Background Image

...

In Fact, Very Few People On The Face Of The Planet Know That The Very Shape Of The M25 Forms The Sigil *odegra* In The Language Of The Black Priesthood Of Ancient Mu, And Means 'hail The Great Beast, Devourer Of Worlds'.

-Terry Pratchett

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

In Fact, Very Few

Terry Pratchett

...

In Fact, Very Few People On The Face Of The Planet Know That The Very Shape Of The M25 Forms The Sigil *odegra* In The Language Of The Black Priesthood Of Ancient Mu, And Means 'hail The Great Beast, Devourer Of Worlds'.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Terry Pratchett

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

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.

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

As Far As Death Was Aware, The Sole Reason For Any Human Association With Pigs And Lambs Was As A Prelude To Chops And Sausages. Quite Why They Should Dress Up For Children’s Wallpaper As Well Was A Mystery. Hello, Little Folk, This Is What You’re Going To Eat… He Felt That If Only He Could Find The Key To It, He’d Know A Lot More About Human Beings.

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

It Is Said That Whomsoever The Gods Wish To Destroy, They First Make Mad. In Fact, Whomsoever The Gods Wish To Destroy, They First Hand The Equivalent Of A Stick With A Fizzing Fuse And Acme Dynamite Company Written On The Side. It's More Interesting, And Doesn't Take So Long.

It Was Amazing How Many Friends You Could Make By Being Bad At Things, Provided You Were Bad Enough To Be Funny.

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

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.

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

Lords And Ladies

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

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.

You Did What You Were Told Or You Didn't Get Paid, And If Things Went Wrong It Wasn't Your Problem. It Was The Fault Of Whatever Idiot Has Accepted This Message For Sending In The First Place. No One Cared About You, And Everyone At Headquarters Was An Idiot. It Wasn't Your Fault, No One Listened To You. Headquarters Had Even Started An Employee Of The Month Scheme To Show How Much They Cared. That Was How Much They Didn't Care.

Granny Weatherwax Was Firmly Against Fiction. Life Was Hard Enough Without Lies Floating Around And Changing The Way People Thought.

I'd Like To Sell A Lot Of Books.

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.

Probably The Last Sound Heard Before The Universe Folded Up Like A Paper Hat Would Be Someone Saying, "what Happens If I Do This?"

I'm Not Really Good At Fun-to-know, Human Interest Stuff. We're Not 'celebrities', Whose Life Itself Is A Performance. Good Or Bad Or Ugly, We Are Our Words. They're What People Meet.

When All Else Failed, She Tried Being Reasonable.

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

It's Either Because Of The Number Of Times The Scholar Puts The Boot Into Peter Jackson The Director Of The Lord Of The Rings Films Or Is Making A Point They Have Never Heard Of.

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.'

Strength Enough To Build A Home, Time Enough To Hold A Child, Love Enough To Break A Heart

The Truth Is That Even Big Collections Of Ordinary Books Distort Space, As Can Readily Be Proved By Anyone Who Has Been Around A Really Old-fashioned Secondhand Bookshop, One That Looks As Though They Were Designed By M. Escher On A Bad Day And Has More Stairways Than Storeys And Those Rows Of Shelves Which End In Little Doors That Are Surely Too Small For A Full-sized Human To Enter. The Relevant Equation Is: Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; A Good Bookshop Is Just A Genteel Black Hole That Knows How To Read.

Humans Need Fantasy To Be Human. To Be The Place Where The Falling Angel Meets The Rising Ape.

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.

Luck Is My Middle Name. Mind You, My First Name Is Bad.

I Just Rearrange Words Into A Pleasing Order For Money.

Find The Story, Granny Weatherwax Always Said. She Believed That The World Was Full Of Story Shapes. If You Let Them, They Controlled You. But If You Studied Them, If You Found Out About Them... You Could Use Them, You Could Change Them.

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

Noble Dragons Don't Have Friends. The Nearest They Can Get To The Idea Is An Enemy Who Is Still Alive.

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?

No One Knew Where You Were Before You Were Born, But When You Were Born, It Wasn't Long Before You Found You'd Arrived With Your Return Ticket Already Punched.

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful: Something To Be Admired From A Distance, Not Up Close.

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

But Ye Gotta Know Where Ye're Just Gonna Rush In. Ye Cannae Just Rush In Anywhere. It Looks Bad, Havin' To Rush Oout Again Straight Awa'.

