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However, You Do Need Rules. Driving On The Left (or The Right Or, In Parts Of Europe, On The Left And The Right As The Mood Takes You) Is A Rule Which Works, Since Following It Means You're More Likely To Reach Your Intended Rather Than Your Final Destination.

-Terry Pratchett

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However, You Do Need

Terry Pratchett

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However, You Do Need Rules. Driving On The Left (or The Right Or, In Parts Of Europe, On The Left And The Right As The Mood Takes You) Is A Rule Which Works, Since Following It Means You're More Likely To Reach Your Intended Rather Than Your Final Destination.

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All Things That Are, Are Ours. But We Must Care. For If We Do Not Care, We Do Not Exist. If We Do Not Exist, Then There Is Nothing But Blind Oblivion. And Even Oblivion Must End Someday. Lord, Will You Grant Me Just A Little Time? For The Proper Balance Of Things. To Return What Was Given. For The Sake Of Prisoners And The Flight Of Birds. Death Took A Step Backwards. It Was Impossible To Read Expression In Azrael's Features. Death Glanced Sideways At The Servants. Lord, What Can The Harvest Hope For, If Not For The Care Of The Reaper Man?

Oh, There Has To Be Something In The Stocking That Makes A Noise, Said Death. Otherwise, What Is 4:30 A.m. For?

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.

Silverfish Looked Down. "oh. Are You A Dwarf?" Cuddy Gave Him A Blank Stare. "are You A Giant?" He Said. "me? Of Course Not!" "ah. Then I Must Be A Dwarf, Yes."

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.

Truth! Freedom! Justice! And A Hard-boiled Egg!

Other People Salted Away Money For Their Old Age, But Nanny Preferred To Accumulate Memories.

I Don’t See Why It Matters What Is Written. Not When It’s About People. It Can Always Be Crossed Out.

I Wrote Three Books, I Had Three Greenhouses. It Seemed To Me To Be Very Satisfactory.

Plot Exposition That Can Be Gently Wound Out By The Authorial Voice And Internal Monologue Of A Character In The Length Of A Page Has To Be Delivered In A Matter Of Seconds On The Stage.

If There Was Anything That Depressed Him More Than His Own Cynicism, It Was That Quite Often It Still Wasn't As Cynical As Real Life.

I Believe In Reincarnation,” [bjorn] Said. I Know. “i Tried To Live A Good Life. Does That Help?” That’s Not Up To Me. Death Coughed. Of Course... Since You Believe In Reincarnation... You’ll Be Bjorn Again.

Do You Know How Wizards Like To Be Buried?" "yes!" "well, How?" Granny Weatherwax Paused At The Bottom Of The Stairs. "reluctantly.

If You Don't Know When To Be A Human Being, You Don't Know When To Be A Witch.

And The New Day Was A Great Big Fish.

Many People, Meeting Aziraphale For The First Time, Formed Three Impressions: That He Was English, That He Was Intelligent, And That He Was Gayer Than A Treeful Of Monkeys On Nitrous Oxide.

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.

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?

There Were No Lies Here. All Fancies Fled Away. That's What Happened In All Deserts. It Was Just You, And What You Believed.

Granny Knew All About Bad Fortune-telling. It Was Harder Than The Real Thing. You Needed A Good Imagination.

Fortune Telling

I Could Be Wrong. Not Being Certain Is What Being A Philosopher Is All About.

We Who Think We Are About To Die Will Laugh At Anything.

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

Studies Have Shown That An Ant Can Carry One Hundred Times Its Own Weight, But There Is No Known Limit To The Lifting Power Of The Average Tiny Eighty-year-old Spanish Peasant Grandmother.

You Did Something Because It Had Always Been Done, And The Explanation Was, ‘but We’ve Always Done It This Way.’ A Million Dead People Can’t Have Been Wrong, Can They?

Many Feel They Are Called To The Priesthood, But What They Really Hear Is An Inner Voice Saying, 'it's Indoor Work With No Heavy Lifting, Do You Want To Be A Ploughman Like Your Father?'

Either All Days Are Holy Or None Are.

