If He'd Been A Hero, He Would Have Taken The Opportunity To Say, "that's What I Call Sorted!" Since He Wasn't A Hero, He Threw Up.

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Don't Be Smart. Smart Is Only A Polished Version Of Dumb. Try Intelligence. It Will Surely See You Through.

Oh. I See. People Don't Want To See What Can't Possibly Exist.

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Things Just Happen. What The Hell.

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.

People Think That Stories Are Shaped By People. In Fact, It's The Other Way Around.

Personal’s Not The Same As Important. People Just Think It Is.

When Much Is Taken, Something Is Returned.

Fascism May Be Good At Making The Trains Run On Time, But You Wouldn't Like Some Of The Destinations.

I Was Just A Kid Then. But I Won't Forget. Nor Will Others. There's Lots Of People With Reason To Hate The Church.

There Was Once A Caustic Comment From Someone Suggesting I Was Breeding A New Race. Fans From Different Countries Have Married, Amazing Things Like That. I've Been To Some Of The Weddings. I Went To One Here The Other Day, A Pagan Ceremony.

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

The Best Research You Can Do Is To Talk To People.

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Most Gods Find It Hard To Walk And Think At The Same Time.

Last Hopeless Chances Have Got To Work. Nothing Makes Sense Otherwise. You Might As Well Not Be Alive.

The Thing About Stories Is You Have To Pick The Ones That Last.

When They're Standing Right In Front Of You, Kings Are A Kind Of Speech Impediment.

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Given Enough Coffee I Could Rule The World

I Think It's Impossible For Anyone Famous To Come From Here, Because Everyone Around Here Is Insane.

But…but You Can’t Treat Religion As A Sort Of Buffet, Can You? I Mean, You Can’t Say Yes Please, I’ll Have Some Of The Celestial Paradise And A Helping Of The Divine Plan But Go Easy On The Kneeling And None Of The Prohibition Of Images, They Give Me Wind. Its Table D´hôte Or Nothing, Otherwise…well, It Would Be Silly.

If There's One Thing That Really Annoys A God, It's Not Knowing Something.

What Did They Feed The Lions And Tigers With In The Ark, Sir?

First Of All You Are A Writer, A Writer Is What You Are, So It Doesn't Actually Stop The Moment You Leave Your Desk, Your Computer, Your Keyboard, Whatever. Something Is Operating The Back Of Your Mind.

The Intelligence Of The Creature Known As A Crowd, Is The Square Root Of The Number Of People In It.

Veil, You See, If I Vas To Say Something Portentous Like "zer Dark Eyes Of Zer Mind" Back Home In Uberwald, Zer Would Be A Sudden Crash Of Thunder,' Said Otto. 'and If I Vas To Point At A Castle On A Towering Crag And Say "yonder Is . . . Zer Castle" A Volf Would Be Bound To Howl Mournfully.' He Sighed. 'in Zer Old Country, Zer Scenery Is Psychotropic And Knows Vot Is Expected Of It. Here, Alas, People Just Look At You In A Funny Vay.

Some Shadows Are So Long, They Arrive Before The Light.

The Wages Of Sin Is Death But So Is The Salary Of Virtue, And At Least The Evil Get To Go Home Early On Fridays.

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

Evolution Was Far More Thrilling To Me Than The Biblical Account. Who Would Not Rather Be A Rising Ape Than A Falling Angel? To My Juvenile Eyes, Darwin Was Proved True Every Day. It Doesn't Take Much To Make Us Flip Back Into Monkeys Again.

If It Wasn't For The Fun And Money, I Really Don't Know Why I'd Bother.

There Are, Always And Only, The Bad People, But Some Of Them Are On Opposite Sides.

Funny Inspirational

All Tapes Left In A Car For More Than About A Fortnight Metamorphose Into Best Of Queen Albums.

Anyway, Why Would You Trust Anything Written Down? She Certainly Didn't Trust "mothers Of Borogravia!" And That Was From The Government. And If You Couldn't Trust The Government, Who Could You Trust? Very Nearly Everyone, Come To Think Of It.

But The Helmet Had Gold Decoration, And The Bespoke Armorers Had Made A New Gleaming Breastplate With Useless Gold Ornamentation On It. Sam Vimes Felt Like A Class Traitor Every Time He Wore It. He Hated Being Thought Of As One Of Those People That Wore Stupid Ornamental Armor. It Was Gilt By Association.

Vimes Had Got Around To A Clean Desk Policy. It Was A Clean Floor Strategy That Eluded Him At The Moment.

All He Knew Was That You Couldn't Hope To Try For The Big Stuff, Like World Peace And Happiness, But You Might Just About Be Able To Achieve Some Tiny Deed That'd Make The World, In A Small Way, A Better Place. Like Shooting Someone.

Bill Door Was Impressed. Miss Flitworth Could Actually Give The Word "revenue", Which Had Two Vowels And One Diphthong, All The Peremptoriness Of The Word "scum.

Granny Weatherwaz Was A Witch. That Was Quite Acceptable In The Ramtops, And No One Had A Bad Word To Say About Witches. At Least, Not If He Wanted To Wake Up In The Morning The Same Shape As He Went To Bed.