After A While, Another Voice Said: One, Two, Three, Four- And The Universe Came Into Being. It Was Wrong To Call It A Big Bang. That Would Just Be Noise, And All That Noise Could Create Is More Noise And A Cosmos Full Of Random Particles. Matter Exploded Into Being, Apparently As Chaos, But In Fact As A Chord. The Ultimate Power Chord.

She'd Stopped Reading The Kind Of Women's Magazine That Talked About Romance And Knitting And Started Reading The Kind Of Women's Magazine That Talked About Orgasms, But Apart From Making A Mental Note To Have One If Ever The Occasion Presented Itsel

Young Adults That Actually Read Are Reading Bodice Rippers And Best-sellers And Me. And Horror.

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

So, Mistletoe, In Fact, Symbolizes Mistletoe.

She Heard Him Mutter, 'can You Take Away This Grief?' 'i'm Sorry,' She Replied. 'everyone Asks Me. And I Would Not Do So Even If I Knew How. It Belongs To You. Only Time And Tears Take Away Grief; That Is What They Are For.

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

It Must Be Powerful Language If You Canna Make Oout What The Heel It’s Goin’ On Aboot!

Probably The Last Man Who Knew How It Worked Had Been Tortured To Death Years Before. Or As Soon As It Was Installed. Killing The Creator Was A Traditional Method Of Patent-protection.

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.

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

Granny Weatherwax Was Not Lost. She Wasn't The Kind Of Person Who Ever Became Lost. It Was Just That, At The Moment, While She Knew Exactly Where She Was, She Didn't Know The Position Of Anywhere Else.

[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.

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

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.

...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.

I Discovered Fantasy And Science Fiction When I Was About 10, And Read Nothing Else For About Three Years. I Ran Out Of All The Books That There Were To Read In The Library. I Was Keen On Reading Stuff That Took Me To Other Places.

Esk Felt That Bravery Was Called For, But On A Night Like This Bravery Lasted Only As Long As A Candle Stayed Alight.

Stop Stealing The Funeral Meats Right Now, You Wee Scuggers!" She Shouted. The Feegles Stopped And Stared At Her. Then Rob Anybody Said: "socks Wi'oot Feets?

If Cats Looked Like Frogs We'd Realize What Nasty, Cruel Little Bastards They Are. Style. That's What People Remember.

Sheep Are Stupid, And Have To Be Driven. But Goats Are Intelligent, And Need To Be Led.

I Don't Want To Hurt You, Mistress Weatherwax," Said Mrs Gogol. "that's Good," Said Granny. "i Don't Want You To Hurt Me Either.

Do You Not Know That A Man Is Not Dead While His Name Is Still Spoken?

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

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.

Everyone's Heard Of Erwin Schrodinger's Famous Thought Experiment. You Put A Cat In A Box With A Bottle Of Poison, Which Many People Would Suggest Is About As Far As You Need To Go.

There Are Plenty Of People Who Believe That Elvis Is Alive, Or That Aliens Occasionally Land Here To Do Highly Personal Things To People, Or That The Whole Idea Of Evolution Is A Conspiracy Of Godless Scientists. Almost All Of These People Can Vote And Some Of Them Have Got Guns.

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.

This Is A Lovely Party," Said The Bursar To A Chair, "i Wish I Was Here.

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.

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.

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 Reaper Does Not Listen To The Harvest.

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

There Was This About Vampires : They Could Never Look Scruffy. Instead, They Were... What Was The Word... Deshabille. It Meant Untidy, But With Bags And Bags Of Style.

I Am Certain No One Sets Out To Be Cruel, But Our Treatment Of The Elderly Ill Seems To Have No Philosophy To It. As A Society, We Should Establish Whether We Have A Policy Of Life At Any Cost.

He Felt That The Darkness Was Full Of Unimaginable Horrors - And The Trouble With Unimaginable Horrors Was That They Were Only Too Easy To Imagine.

Bringing About Armageddon Can Be Dangerous. Do Not Attempt It In Your Own Home.

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.

Once You Gave A Thing A Name, You Gave It Life.

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

A European Says: I Can't Understand This, What's Wrong With Me? An American Says: I Can't Understand This, What's Wrong With Him? I Make No Suggestion That One Side Or Other Is Right, But Observation Over Many Years Leads Me To Believe It Is True.

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.

Thats How We Survive Infinity - We Kill It By Breaking It Up Into Small Bits.