Take It From Me, Whenever You See A Bunch Of Buggers Puttering Around Talking About Truth And Beauty And The Best Way Of Attacking Ethics, You Can Bet Your Sandals It's All Because Dozens Of Other Poor Buggers Are Doing All The Real Work Around The Place.

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.

The Battle Of Koom Valley Is The Only One Known To History Where Both Sides Ambushed Each Other.

And What Are You Doing On It, I Would Like To Know? Running Away From Home, Yesno? If You Were A Boy I'd Say Are You Going To Seek Your Fortune?" "can't Girls Seek Their Fortune?" "i Think They're Supposed To Seek A Boy With A Fortune.

His Mind Worked Fast, Flying In Emergency Supplies Of Common Sense, As Human Minds Do, To Construct A Huge Anchor In Sanity And Prove That What Happened Hadn't Really Happened And, If It Had Happened, Hadn't Happened Much.

Things Just Happen. What The Hell.

Belief Is One Of The Most Powerful Organic Forces In The Multiverse. It May Not Be Able To Move Mountains, Exactly. But It Can Create Someone Who Can. People Get Exactly The Wrong Idea About Belief. They Think It Works Back To Front. They Think The Sequence Is, First Object, Then Belief. In Fact, It Works The Other Way.

I Intend, Before The Endgame Looms, To Die Sitting In A Chair In My Own Garden With A Glass Of Brandy In My Hand And Thomas Tallis On The Ipod. Oh, And Since This Is England, I Had Better Add, "if Wet, In The Library." Who Could Say That This Is Bad?

Your Average Witch Is Not, By Nature, A Social Animal As Far As Other Witches Are Concerned. There's A Conflict Of Dominant Personalities. There's A Group Of Ringleaders Without A Ring. There's The Basic Unwritten Rule Of Witchcraft, Which Is 'don't Do What You Will, Do What I Say.' The Natural Size Of A Coven Is One. Witches Only Get Together When They Can't Avoid It.

You're Not Allowed To Call Them Dinosaurs Any More," Said Yo-less. "it's Speciesist. You Have To Call Them Pre-petroleum Persons.

Political Correctness

People Were Stupid, Sometimes. They Thought The Library Was A Dangerous Place Because Of All The Magical Books, Which Was True Enough, But What Made It Really One Of The Most Dangerous Places There Could Ever Be Was The Simple Fact That It Was A Library.

It Had A Very Long Pendulum, And The Pendulum Swung With A Slow Tick-tock That Set His Teeth On Edge, Because It Was The The Kind Of Delibrate, Annoying Ticking That Wanted To Make It Abundantly Clear That Every Tick And Every Tock Was Stripping Another Second Off Your Life.

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.

Banana Daiquiris Aren't Knock-'em-back-by-the-flagon.

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

One Of The Highlights Of The First Good Omens Tour Was Neil And I Walking Through New York Singing Shoehorn With Teeth. Well, We'd Had A Good Breakfast. And You Don't Get Mugged, Either.

I Don't Think A Baker Reads An Awful Lot About Bread.

What Was The Point Of Education, He Thought, If People Went Out Afterward And Used It?

Well, The Traveling Teachers Do Come Through Every Few Months," Said The Baron. "yes, Sir, I Know, Sir, And They're Useless, Sir. They Teach Facts, Not Understanding. It's Like Teaching People About Forests By Showing Them A Saw. I Want A Proper School, Sir, To Teach Reading And Writing, And Most Of All Thinking, Sir, So People Can Find What They're Good At, Because Someone Doing What They Really Like Is Always An Asset To Any Country, And Too Often People Never Find Out Until It's Too Late.

If Women Were As Good As Men They'd Be A Lot Better!

Because Some Stories End, But Old Stories Go On, And You Gotta Dance To The Music If You Want To Stay Ahead

But I Think You Have A Right To Know What It Is You’re Not Being Told.

Your Average Witch Is Not, By Nature, A Social Animal.... The Natural Size Of A Coven Is One. Witches Only Get Together When They Can't Avoid It.