At Some Time In The Recent Past Someone Had Decided To Brighten The Ancient Corridors Of The University By Painting Them, Having Some Vague Notion That Learning Should Be Fun. It Hadn’t Worked. It’s A Fact Known Throughout The Universes That No Matter How Carefully The Colors Are Chosen, Institutional Decor Ends Up As Either Vomit Green, Unmentionable Brown, Nicotine Yellow Or Surgical Appliance Pink. By Some Little-understood Process Of Sympathetic Resonance, Corridors Painted In Those Colors Always Smell Slightly Of Boiled Cabbage—even If No Cabbage Is Ever Cooked In The Vicinity.

(about Sweeping).... What He Was In Fact Doing Was Moving The Dirt Around With A Broom, To Give It A Change Of Scenery And A Chance To Make New Friends.

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.

Its Useful To Go Out Of This World And See It From The Perspective Of Another One.

That Was Always The Dream, Wasn't It? 'i Wish I'd Known Then What I Know Now'? But When You Got Older You Found Out That You Now Wasn't You Then. You Then Was A Twerp. You Then Was What You Had To Be To Start Out On The Rocky Road Of Becoming You Now, And One Of The Rocky Patches On That Road Was Being A Twerp.

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

There Are No Medium-sized Trees In The Deep Forest. There Are Only The Towering Ones, Whose Canopy Spreads Across The Sky. Below, In The Gloom, There's Light For Nothing But Mosses And Ferns. But When A Giant Falls, Leaving A Little Space ... Then There's A Race - Between The Trees On Either Side, Who Want To Spread Out, And The Seedlings Below, Who Race To Grow Up. Sometimes, You Can Make Your Own Space.

A Lot Hinges On The Fact That, In Most Circumstances, People Are Not Allowed To Hit You With A Mallet. They Put Up All Kinds Of Visible And Invisible Signs That Say, 'do Not Do This' In The Hope That It'll Work, But If It Doesn't, Then They Shrug, Because There Is, Really, No Real Mallet At All.

Freedom Without Limits Is Just A Word.

I Like The Idea Of Democracy. You Have To Have Someone Everyone Distrusts.

She Was, In Fact, Quite A Pleasant Looking Girl, Even If Her Bosom Had Clearly Been Intended For A Girl Two Feet Taller; But She Was Not Her. The Egregious Professor Of Grammar And Usage Would Have Corrected This To "she Was Not She," Which Would Have Caused The Professor Of Logic To Spit Out His Drink.

Grinning Like A Necrophiliac In A Morgue.

The Best Research Is The Research That You Don't Know That You Are Doing.

It's No Wonder Most Religions Are Born In The Desert, Because When Men Lay Beneath That Boundless Night Sky And Look Up At The Infinite Expanse Of Creation They Have An Uncontrollable Urge To Put Something In The Way .

The Senior Wizard In A World Of Magic Had The Same Prospects Of Long-term Employment As A Pogo Stick Tester In A Minefield.

Sometimes You Had To Take A Look At Yourself And Then Look Away.

Look At Yourself

Susan Says, Don't Get Afraid, Get Angry.

No! Please! I'll Tell You Whatever You Want To Know!" The Man Yelled. "really?" Said Vimes. "what's The Orbital Velocity Of The Moon?" "what?" "oh, You'd Like Something Simpler?

Knowing Things Is Magical, If Other People Don't Know Them.

When It's Time To Stop Living, I Will Certainly Make Death My Number One Choice!

Oh, Come On. Revelation Was A Mushroom Dream That Belonged In The Apocrypha. The New Testament Is Basically About What Happened When God Got Religion.

At Least I Know I'm Bewildered About The Really Fundamental And Important Facts Of The Universe.

The Chain Letter To The Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn To Fear. Do Not Break The Chain -- The Last People Who Did Woke Up One Morning To Find Fifty Thousand Armed Men On Their Lawn.

If Per Capita Was A Problem, Decapita Could Be Arranged.

History Isn't Like That. History Unravels Gently, Like An Old Sweater. It Has Been Patched And Darned Many Times, Reknitted To Suit Different People, Shoved In A Box Under The Sink Of Censorship To Be Cut Up For The Dusters Of Propaganda, Yet It Always - Eventually - Manages To Spring Back Into Its Old Familar Shape. History Has A Habit Of Changing The People Who Think They Are Changing It. History Always Has A Few Tricks Up Its Frayed Sleeve. It's Been Around A Long Time.

A Good Banana Daiquiri Is Hard To Come By. I've Only Ever Found One Place In This Country That Makes A Proper One, And That's In Leeds.

This Book Had Two Authors, And They Were Both The Same Person.

The Short Conversation That Follows Eventually Led To A Tree Religion. Its Tenet Of Faith Was This: A Tree That Was A Good Tree And Led A Clean Decent And Upstanding Life Could Be Assured Of A Future Life After Death. If It Was Very Good Indeed It Would Eventually Be Reincarnated As Five Thousand Rolls Of Lavatory Paper.

Oh, There's Plenty Of Reasons. I Just Don't Know Which One.

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