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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.

-Terry Pratchett

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In An Instant He

Terry Pratchett

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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.

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More From Terry Pratchett

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

I Am Death, Not Taxes. I Turn Up Only Once.

The Elevator Shaft Was A Kind Of Heat Sink. Hot Food Was Cold By The Time It Arrived. Cold Food Got Colder. No One Knew What Would Happen To Ice Cream, But It Would Probably Involve Some Rewriting Of The Laws Of Thermodynamics.

Chaos Is Found In Greatest Abundance Wherever Order Is Being Sought. It Always Defeats Order, Because It Is Better Organized.

People Don't Like Change. But Make The Change Fast Enough And You Go From One Type Of Normal To Another.

The Truth May Be Out There, But Lies Are Inside Your Head.

One Thing That Writers Have In Common Is That They Are Readers First. They Have Read Lots And Lots Of Stuff, Because They're Just Infested With Lots Of Stuff.

The Universe Danced Towards Life. Life Was A Remarkably Common Commodity. Anything Sufficiently Complicated Seemed To Get Cut In For Some, In The Same Way That Anything Massive Enough Got A Generous Helping Of Gravity. The Universe Had A Definite Tendency Towards Awareness. This Suggested A Certain Subtle Cruelty Woven Into The Very Fabric Of Space-time.

Time Was Something That Largely Happened To Other People; He Viewed It In The Same Way That People On The Shore Viewed The Sea. It Was Big And It Was Out There, And Sometimes It Was An Invigorating Thing To Dip A Toe Into, But You Couldn't Live In It All The Time. Besides, It Always Made His Skin Wrinkle.

If You Get The Characters Right You've Done Sometimes Nearly Half The Work. I Sometimes Find I Get The Characters Right Then The Characters Will Often Help Me Write The Book - Not What They Look Like That's Not Very Important - What People Look Like Is Not About Their Character. You Have To Describe The Shape They Leave In The World, How They React To Things, What Effect They Have On People And You Do That By Telling Their Story.

There's No Point In Killing An Opponent... There's No Triumph Over A Corpse, But A Beaten Opponent, Who Will Remain Beaten Every Day Of The Remainder Of Their Sad And Wretched Life, Is Something To Treasure.

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

I Dare Say That Quite A Few People Have Contemplated Death For Reasons That Much Later Seemed To Them To Be Quite Minor.

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.

That's What's So Stupid About The Whole Magic Thing, You Know. You Spend Twenty Years Learning The Spell That Makes Nude Virgins Appear In Your Bedroom, And Then You're So Poisoned By Quicksilver Fumes And Half-blind From Reading Old Grimoires That You Can't Remember What Happens Next.

It Is Often Said That Before You Die Your Life Passes Before Your Eyes. It Is In Fact True. It's Called Living.

Opera Happens Because A Large Number Of Things Amazingly Fail To Go Wrong.

Raise The Stakes! Always Push Your Luck Because No One Else Would Push It For You.

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.

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.

Occasionally He Would Very Nearly Swear.

Yes, Sir, Thank You, Sir, And I Wouldn’t Trust Me One Little Inch, Sir. I Knows A Bad One When I Sees Them. I Have A Mirror.

Sometimes I Feel That The World Is Made Up Of Sensible People Who Know The Plot And Bloody Idiots Who Don't.

No. Men Should Die For Lies. But The Truth Is Too Precious To Die For.

I Taught Myself More In The Library Than School Taught Me.

They Can Tak' Oour Lives But They Canna Tak' Oour Troousers!

The Trouble With Life Was That You Didn’t Get A Chance To Practice Before Doing It For Real.

It Is A Mistake Trying To Cheer Up Camels. You May As Well Drop Meringues Into A Black Hole.