He Hated Games They Made The World Look Too Simple. Chess, In Particular, Had Always Annoyed Him. It Was The Dumb Way The Pawns Went Off And Slaughtered Their Fellow Pawns While The King Lounged About Doing Nothing. If Only The Pawns Would've United ... The Whole Board Could've Been A Republic In About A Dozen Moves.

Things Like Crowns Had A Troublesome Effect On Clever Folk; It Was Best To Leave All The Reigning To The Kind Of People Whose Eyebrows Met In The Middle When They Tried To Think. In A Funny Sort Of Way, They Were Much Better At It.

Open Your Eyes And Then Open Your Eyes Again.

It Was So Loud And So Deep, It Wasn't Really Sound At All, Just Something That Turned The Air Hard And Then Hit You With It.

There's That Lovely Thing For The First Month Or Two Of Writing A New Book: Ok, I Don't Know What That Character's Going To Do, But We'll Find Out Later. After About Three Or Four Months You Come To That Bit Where You've Got To Put Some Plot In Before It's Too Late, And You Have To Go Back And Start Inserting Plot, And, Ooh, I've Left Out The Literature, Ok, Lets Put Some In.

First Draft: Let It Run. Turn All The Knobs Up To 11. Second Draft: Hell. Cut It Down And Cut It Into Shape. Third Draft: Comb Its Nose And Blow Its Hair. I Usually Find That Most Of The Book Will Have Handed Itself To Me On That First Draft.

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

Thinking. This Book Contains Some. Whether You Try It At Home Is Up To You.

The Librarian Was Not Familiar With Love, Which Had Always Struck Him As A Bit Ethereal And Soppy, But Kindness, On The Other Hand, Was Practical. You Knew Where You Were With Kindness, Especially If You Were Holding A Pie It Had Just Given You.

Belief Sloshes Around In The Firmament Like Lumps Of Clay Spiralling Into A Potter's Wheel. That's How Gods Get Created, For Example. They Clearly Must Be Created By Their Own Believers, Because A Brief Resume Of The Lives Of Most Gods Suggests That Their Origins Certainly Couldn't Be Divine. They Tend To Do Exactly The Things People Would Do If Only They Could, Especially When It Comes To Nymphs, Golden Showers, And The Smiting Of Your Enemies.

He Felt As If He Had Been Shipwrecked On The Titanic, But In The Nick Of Time Had Been Rescued. By The Lusitania

We Are Here And It Is Now. The Way I See It Is, After That, Everything Tends Towards Guesswork.

- I Notice You Didn't Laugh, Mr. Black! - No, Your Majesty. We Are Forbidden To Laugh At The Things Kings Say, Sire, Because Otherwise We Would Be At It All Day.

Botswana Is Also The Only Country In The World With A Colour In Its Flag Meant To Represent Rain (a Sort Of Blue-grey). Not Many People Know This.

Magic Never Dies. It Merely Fades Away.

It's Going To Look Pretty Good, Then, Isn't It," Said War Testily, "the One Horseman And Three Pedestrians Of The Apocalypse.

The Secret Is Not To Dream," She Whispered. "the Secret Is To Wake Up. Waking Up Is Harder. I Have Woken Up And I Am Real. I Know Where I Come From And I Know Where I'm Going. You Cannot Fool Me Any More. Or Touch Me. Or Anything That Is Mine.

These Weren't Encouraged In The City, Since The Heft And Throw Of A Longbow's Arrow Could Send It Through An Innocent Bystander A Hundred Yards Away Instead Of The Innocent Bystander At Whom It Was Aimed.

The Thing Is, I Mean, There’s Times When You Look At The Universe And You Think, “what About Me?” And You Can Just Hear The Universe Replying, “well, What About You?”

What's Money Interested In? More Money.

The Labyrinth Of Ephebe Is Ancient And Full Of One Hundred And One Amazing Things You Can Do With Hidden Springs, Razor-sharp Knives, And Falling Rocks.

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.

Look, That's Why There's Rules, Understand? So That You Think Before You Break 'em.

I Once Absent-mindedly Ordered Three Mile Island Dressing In A Restaurant And, With Great Presence Of Mind, They Brought Thousand Island Dressing And A Bottle Of Chili Sauce.