He Sighed. It Had Come To This. He Was A Responsible Authority, And People Could Use Terms Like "core Values" At Him With Impunity.

I Don't See What's So Triffic About Creating People As People And Then Gettin' Upset 'cos They Act Like People.

I'm Trying To Remember How You Tell The Time By Looking At The Sun." -"i Should Leave It For A While, It's Too Bright To See The Numbers At The Moment.

When People Say "clearly" Something That Means There's A Huge Crack In Their Argument And They Know Things Aren't Clear At All.

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

Someone Got Killed Up Here.... It Was Outside. A Tall Man. He Had One Leg Longer’n The Other. And A Beard. He Was Probably A Hunter." "how’d You Know All That?" "i Just Trod On ‘im.

Rincewind Had Always Been Happy To Think Of Himself As A Racist. The One Hundred Meters, The Mile, The Marathon -- He'd Run Them All.

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

Fear Is A Strange Soil. It Grows Obedience Like Corn, Which Grow In Straight Lines To Make Weeding Easier. But Sometimes It Grows The Potatoes Of Defiance, Which Flourish Underground.

You Are In Favour Of The Common People?” Said Dragon Mildly. The Common People?” Said Vimes. “they’re Nothing Special. They’re No Different From The Rich And Powerful Except They’ve Got No Money Or Power. But The Law Should Be There To Balance Things Up A Bit. So I Suppose I’ve Got To Be On Their Side.

They've Got Something They Do It With, I Think It's Called A Mocracy, And It Means Everyone In The Whole Country Can Say Who The New Tyrant Is. One Man ... One Vet. ... Everyone Has ... The Vet. Except For Women, Of Course. And Children. And Criminals. And Slaves. And Stupid People. And People Of Foreign Extraction. And People Disapproved Of For, Er, Various Reasons. And Lots Of Other People. But Everyone Apart From Them. It's A Very Enlightened Civilization.

The Important Thing About Having Lots Of Things To Remember Is That You’ve Got To Go Somewhere Afterwards Where You Can Remember Them, You See? You’ve Got To Stop. You Haven’t Really Been Anywhere Until You’ve Got Back Home.

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

...roland De Chumsfanleigh (it Wasn't His Fault).

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.

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

And What Had He Wanted? He'd Never Sat Down To Think About It. But Mostly, He Wanted Yesterday To Be Different From Today.

Tomorrow Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Our Lives.

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

The Trouble With Being A God Is That You've Got No One To Pray To.

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.

Some Of Them Wanted To Sell Me Snake Oil And I'm Not Necessarily Going To Dismiss All Of These, As I Have Never Found A Rusty Snake.

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.

Unseen University Had Never Admitted Women, Muttering Something About Problems With The Plumbing, But The Real Reason Was An Unspoken Dread That If Women Were Allowed To Mess Around With Magic They Would Probably Be Embarrassingly Good At It.

There Are Thousands Of Good Reasons Why Magic Doesn't Rule The World. They're Called Witches And Wizards.

Science Fiction Is Fantasy With Bolts Painted On Outside.

Science Fiction

It Was Also A Room Full Of Books And Made Of Books. There Was No Actual Furniture; This Is To Say, The Desk And Chairs Were Shaped Out Of Books. It Looked As Though Many Of Them Were Frequently Referred To, Because They Lay Open With Other Books Used As Bookmarks.

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.

They Were Also Slightly Less Intelligent Than He Was. This Is A Quality You Should Always Pray For In Your Would-be Murderer.

Picturesque Meant - He Decided After Careful Observation Of The Scenerey That Inspired Twoflower To Use The Word - That The Landscape Was Horribly Precipitous. Quaint, When Used To Describe The Occasional Village Through Which They Passed, Meant Fever-ridden And Tumbledown. Twoflower Was A Tourist, The First Ever Seen On The Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind Had Decided, Mean 'idiot'.

Lots Of People Would Be As Cowardly As Me If They Were Brave Enough.

People Don't Like To Say Comic So They Say Graphic Novel, Despite The Fact That I Don't Think The True Graphic Novel Has Been Written Anywhere.

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

Don't You *ever* Let Go?" "i Haven't Yet." "why?" "i Suppose... Because In This World, After Everyone Panics, There's Always Got To Be Someone To Tip The Wee Out Of The Shoe.

When Much Is Taken, Something Is Returned.

The Mountains Of Madness Have Many Little Plateau Of Sanity.