This, Milord, Is My Family's Axe. We Have Owned It For Almost Nine Hundred Years, See. Of Course, Sometimes It Needed A New Blade. And Sometimes It Has Required A New Handle, New Designs On The Metalwork, A Little Refreshing Of The Ornamentation . . . But Is This Not The Nine Hundred-year-old Axe Of My Family? And Because It Has Changed Gently Over Time, It Is Still A Pretty Good Axe, Y'know. Pretty Good.

When Millions Of Tons Of Angry Elephant Come Spinning Through The Sky, And There Was No One There To Hear It, Does It - Philosopically Speaking - Make A Noise

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

Drinks Like This Tend To Get Called Traffic Lights Or Rainbow's Revenge Or, In Places Where Truth Is More Highly Valued, Hello And Good-bye, Mr. Brain Cell.

The Only Really Sane Person In There Is Igor, And Possibly The Turnip. And I'm Not Sure About The Turnip.

Animals Never Spend Time Dividing Experience Into Little Bits And Speculating About All The Bits They've Missed. The Whole Panoply Of The Universe Has Been Neatly Expressed To Them As Things To (a) Mate With, (b) Eat, (c) Run Away From, And (d) Rocks.

It Was Lonely On The Hill, And Cold. And All You Could Do Was Keep Going. You Could Scream, Cry, And Stamp Your Feet, But Apart From Making You Feel Warmer, It Wouldn’t Do Any Good. You Could Say It Was Unfair, And That Was True, But The Universe Didn’t Care Because It Didn’t Know What “fair” Meant. That Was The Big Problem About Being A Witch. It Was Up To You. It Was Always Up To You.

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."

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

I Don't Think I've Drunk Enough Beer To Understand That.

If You Have Let Pride Get The Better Of You, Then You Have Already Lost, But If You Grab Pride By The Scruff Of The Neck And Ride It Like A Stallion, Then You May Have Already Won.

This Is Space. It's Sometimes Called The Final Frontier. (except That Of Course You Can't Have A Final Frontier, Because There'd Be Nothing For It To Be A Frontier To, But As Frontiers Go, It's Pretty Penultimate . . .)

People's Whole Lives Do Pass In Front Of Their Eye Before They Die. The Process Is Called "living".

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.

When People Say Things Are A Lot More Complicated Than That, They Means They're Getting Worried That They Won't Like The Truth.

Lessee...he'd Gone Off After The Funeral And Gotten Drunk. No, Not Drunk, Another Word, Ended With "er." Drunker. That Was It.

I Mistrust The Term Graphic Novel Because It Sounds Like A Good Thing To Put On A Tee-shirt. That's Why The French Like Them.

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.

Oh, My Dear Vimes, History Changes All The Time. It Is Constantly Being Re-examined And Re-evaluated, Otherwise How Would We Be Able To Keep Historians Occupied? We Can't Possibly Allow People With Their Sort Of Minds To Walk Around With Time On Their Hands.

Some Humans Would Do Anything To See If It Was Possible To Do It. If You Put A Large Switch In Some Cave Somewhere, With A Sign On It Saying 'end-of-the-world Switch. Please Do Not Touch,' The Paint Wouldn't Even Have Time To Dry.

It Was The Heart Of Any Scam Or Fiddle -- Keep The Punter Uncertain, Or, If He Is Certain, Make Him Certain Of The Wrong Thing.

Nothing I Can Say Or Devise, And Nothing Anybody Else Can Say Or Devise, Is Going To Be Perfect.

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.

For The First Time In Her Life Granny Wondered Whether There Might Be Something Important In All These Books People Were Setting Store By These Days, Although She Was Opposed To Books On Strict Moral Grounds, Since She Had Heard That Many Of Them Were Written By Dead People And Therefore It Stood To Reason Reading Them Would Be As Bad As Necromancy. Among The Many Things In The Infinitely Varied Universe With Which Granny Did Not Hold Was Talking To Dead People, Who By All Accounts Had Enough Troubles Of Their Own.

You Need To Believe In Things That Aren't True. How Else Can They Become?

Why Not? If Enough People Believe, You Can Be God Of Anything.