Presence Of Mind

Any Sensible Ruler Would Have Killed Off Leonard, And Lord Vetinari Was Extremely Sensible And Often Wondered Why He Had Not Done So. He'd Decided That It Was Because, Imprisoned In The Priceless, Inquiring Amber Of Leonard's Massive Mind, Underneath That Bright Investigative Genius Was A Kind Of Willful Innocence That Might In Lesser Men Be Called Stupidity. It Was The Seat And Soul Of That Force Which, Down The Millennia, Had Caused Mankind To Stick Its Fingers In The Electric Light Socket Of The Universe And Play With The Switch To See What Happened - And Then Be Very Surprised When It Did.

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

You Can't Second-guess Ineffability, I Always Say.

One Person Is Nothing. Two People Are A Nation.

Nigeria Independence

Omens Are Everywhere In This World You Just Have To Find The One That Fits.

Few Things Are Hidden From A Quiet Child With Good Eyesight.

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.

Of Course, Just Because We've Heard A Spine-chilling, Blood-curdling Scream Of The Sort To Make Your Very Marrow Freeze In Your Bones Doesn't Automatically Mean There's Anything Wrong.

Inside Every Sane Person There’s A Madman Struggling To Get Out.

Gravity Is A Habit That Is Hard To Shake Off.

Any Wizard Bright Enough To Survive For Five Minutes Was Also Bright Enough To Realize That If There Was Any Power In Demonology, Then It Lay With The Demons. Using It For Your Own Purposes Would Be Like Trying To Beat Mice To Death With A Rattlesnake.

...and The Funny Thing Was That People Who Weren't Entirely Certain They Were Right Always Argued Much Louder Than Other People, As If The Main Person They Were Trying To Convince Were Themselves.

The Disc, Being Flat, Has No Real Horizon. Any Adventurous Sailor Who Got Funny Ideas From Staring At Eggs And Oranges For Too Long And Set Out For The Antipodes Soon Learned That The Reason Why Distant Ships Sometimes Looked As Though They Were Disappearing Over The Edge Of The World Was That They Were Disappearing Over The Edge Of The World.

When I Was A Kid, I Read The Science-fiction Shelves, And I Read The Fantasy Shelves.

It's A Terrible Thing For A Man When His Woman Gangs Up On Him Wi' A Toad

The Four Horsemen Whose Ride Presages The End Of The World Are Known To Be Death, War, Famine, And Pestilence. But Even Less Significant Events Have Their Own Horsemen. For Example, The Four Horsemen Of The Common Cold Are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, And Lack Of Tissues; The Four Horsemen Whose Appearance Foreshadows Any Public Holiday Are Storm, Gales, Sleet, And Contra-flow.

In An Instant He Became Aware That The Tourist Was About To Try His Own Peculiar Brand Of Linguistics, Which Meant That He Would Speak Loudly And Slowly In His Own Language.

Granny Was An Old-fashioned Witch. She Didn’t Do Good For People, She Did Right By Them.

I Was Once A Journalist. And I Think Of Myself As A Journalist, And That's It. You Tell The Truth. I Even Wrote A Book Called 'the Truth'.

Telling The Truth

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.

Have A Bit More Patience With Newbies. Of Course Some Of Them Act Dumb - They're Often Students, For Heaven's Sake.

There Are Hardly Any Excesses Of The Most Crazed Psychopath That Cannot Easily Be Duplicated By A Normal Kindly Family Man Who Just Comes In To Work Every Day And Has A Job To Do.

Belief Was Never Mentioned At Home, But Right Actions Were Taught By Daily Example.

You Say That You People Don’t Burn Folk And Sacrifice People Anymore, But That’s What True Faith Would Mean, Y’see? Sacrificin’ Your Own Life, One Day At A Time, To The Flame, Declarin’ The Truth Of It, Workin’ For It, Breathin’ The Soul Of It. That’s Religion. Anything Else Is Just . . . Is Just Bein’ Nice. And A Way Of Keepin’ In Touch With The Neighbors.