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.

Fantasy Doesn't Have To Be Fantastic. American Writers In Particular Find This Much Harder To Grasp. You Need To Have Your Feet On The Ground As Much As Your Head In The Clouds. The Cute Dragon That Sits On Your Shoulder Also Craps All Down Your Back, But This Makes It More Interesting Because It Gives It An Added Dimension.

You Know What I'd Really, Really Like? What I'd Pay Money For? A Zx81 With A Disc Drive. I Understood The Zx81. It Was So Easy To Interface Stuff To It.

So Much Universe, And So Little Time.

...the Proliferation Of Luminous Fungi Or Iridescent Crystals In Deep Caves Where The Torchlessly Improvident Hero Needs To See Is One Of The Most Obvious Intrusions Of Narrative Causality Into The Physical Universe.

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

I May Be Daft But I'm No' Stupid!

Vimes Stalked Gloomily Through The Crowded Streets, Feeling Like The Only Pickled Onion In A Fruit Salad.

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.

In Genua, Someone Set Out To Make Dreams Come True. Remember Some Of Your Dreams?

Dreams Come True

Everything Happens For A Reason, Except Possibly Football. (in Thief Of Time)

Everything Happens For A Reason

Sham Harga Had Run A Successful Eatery For Many Years By Always Smiling, Never Extending Credit, And Realizing That Most Of His Customers Wanted Meals Properly Balanced Between The Four Food Groups: Sugar, Starch, Grease, And Burnt Crunchy Bits.

It's Hard To Be Famous And Alive.

Never F*!k With The Ineffable.

Cheery Was Aware That Commander Vimes Didn't Like The Phrase 'the Innocent Have Nothing To Fear', Believing The Innocent Had Everything To Fear, Mostly From The Guilty But In The Longer Term Even More From Those Who Say Things Like 'the Innocent Have Nothing To Fear'.

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

Always Remember That The Crowd That Applauds Your Coronation Is The Same Crowd That Will Applaud Your Beheading. People Like A Show.

The Point Is That If A Book That Had Been Published Three Years Ago Started To Sell Twice As Many All Of A Sudden It Probably Wouldn't Even Get Noticed. People Wouldn't Be Tracking It. The System Has Cleaned Up Its Act An Awful Lot But The Best-seller List System Is Not An Entirely Foolproof Thing.

As Large As Worlds. As Old As Time. As Patient As A Brick.

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.

Well, Basically There Are Two Sorts Of Opera," Said Nanny, Who Also Had The True Witch's Ability To Be Confidently Expert On The Basis Of No Experience Whatsoever. "there's Your Heavy Opera, Where Basically People Sing Foreign And It Goes Like "oh Oh Oh, I Am Dyin', Oh I Am Dyin', Oh Oh Oh, That's What I'm Doin'", And There's Your Light Opera, Where They Sing In Foreign And It Basically Goes "beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I Like To Drink Lots Of Beer!", Although Sometimes They Drink Champagne Instead. That's Basically All Of Opera, Reely.

Who Knows What The Future Holds.

In Order To Have A Change Of Fortune At The Last Minute, You Have To Take Your Fortune To The Last Minute.

The Captain Of The Watch Says If You're Still In The City By Sunrise He Will Personally Have You Buried Alive.

Do I Detect A Note Of Unseasonal Grumpiness? Said Death. No Sugar Piggywiggy For You, Albert.

Over The Centuries, Mankind Has Tried Many Ways Of Combating The Forces Of Evil... Prayer, Fasting, Good Works And So On. Up Until Doom, No One Seemed To Have Thought About The Double-barrel Shotgun. Eat Leaden Death, Demon...

Build A Man A Fire, And He'll Be Warm For A Day. Set A Man On Fire, And He'll Be Warm For The Rest Of His Life.

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 You Look Into The Abyss, It’s Not Supposed To Wave Back.

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.

Carpe Jugulum," Read Agnes Aloud. "that's... Well, Carpe Diem Is 'sieze The Day,' So This Means-" "go For The Throat

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

When I Am Old I Shall Wear Midnight.

As A Species, We Are Forever Sticking Our Finger Into The Electric Socket Of The Universe To See What Will Happen Next.

Thou Shalt Not Submit Thy God To Market Forces.

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.