Christ Managed To Boil Down An Awful Lot Of Commandments To A Few Very Simple Rules For Living. It's When You Go Backwards Through The 'begats' And The Garden Of Eden, And You Start Thinking, 'hang On, That's A Big Punishment For Eating One Lousy Apple... There's A Human-rights Issue.'

Ingenuity And Incongruity Always Cheer Me Up.

[y]ou Weren't Born With A Talent For Witchcraft: It Didn't Come Easily; You Worked Hard At It Because You Wanted It. You Forced The World To Give It To You, No Matter The Price, And The Price Is And Always Will Be High... People Say You Don't Find Witchcraft; Witchcraft Finds You. But You've Found It, Even If At The Time You Didn't Know What It Was You Were Finding, And You Grabbed It By Its Scrawny Neck And Made It Work For You.

What Is Magic? There Is The Wizard's Explanation... Wizards Talk About Candles, Circles, Planets, Stars, Bananas, Chants, Runes And The Importance Of Having At Least Four Good Meals Every Day.

A Good Plan Isn't One Where Someone Wins, It's Where Nobody Thinks They've Lost.

If I Knew That I Could Die, I Would Live. My Life, My Death, My Choice.

The Assassin Moved Quietly From Roof To Roof Until He Was Well Away From The Excitement Around The Watch House. His Movements Could Be Called Cat-like, Except That He Did Not Stop To Spray Urine Up Against Things.

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.

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

There Is No Doubt That Being Human Is Incredibly Difficult And Cannot Be Mastered In One Lifetime.

Dogs Are Not Like Cats, Who Amusingly Tolerate Humans Only Until Someone Comes Up With A Tin Opener That Can Be Operated With A Paw. Men Made Dogs, They Took Wolves And Gave Them Human Things - Unnecessary Intelligence, Names, A Desire To Belong, And A Twitching Inferiority Complex. All Dogs Dream Wolf Dreams, And Know They're Dreaming Of Biting Their Maker. Every Dog Knows, Deep In His Heart, That He Is A Bad Dog.

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

Most Modern Fantasy Just Rearranges The Furniture In Tolkien's Attic.

And When The Patrician Was Unhappy, He Became Very Democratic. He Found Intricate And Painful Ways Of Spreading That Unhappiness As Far As Possible.

Fate Can Be One Mean God At Times.

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.

...it Is Well Known That A Vital Ingredient Of Success Is Not Knowing That What You're Attempting Can't Be Done.

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

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.

Currently, It Was Leading Him Through A Neighborhood That Was On The Downside Of Whatever Curve You Hoped You'd Bought Your Property On The Upside Of. Graffiti And Garbage Were Everywhere Here. They Were Everywhere In The City, If It Came To That, But Elsewhere The Garbage Was Better Quality, And The Graffiti Was Close To Being Correctly Spelled. The Whole Area Was Waiting For Something To Happen, Like A Really Bad Fire.

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.

Stupid Men Are Often Capable Of Things The Clever Would Not Dare To Contemplate.

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.

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?

Why Bother With A Cunning Plan When A Simple One Will Do?

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

The Conflict Is Not Between Christianity And Islam Or Between East And West - Instead, It Is Between Stupid People And Other Stupid People.

The Trouble Is You Can Shut Your Eyes But You Can’t Shut Your Mind.

You Can't Inspire People With Facts. They Need A Cause. They Need A Symbol.

Neither Of My Parents Went To Church, But They Did Everything That You Needed To Do To Be Christian. That's Something A Quaker Would Call An Intimation Of The Divine.

She Was Not, Herself, Hugely In Favour Of Motherhood In General. Obviously It Was Necessary, But It Wasn't Exactly Difficult. Even Cats Managed It. But Women Acted As If They'd Been Given A Medal That Entitled Them To Boss People Around. It Was As If, Just Because They'd Got The Label Which Said "mother," Everyone Else Got A Tiny Part Of The Label That Said "child".

Be Careful What You Wish For. You Never Know Who Will Be Listening.