It's Beautiful," Said Mort Softly. "what Is It?" The Sun Is Under The Disc, Said Death. "is It Like This Every Night?" Every Night, Said Death. Nature's Like That. "doesn't Anyone Know?" Me. You. The Gods. Good, Isn't It? "gosh!" Death Leaned Over The Saddle And Looked Down At The Kingdoms Of The World. I Don't Know About You, He Said, But I Could Murder A Curry.

...inside Every Old Person Is A Young Person Wondering What Happened.

The People Who Guard The Rainbow Don't Like Those Who Get In The Way Of The Sun.

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

Tourist, Rincewind Decided, Meant ‘idiot.

History, Contrary To Popular Theories, Is Kings And Dates And Battles.

A World Like That, Which Exists Only Because The Gods Enjoy A Joke, Must Be A Place Where Magic Can Survive. And Sex Too, Of Course.

I've Always Felt That What I Have Going For Me Is Not My Imagination, Because Everyone Has An Imagination. What I Have Is A Relentlessly Controlled Imagination. What Looks Like Wild Invention Is Actually Quite Carefully Calculated.

One Of The Important Things About Being A Small-town Reporter Is Knowing What Not To Put In The Paper.

After You've Been Working Fairly Intensively On A Novel For Six Months You Never Want To See The Damn Thing Again.

I'll Be More Enthusiastic About Encouraging Thinking Outside The Box When There's Evidence Of Any Thinking Going On Inside It.

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.

Maybe The Only Significant Difference Between A Really Smart Simulation And A Human Being Was The Noise They Made When You Punched Them.

There Has Been A Lot Of Bad Fantasy In The Past - I'm By No Means Saying That All Classic Fantasy Out There Is Bad - But There Has Been A Lot Of Bad Fantasy Written By People Who Read A Lot Of Fantasy And So All They Keep Doing Is Recycling It.

The 'new Testament', Now, I Quite Liked. Jesus Had A Lot Of Good Things To Say, And As For His Father, He Must Have Been Highly Thought Of By The Community To Work With Wood - A Material That Couldn't Have Been Widely Available In Palestine.

The Female Mind Is Certainly A Devious One, My Lord." Vetinari Looked At His Secretary In Surprise. "well, Of Course It Is. It Has To Deal With The Male One.

And So The Children Of The Revolution Were Faced With The Age-old Problem: It Wasn't That You Had The Wrong Kind Of Government, Which Was Obvious, But That You Had The Wrong Kind Of People. As Soon As You Saw People As Things To Be Measured, They Didn't Measure Up.

Divers Alarums And Excursions', She Read, Uncertainly. 'that Means Lots Of Terrible Happenings, Said Magrat. 'you Always Put That In Plays.' Alarums And What?', Said Nanny Ogg, Who Hadn't Been Listening. Excursions', Said Magrat Patienly. Oh.' Nanny Ogg Brightened A Bit. 'the Seaside Would Be Nice,' She Said. Oh Do Shut Up, Gytha,' Said Granny Weatherwax. 'they're Not For You. They're Only For Divers, Like It Says. Probably So They Can Recover From All Them Alarums.

5.buggre Alle This For A Larke I Amme Sick To Mye Hart Of Typefetinge. Master Biltonn If No Gentelmann, And Master Scagges Now More That A Tighte Fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I Telle You, Onne A Daye Laike Thif Ennywone Withe Half And Oz Of Sense Shoulde Bee Oute In The Suneshain, Ane Nott Stucke Here Alle The Lielong Dale Inn Thif Mowldey Olde By-our-lady Workefhoppe *ae@;i*

He Was The Sort Of Person Who Stood On Mountaintops During Thunderstorms In Wet Copper Armour Shouting 'all The Gods Are Bastards.'

It Was Nice To Hear The Voices Of Little Children At Play, Provided You Took Care To Be Far Enough Away Not To Hear What They Were Actually Saying.

In Ancient Times Cats Were Worshiped As Gods; They Have Not Forgotten This.

So Much Universe, And So Little Time.

If You Have To Look Along The Shaft Of An Arrow From The Wrong End, If A Man Has You Entirely At His Mercy, Then Hope Like Hell That Man Is An Evil Man. Because The Evil Like Power... They Will Talk, They Will Gloat. So Hope Like Hell Your Captor Is An Evil Man. A Good Man Will Kill You With Hardly A Word.