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 Only Thing More Dangerous Then A Vampire Crazed With Blood Lust Was A Vampire Crazed With Anything Else. All The Meticulous Single-mindedness That Went Into Finding Young Women Who Slept With Their Bedroom Window Open Got Channeled Into Some Other Interest, With Merciless And Painstaking Efficiency.

It's Amazing How Fast Gold Works.

They Didn't Know Why These Things Were Funny. Sometimes You Laugh Because You've Got No More Room For Crying. Sometimes You Laugh Because Table Manners On A Beach Are Funny. And Sometimes You Laugh Because You're Alive, When You Really Shouldn't Be.

And That's When I First Learned About Evil. It Is Built In To The Very Nature Of The Universe. Every World Spins In Pain. If There Is Any Kind Of Supreme Being, I Told Myself, It Is Up To All Of Us To Become His Moral Superior.

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

People Who Didn't Need People Needed People Around To Know That They Were The Kind Of People Who Didn't Need People.

The English Were Notoriously Unenthusiastic About Burning Witches. I Suppose Ours Were Too Soggy.

If You Are Going To Write, Say, Fantasy - Stop Reading Fantasy. You've Already Read Too Much. Read Other Things; Read Westerns, Read History, Read Anything That Seems Interesting, Because If You Only Read Fantasy And Then You Start To Write Fantasy, All You're Going To Do Is Recycle The Same Old Stuff And Move It Around A Bit.

I Wouldn't Trust You With A Bucket Of Water If My Knickers Were On Fire!

Rincewind Gave His Fingers A Long Shocked Stare, As One Might Regard A Gun That Has Been Hanging On The Wall For Decades And Has Suddenly Gone Off And Perforated The Cat.

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.

He'd Always Known That The World Was An Interesting Place, And His Imagination Had Peopled It With Pirates And Bandits And Spies And Astronauts And Similar. But He'd Also Had A Nagging Suspicion That, When You Seriously Got Right Down To It, They Were All Just Things In Books And Didn't Properly Exist Anymore.

The Entire Universe Has Been Neatly Divided Into Things To (a) Mate With, (b) Eat, (c) Run Away From, And (d) Rocks.

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.

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.

Knowledge Is Dangerous, Which Is Why Governments Often Clamp Down On People Who Can Think Thoughts Above A Certain Caliber.

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.

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

People Are Content To Wait A Long Time For Salvation, But Prefer Dinner To Turn Up Inside An Hour.

Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Wizards Because A Refusal Often Offends, I Read Somewhere.

And These Are Your Reasons, My Lord?" "do You Think I Have Others?" Said Lord Vetinari. "my Motives, As Ever, Are Entirely Transparent." Hughnon Reflected That 'entirely Transparent' Meant Either That You Could See Right Through Them Or That You Couldn't See Them At All.

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

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

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

He Looked Up At Them, A Scruffy Napoleon With His Laces Trailing, Exiled To A Rose-trellised Elba.

So Much Paperwork To Read! So Much Paperwork To Push Away! So Much Paperwork To Pretend He Hadn't Received And That Might Have Been Eaten By Gargoyles.

I Have To Write Because If I Don't Get Something Down Then After A While I Feel It's Going To Bang The Side Of My Head Off.

It Was Raining In The Small, Mountainous Country Of Llamedos. It Was Always Raining In Llamedos. Rain Was The Country's Main Export. It Had Rain Mines.

- 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.

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.

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

Destiny Is Important, See, But People Go Wrong When They Think It Controls Them. It's The Other Way Around.

The People Of Ankh-morpork Had A Straightforward, No-nonsense Approach To Entertainment, And While They Were Looking Forward To Seeing A Dragon Slain, They'd Be Happy To Settle Instead For Seeing Someone Being Baked Alive In His Own Armour. You Didn't Get The Chance Every Day To See Someone Baked Alive In Their Own Armour. It Would Be Something For The Children To Remember.

The Man Gave A Shrug Which Indicated That, Although The World Did Indeed Have Many Problems, This Was One Of Them That Was Not His.

The Universe Was Bad Enough Without People Poking It.

Wisdom Comes From Experience. Experience Is Often A Result Of Lack Of Wisdom.

Wisdom Experience

Wisdom And Experience

Real Children Do Not Go Hoppity Skip Unless They Are On Drugs.

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.

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.

We Live In A Science Fiction Universe. We Have Done For A Long Time.

Oh, Well...up Until Now It Had Been A Good Day, In A Horrible Kind Of Way.

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

Trending Author

Category