I Can't Stand Any Music That Requires Its Singers To Be So Dumb They Wear Their Baseball Caps Backwards.

But What's Worth More Than Gold?" "practically Everything. You, For Example. Gold Is Heavy. Your Weight In Gold Is Not Very Much Gold At All. Aren't You Worth More Than That?

You Are Very Clever," Said The Old Man Shyly. "i Would Like To Eat Your Brains, One Day.

One Of The Recurring Philosophical Questions Is: 'does A Falling Tree In The Forest Make A Sound When There Is No One To Hear?' Which Says Something About The Nature Of Philosophers , Because There Is Always Someone In A Forest. It May Only Be A Badger, Wondering What That Cracking Noise Was, Or A Squirrel A Bit Puzzled By All The Scenery Going Upwards, But Someone.

One Day All Of Us Will Die But - And This Is The Important Thing - We Are Not Dead Yet.

If You Had Enough Money, You Could Hardly Commit Crimes At All. You Just Perpetrated Amusing Little Peccadilloes.

In Fact, The Mere Act Of Opening The Box Will Determine The State Of The Cat, Although In This Case There Were Three Determinate States The Cat Could Be In: These Being Alive, Dead, And Bloody Furious.

Lords And Ladies

There's A Lot Of Science In It, And As Slartibartfast [in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy] Said: 'i Am A Great Fan Of Science, But I Cannot Do A Quadratic Equation.' I've Never, Ever Been Able To Do One. I Remember One Occasion At Warwick University, When Jack And Ian Were At Their Wits' End Because I Couldn't Get It. I Felt Totally Ashamed.

Quadratic Equation

What's The Orbital Velocity Of The Moon?

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.

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.

When In Doubt, Choose To Live.

What's Money Interested In? More Money.

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword ... If The Sword Is Very Short, And The Pen Is Very Sharp.

He Stared At His Feet. “i’m Still Very Ignorant,” He Said, “but At Least I’m Ignorant About Really Important Things.

Most People Who Have Found That They Are More Intelligent Than Most Around Them, Have Yet To Learn That One Of The Most Intelligent Things They Can Do Is Prevent Said People Ever Finding This Out.

In The First Book Of My Discworld Series, Published More Than 26 Years Ago, I Introduced Death As A Character; There Was Nothing Particularly New About This - Death Has Featured In Art And Literature Since Medieval Times, And For Centuries We Have Had A Fascination With The Grim Reaper.

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

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

So Let's Not Get Frightened When The Children Read Fantasy. It's The Compost For A Healthy Mind. It Stimulate S The Inquisitive Nodes, And There Is Some Evidence That A Rich Internal Fantasy Life Is As Good And Necessary For A Child As Healthy Soil Is For A Plant, For Much The Same Reasons.

Sometimes It Is Better To Light A Flamethrower Than Curse The Darkness.

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

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.

The Thing Is, 'discworld' Had Been Going On For A Very Long Time, And I've Written Children's Books As Well. Usually When People Have A Really Big Series They Franchise It, Which I Thought Is A Bit Of A No-no, So I Thought What I'd Do Is I'd Franchise It To Myself.

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.

Wikipedia, Eh? Must Be Accurate Then.

They Think Written Words Are Even More Powerful,’ Whispered The Toad. ‘they Think All Writing Is Magic. Words Worry Them. See Their Swords? They Glow Blue In The Presence Of Lawyers.

My Advice Is This. For Christ's Sake, Don't Write A Book That Is Suitable For A Kid Of 12 Years Old, Because The Kids Who Read Who Are 12 Years Old Are Reading Books For Adults. I Read All Of The James Bond Books When I Was About 11, Which Was Approximately The Right Time To Read James Bond Books.

Consider The Situation. There You Are, Forehead Like A Set Of Balconies, Worrying About The Long-term Effects Of All This New 'fire' Stuff On The Environment, You're Being Chased And Eaten By Most Of The Planet's Large Animals, And Suddenly Tiny Versions Of One Of The Worst Of Them Wanders Into The Cave And Starts To Purr.