Whut's The Plan, Rob?" Said One Of Them. "okay, Lads, This Is What We'll Do. As Soon As We See Somethin', We'll Attack It. Right?" This Caused A Cheer. "ach, 'tis A Good Plan," Said Daft Wullie.

The Trouble With Having An Open Mind, Of Course, Is That People Will Insist On Coming Along And Trying To Put Things In It.

Incidentally, It's Best Not To Argue With The Nursing Staff. I Find The Best Course Of Action Is To Throw Some Chocolates In One Direction And Hurry Off In The Other While Their Attention Is Distracted.

The World Is A Globe — The Farther You Sail, The Closer To Home You Are.

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

I Have No Use For People Who Have Learned The Limits Of The Possible.

It's A God-eat-god World.

"out Of Print" Is Bookseller Speak For "we Can't Be Hedgehogged".

It's Actually True That I Keep Myself Going By Constantly Promising Myself That In Response For The Hard Work I Will Be Allowed To Do Some More Hard Work Later On.

Magic Is Just A Way Of Saying 'i Don't Know.'

But Then Science Is Nothing But A Series Of Questions That Lead To More Questions.

It Was Possibly The Most Circumspect Advance In The History Of Military Maneuvers, Right Down At The Bottom End Of The Scale That Things Like The Charge Of The Light Brigade Are At The Top Of.

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

A Marriage Is Always Made Up Of Two People Who Are Prepared To Swear That Only The Other One Snores.

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!

Adventure! People Talked About The Idea As If It Were Something Worthwhile, Rather Than A Mess Of Bad Food, No Sleep And Strange People Inexplicably Trying To Stick Pointed Objects In Bits Of You.

Look At Satan. Created As An Angel, Grows Up To Be The Great Adversary. Hey, If You’re Going To Go On About Genetics, You Might As Well Say The Kid Will Grow Up To Be An Angel. After All, His Father Was Really Big In Heaven In The Old Days. Saying He’ll Grow Up To Be A Demon Just Because His Dad Became One Is Like Saying A Mouse With Its Tail Cut Off Will Give Birth To Tailless Mice. No. Upbringing Is Everything. Take It From Me.

By The Time You've Reached Your Sixties, You Do Know That One Day You Will Die, And Knowing That Is At Least The Beginning Of Wisdom.

It's A Sword. Said The Hogfather. They're Not Meant To Be Safe.

It Wasn't That Nanny Ogg Sang Badly. It Was Just That She Could Hit Notes Which, When Amplified By A Tin Bath Half Full Of Water, Ceased To Be Sound And Became Some Sort Of Invasive Presence.

Truly, He Thought, The Way Of Enlightenment Is Like Unto Half A Mile Of Broken Glass.

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.

You Get All Sorts Of People In The Library, And The Librarian Gets It All.

It's Still Magic Even If You Know How It's Done.

We're Dealing Here," Said Vimes, "with A Twisted Mind." "oh, No! You Think So?" "yes." "but... No... You Can't Be Right. Because Nobby Was With Us All The Time." "not Nobby," Said Vimes Testily. "whatever He Might Do To A Dragon, I Doubt If He'd Make It Explode. There's Stranger People In This World Than Corporal Nobbs, My Lad." Carrot's Expression Slid Into A Rictus Of Intrigued Horror. "gosh," He Said.

I Reckon That Stonehege Was Build By The Contemporary Equivalent Of Microsoft, Whereas Avebury Was Definitely An Apple Circle.

You're Not Going To Tell Me They Built Fifty-foot-high Killer Golems, Are You?" "only A Man Would Think Of That. It's Our Job," Said Moist. "if You Don't Think Of Fifty-foot-high Killer Golems First, Someone Else Will.

I Can't Be Talking To A Tree. If I Was Talking To A Tree I'd Be Mad, And I'm Not Mad, So Trees Can't Talk.

I Can No Longer Type, So I Use Talkingpoint And Dragon Dictate. It's A Speech-to-text Program, And There's An Add-on For Talking Which Some Guys Came Up With.