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

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?

And All Those Exclamation Marks, You Notice? Five? A Sure Sign Of Someone Who Wears His Underpants On His Head.

Exclamation Marks

Because No Man Wants To Be A Coward In Front Of A Cheese.

And Therefore Education At The University Mostly Worked By The Age-old Method Of Putting A Lot Of Young People In The Vicinity Of A Lot Of Books And Hoping That Something Would Pass From One To The Other, While The Actual Young People Put Themselves In The Vicinity Of Inns And Taverns For Exactly The Same Reason.

The Whole Of Life Is Just Like Watching A Film. Only It's As Though You Always Get In Ten Minutes After The Big Picture Has Started, And No-one Will Tell You The Plot, So You Have To Work It Out All Yourself From The Clues.

When You Can Flatten Entire Cities At A Whim, A Tendency Towards Quiet Reflection And Seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- Of-view Is Seldom Necessary.

Good And Bad Is Tricky," She Said. "i Ain't Too Certain About Where People Stand. P'raps What Matters Is Which Way You Face." (pp. 348-349)

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

You Have Reached The End Of Cake

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.

You Know How To Pray, Don’t You? Just Put Your Hands Together And Hope.

Just Erotic. Nothing Kinky. It's The Difference Between Using A Feather And Using A Chicken.

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

When I Was A Child, I Spake As A Child, I Understood As A Child, I Thought As A Child: But When I Became A Man I Put Away Childish Things Because. Wow, Then I Could Afford Much *better* Childish Things!

Watching A Dog Try To Chew A Large Piece Of Toffee Is A Pastime Fit For Gods. Mr. Fusspot's Mixed Ancestry Had Given Him A Dexterity Of Jaw That Was Truly Awesome. He Somersaulted Happily Around The Floor, Making Faces Like A Rubber Gargoyle In A Washing Machine.

The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Become.

Inspirational Life

Oh, Where Are My Manners? Do Sit Down. Pull Up A Small Child.

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.

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

And No Practical Definition Of Freedom Would Be Complete Without The Freedom To Take The Consequences. Indeed, It Is The Freedom Upon Which All The Others Are Based.

The Merest Accident Of Microgeography Had Meant That The First Man To Hear The Voice Of Om, And Who Gave Om His View Of Humans, Was A Shepherd And Not A Goatherd. They Have Quite Different Ways Of Looking At The World, And The Whole Of History Might Have Been Different. For Sheep Are Stupid, And Have To Be Driven. But Goats Are Intelligent, And Need To Be Led.

Modesty Is Only Arrogance By Stealth.

Poetic Simile Was Strictly Limited To Statements Like 'his Mighty Steed Was As Fleet As The Wind On A Fairly Calm Day, Say About Force Three,' And Any Loose Talk About A Beloved Having A Face That Launched A Thousand Ships Would Have To Be Backed By Evidence That The Object Of Desire Did Indeed Look Like A Bottle Of Champagne.

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

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.

I Can See We're Going To Get Along Like A House On Fire," Said Miss Tick. "there May Be No Survivors.

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.

Ninety Percent Of True Love Is Acute, Ear-burning Embarrassment.

You've Got A Lot Of Time For Abstract Thought When You've Got Your Hand Stuck Up A Dead Badger.

Creatures Which, Lacking Mankind's Superior Brain Power, Did Not Concern Themselves With Finding Someone To Blame, And Instead Tried To Find Someone To Eat.

Finding Someone

Where's The Pleasure In Bein' The Winner If The Loser Ain't Alive To Know They've Lost?

Tv People In The Uk... I'm Getting On A Lot Better With Them.

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.

People Were People, Even If They Had Four Legs And Had Called Themselves Names Like Dangerous Beans, Which Is The Kind Of Name You Gave Yourself If You Learned To Read Before You Understood What All The Words Actually Meant.