Imagination Is Only Intelligence Having Fun. A Healthy Mind Knows How To Switch Between Worlds, And Which One You Need To Eat And Sleep In.

The Most Prudent Thing Any Intelligent Animal Can Do, If It Would Prefer Its Descendents Not To Spend A Lot Of Time On A Slab With Electrodes Clamped To Their Brains Or Sticking Mines On The Bottom Of Ships, Or Being Patronised By Zoologists, Is To Make Bloody Certain Humans Don't Find Out About It.

My Character - And For That Matter My Worst Habits - Could Only Be Described By Someone Else. You Can't Open A Box With The Crowbar Inside It.

I Just Rearrange Words Into A Pleasing Order For Money.

...william Wondered Why He Always Disliked People Who Said 'no Offense Meant.' Maybe It Was Because They Found It Easier To To Say 'no Offense Meant' Than Actually To Refrain From Giving Offense.

Even Our Fears Make Us Feel Important, Because We Fear We Might Not Be.

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

Look At Yourself

Your Own Brain Ought To Have The Decency To Be On Your Side!

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

There's Some Things That You Wouldn't Tackle In A Children's Book Because It Would Be Beyond, Not The Mental Capabilities, But The Experience Of Someone Under The Age Of Say Ten Or Eleven To Encompass. But That Field Is Smaller Than You Might Think. They Can Easily Cope With Death And Things Like That; They Know About It And It's A Subject That Often Preoccupies Them.

Ridcully Was To Management What King Herod Was To The Bethlehem Playgroup Association.

Words Are The Litmus Paper Of The Minds. If You Find Yourself In The Power Of Someone Who Will Use The Word "commence" In Cold Blood, Go Somewhere Else Very Quickly. But If They Say "enter", Don't Stop To Pack.

Finding Yourself

They Called Themselves The Munrungs. It Meant The People, Or The True Human Beings. It's What Most People Call Themselves, To Begin With. And Then One Day The Tribe Meets Some Other People Or, If It's Not Been A Good Day, The Enemy. If Only They'd Think Up A Name Like Some More True Human Beings, It'd Save A Lot Of Trouble Later On

And It Came To Pass That In Time The Great God Om Spake Unto Brutha, The Chosen One: "psst!

Asking Someone To Repeat A Phrase You'd Not Only Heard Very Clearly But Were Also Exceedingly Angry About Was Around Defcon Ii In The Lexicon Of Squabble.

It Was The Living Who Ignored The Strange And Wonderful, Because Life Was Too Full Of The Boring And Mundane.

The Trouble With Thinking Was That, Once You Started, You Went On Doing It.

For Example, The Dwarfs Found Out How To Turn Lead Into Gold By Doing It The Hard Way. The Difference Between That And The Easy Way Is That The Hard Way Works.

History Has A Habit Of Changing The People Who Think They Are Changing It

Once Upon A Time The Plural Of 'wizard' Was 'war'.

Once Upon A Time

Never Build A Dungeon You Wouldn't Be Happy To Spend The Night In Yourself. The World Would Be A Happier Place If More People Remembered That.

Haven't You Got Any Romance In Your Soul?" Said Magrat Plaintively. "no," Said Granny. "i Ain't. And Stars Don't Care What You Wish, And Magic Don't Make Things Better, And No One Doesn't Get Burned Who Sticks Their Hand In A Fire. If You Want To Amount To Anything As A Witch, Magrat Garlick, You Got To Learn Three Things. What's Real, What's Not Real, And What's The Difference.

Mere Animals Couldn’t Possibly Manage To Act Like This. You Need To Be A Human Being To Be Really Stupid.

Time Is A Drug. Too Much Of It Kills You.

All Assassins Had A Full-length Mirror In Their Rooms, Because It Would Be A Terrible Insult To Anyone To Kill Them When You Were Badly Dressed.

I Think That Sick People In Ankh-morpork Generally Go To A Vet. It's Generally A Better Bet. There's More Pressure On A Vet To Get It Right. People Say "it Was God's Will" When Granny Dies, But They Get Angry When They Lose A Cow.