He Said It Was Better To Belong Where You Don't Belong Than Not To Belong Where You Used To Belong, Remembering When You Used To Belong There.

If Words Had Weight, A Single Sentence From Death Would Have Anchored A Ship.

This Man Was So Absent-mindedly Clever That He Could Paint Pictures That Didn’t Just Follow You Around The Room But Went Home With You And Did The Washing-up.

Generally I Start Writing When I Have Even The Smallest Idea Of How A Book Is Going To Go, Because The Physical Process Of Writing Itself Keeps The Mind Active And Focused On The Job At Hand. Usually I Write In About 5 Drafts, But That Simply Means There Are 5 Definite Times When I Go In A Linear Fashion From The Beginning To The End Of The Book.

Nothing But Dust And Fundamentalists.

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.

Although The Scythe Isn't Pre-eminent Among The Weapons Of War, Anyone Who Has Been On The Wrong End Of, Say, A Peasants' Revolt Will Know That In Skilled Hands It Is Fearsome.

Nature Abhors A Lot Of Things, Including Vacuums, Ships Called The Marie Celeste, And The Chuck Keys For Electric Drills.

People Who Are Rather More Than Six Feet Tall And Nearly As Broad Across The Shoulders Often Have Uneventful Journeys. People Jump Out At Them From Behind Rocks Then Say Things Like, "oh. Sorry. I Thought You Were Someone Else.

Rincewind Could Scream For Mercy In Nineteen Languages, And Just Scream In Another Forty-four.

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

Lords And Ladies

The Reason That Clichés Become Clichés Is That They Are The Hammers And Screwdrivers In The Toolbox Of Communication.

Tourist, Rincewind Decided, Meant ‘idiot.

It Was Long After Midnight And The Stars Looked Damp And Chilly; The Air Was Full Of The Busy Silence Of The Night, Which Is Created By Hundreds Of Small Furry Things Treading Very Carefully In The Hope Of Finding Dinner While Avoiding Being The Main Course.

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?

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.

No One Is Actually Dead Until The Ripples They Cause In The World Die Away.

She Was Already Learning That If You Ignore The Rules People Will, Half The Time, Quietly Rewrite Them So That They Don't Apply To You.

The Hippo Of Recollection Stirred In The Muddy Waters Of The Mind.

God Moves In Extremely Mysterious, Not To Say, Circuitous Ways. God Does Not Play Dice With The Universe; He Plays An Ineffable Game Of His Own Devising, Which Might Be Compared, From The Perspective Of Any Of The Other Players, Ie., Everybody, To Being Involved In An Obscure And Complex Version Of Poker In A Pitch-dark Room, With Blank Cards, For Infinite Stakes, With A Dealer Who Won't Tell You The Rules, And Who Smiles All The Time.

People Are Often So Busy Living That They Never Stop To Wonder Why.

The Most Important Thing Was That Time Had Passed, Pouring Thousands Of Soothing Seconds Across The Island. People Need Time To Deal With The Now Before It Runs Away And Becomes The Then.

"i'm Sorry, I Just Got Carried Away," Hissed Aziraphale.

And, While It Was Regarded As Pretty Good Evidence Of Criminality To Be Living In A Slum, For Some Reason Owning A Whole Street Of Them Merely Got You Invited To The Very Best Social Occasions.

Them As Can Do Has To Do For Them As Can't. And Someone Has To Speak Up For Them As Has No Voices.

I Thought Unicorns Were More . . . Fluffy.

I Have No Fear Of Death Whatsoever. I Suspect That Few People Do, What They All Fear Is What Might Happen In The Years Or Months Before Death.

Anyway, Just Because You're Sworn Enemies Doesn't Mean You Can't Be Friends, Does It?

"and What Would Humans Be Without Love?" Rare, Said Death.

I Would Not Like It Thought That I Do Not Buy My Own Paperclips, Sir. I Enjoy Owning My Own Paperclips. It Means They Are Mine.

Perhaps The Magic Would Last, Perhaps It Wouldn't. But Then Again, What Does?

Vampires Have Risen From The Dead, The Grave, And The Crypt, But Have Never Managed It From The Cat.

You See The Lighted Windows And What You Want To Think Is That There May Be Many Interesting Stories Behind Them, But What You Know Is That Really There Are Just Dull, Dull Souls, Mere Consumers Of Food, Who Think Their Instincts Are Emotions And Their Tiny Lives Of More Account Than A Whisper Of Wind.

Things That Try To Look Like Things Often Do Look More Like Things Than Things.

...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.

Some Of My Best Sources Are Ex-policemen, Just To Get A Feeling Of What It's Like To Be One. And It's Quite Different From Being A Civilian - Except, Of Course, That I Believe That Policemen Are Just Special Sorts Of Civilians. Things Like How Hard It Is To Hold Someone That Doesn't Want To Be Held. This Is The Kind Of Thing That Is Worth Knowing.

We've Got A Lot Of Experience Of Not Having Any Experience

Some Pirates Achieved Immortality By Great Deeds Of Cruelty Or Derring-do. Some Achieved Immortality By Amassing Great Wealth. But The Captain Had Long Ago Decided That He Would, On The Whole, Prefer To Achieve Immortality By Not Dying.

If You Want To Change A Whole People, Then You Start With The Girls. It Stands To Reason: They Learn Faster, And They Pass On What They Learn To Their Children.

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.

Little Fussy Otto, In His Red-lined Black Opera Cloak With Pockets For All His Gear, His Shiny Black Shoes, His Carefully Cut Widow's Peak And, Not Least, His Ridiculous Accent That Grew Thicker Or Thinner Depending On Who He Was Talking To, Did Not Look Like A Threat. He Looked Funny, A Joke, A Music-hall Vampire. It Had Never Previously Occurred To Vimes That, Just Possibly, The Joke Was On Other People.

What Can The Harvest Hope For...

People Like That Don't Need A Reason Apart From "because I Can". They Have A Nightmare And Try To Make It Happen.

You Can't Trample Infidels When You're A Tortoise. I Mean, All You Could Do Is Give Them A Meaningful Look.

The Landscape Was Snow And Green Ice On Broken Mountains. These Weren't Old Mountains, Worn Down By Time And Weather And Full Of Gentle Ski Slopes, But Young, Sulky, Adolescent Mountains. They Held Secret Ravines And Merciless Crevices. One Yodel Out Of Place Would Attract, Not The Jolly Echo Of A Lonely Goatherd, But Fifty Tons Of Express-delivery Snow.

Oh Dear Me, The Booker People Don't Like Me. I Don't Care. I Have Been Given An Award For Being Taken Not Seriously, And I Am Very, Very Pleased About That.

... All Reputable Falconers Agreed That For Hunting Purposes The Only Way You Could Reliably Bring Down Prey With A Wowhawk Was By Using It In A Slingshot.

I Would Like Permission To Fetch A Note From My Mother, Sir' Ridcully Sighed. 'rincewind, You Once Informed Me, To My Everlasting Puzzlement, That You Never Knew Your Mother Because She Ran Away Before You Were Born. Distinctly Remember Writing It Down In My Diary. Would You Like Another Try?' 'permission To Go And Find My Mother?'

When You Stand Between Two Mirrors You're Spread Out Among The Images, Your Whole Soul Is Pulled Out Thin, And Somewhere In The Distant Images A Dark Part Of You Might Get Out And Come Looking For You, If You Aren't Careful.

It Was Carrot Who'd Suggested To The Patrician That Hardened Criminals Should Be Given The Chance To 'serve The Community' By Redecorating The Homes Of The Elderly, Lending A New Terror To Old Age And, Given Ankh-morpork's Crime Rate, Leading To At Least One Old Lady Having Her Front Room Wallpapered So Many Times In Six Months That Now She Could Only Get In Sideways.

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