Or -- And This She Knew Was A Far More Accurate Way Of Looking At It -- The Book Was True And Reality Was Lying.

I Try To Make Computers Say Things Like You Have 60 Seconds To Achieve Safe Distance.

Commander, I Always Used To Consider That You Had A Definite Anti-authoritarian Streak In You.” “sir?” “it Seems That You Have Managed To Retain This Even Though You Are Authority.” “sir?” “that’s Practically Zen.

What Was Supposed To Be So Special About A Full Moon? It Was Only A Big Circle Of Light. And The Dark Of The Moon Was Only Darkness. But Halfway Between The Two, When The Moon Was Between The Worlds Of Light And Dark, When Even The Moon Lived On The Edge...maybe Then A Witch Could Believe In The Moon.

You Never Knew About People, Like You Never Knew How Deep A Pond Was Because All You Saw Was The Top.

Are You A Philosopher? Where's Your Sponge?

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.

The Thing About Secrets Is That They Are Usually Best Kept By Just One Person. That Was The Special Thing About Secrets. Some People Seemed To Think That The Best Way To Keep A Secret Was To Tell As Many People As Possible; What Could Possibly Go Wrong For A Secret When There Were So Many People Defending It?

I Mean, You're Right About The Fire And War, All That. But That Rapture Stuff--well, If You Could See Them All In Heaven--serried Ranks Of Them As Far As The Mind Can Follow And Beyond, League After League Of Us, Flaming Swords, All That, Well, What I'm Trying To Say Is Who Has Time To Go Round Picking People Out And Popping Them Up In The Air To Sneer At The People Dying Of Radiation Sickness On The Parched And Burning Earth Below Them? If That's Your Idea Of A Morally Acceptable Time, I Might Add.

In My Early Teens, I Read Every Bound Volume Of The Magazine Punch. Every Writer Of Any Distinction In The English Language, And I Mean Including America And England, At Some Time Wrote For Punch. Jerome K. Jerome, Who Wrote Three Men In A Boat, I Loved. I Was Very Impressed When I Read A Piece By Mark Twain In Punch, And Realized That Despite The Fact That They Were On Different Continents, Jerome K. Jerome And Mark Twain Had The Same Kind Of Laconic, Laid-back, "the Human Race Is Damn Stupid, But Quite Interesting" Attitude. They Were Almost Talking With The Same Voice.

I Decided At School That The Only Sensible Way To Make A Living By Arranging Words In A Pleasing Order Was By Working On Newspapers, Because You Got Paid At The End Of The Week Or The End Of The Month.

It Doesn't Matter How You Live And Die, It's How The Bards Wrote It Down.

What Have I Always Believed? That On The Whole, And By And Large, If A Man Lived Properly, Not According To What Any Priests Said, But According To What Seemed Decent And Honest Inside, Then It Would, At The End, More Or Less, Turn Out All Right.

You Get A Wonderful View From The Point Of No Return.

The Consensus Seemed To Be That If Really Large Numbers Of Men Were Sent To Storm The Mountain, Then Enough Might Survive The Rocks To Take The Citadel. This Is Essentially The Basis Of All Military Thinking.

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.

Child. That Was A Terrible Thing To Say To Anyone Who Was Almost Thirteen.

The Students Were Staring At Her In The Manner Of Those Who Have Heard Of The Species 'female' But Have Never Expected To Get This Close To One.

Just To Keep Bad Dreams At Bay, She Took A Swig Out Of A Bottle That Smelled Of Apples And Happy Brain-death.

She Folded Her Arms And Then Shouted, "right You Thieving Scunners! How Dare You Steal Miss Treason's Funeral Meats!" "oh, Waily, Waily, It's The Foldin' O' The Arms, The Foooldin' O' The Aaaarmss!" Cried Daft Wullie, Dropping To The Ground And Trying To Cover Himself With Leaves. Around Him Feegles Started To Wail And Cower And Big Yan Began To Bang His Head On The Rear Wall Of The Dairy.

It Is Possible To Live Well With Dementia And Write Best-sellers 'like Wot I Do.

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.

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

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Timothy Findley

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