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It's An Interesting Fact That Fewer Than 17 % Of Real Cats End Their Lives With The Same Name They Started With. Much Family Effort Goes Into Selecting One At The Start ("she Looks Like A Winnifred To Me"), And The As The Years Roll By It Suddenly Finds Itself Being Called Meepo Or Ratbag.

-Terry Pratchett

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It's An Interesting Fact

Terry Pratchett

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It's An Interesting Fact That Fewer Than 17 % Of Real Cats End Their Lives With The Same Name They Started With. Much Family Effort Goes Into Selecting One At The Start ("she Looks Like A Winnifred To Me"), And The As The Years Roll By It Suddenly Finds Itself Being Called Meepo Or Ratbag.

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 Although, Come To Think Of It, Some Of My Teachers Could Easily Have Been Replaced By A Cheeseburger.

Just Because Things Are Obvious Doesn't Mean They're True.

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

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You Can't Die With An Unfinished Book.

Mind You, The Elizabethans Had So Many Words For The Female Genitals That It Is Quite Hard To Speak A Sentence Of Modern English Without Inadvertently Mentioning At Least Three Of Them.

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.

I'm Not The World's Greatest Expert, But I Would Have Thought That The Wizards, Witches, Trolls, Unicorns, ... Broomsticks And Spells Would Have Given Her A Clue?' - When J.k. Rowling Insisted She Wasn't Writing Fantasy.

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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".

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?

Cake Is Not The Issue Here.

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I'd Like To Sell A Lot Of Books.

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

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Hello, Inner Child, I'm The Inner Babysitter!

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

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

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

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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.

No Matter What She Did With Her Hair It Took About Three Minutes For It To Tangle Itself Up Again, Like A Garden Hosepipe In A Shed [which, No Matter How Carefully Coiled, Will Always Uncoil Overnight And Tie The Lawnmower To The Bicycles].

The Universe, They Said, Depended For Its Operation On The Balance Of Four Forces Which They Identified As Charm, Persuasion, Uncertainty And Bloody-mindedness.

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

You're Allowed To Grant People Into The Darkness, But You Must Allow Them To Come Out Again.

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.

Mum Had Done Everything You Need To Educate A Kid. She Made Me A Kid Who Likes Books And She Told Me About 'wind In The Willows' And Read It And I Thought This Is Weird, Rat, Mole, Toad And My First Ever Bolshie Thought - You Know About 'the Wind In The Willows.'

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

Some People Think 'coven' Is A Word For A Group Of Witches, And It's True That's What The Dictionary Says. But The Real Word For A Group Of Witches Is 'an Argument'.

No Clowns Were Funny. That Was The Whole Purpose Of A Clown. People Laughed At Clowns, But Only Out Of Nervousness. The Point Of Clowns Was That, After Watching Them, Anything Else That Happened Seemed Enjoyable

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.

Blessings Be On This House," Granny Said, Perfunctorily. It Was Always A Good Opening Remark For A Witch. It Concentrated People's Minds On What Other Things Might Be On This House.

The Fastest Way To Travel Is To Be There Already.

They May Be Called The Palace Guard, The City Guard, Or The Patrol. Whatever The Name, Their Purpose In Any Work Of Heroic Fantasy Is Identical: It Is, Round About Chapter Three (or Ten Minutes Into The Film) To Rush Into The Room, Attack The Hero One At A Time, And Be Slaughtered. No One Ever Asks Them If They Want To. This Book Is Dedicated To Those Fine Men.

It Was Quite Impossible To Describe. Here Is What It Looked Like. It Looked Like A Piano Sounds Shortly After Being Dropped Down A Well. It Tasted Yellow, And It Felt Paisley. It Smelled Like The Total Eclipse Of The Moon.

Just Because You've Got A Mind Like A Hammer Doesn't Mean You Have To Treat Everyone Else Like A Nail

Many An Ancient Lord's Last Words Have Been, 'you Can't Kill Me Because I've Got Magic Aaargh.'

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

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

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

People Are Bound To Get Excited When They See A Ten-million-ton Starship Trying To Fly Down The Street.

Once You Have Your Character Sitting Right There In Your Head, All You Really Need To Do Is Wind Them Up, Put Them Down, And Simply Write Down What They Do, Say, Or Think.

Anyway, Lots Of Warrior Tribes Think That When They Die, They Go To A Heavenly Land Somewhere," Said The Toad. "you Know, Where They Can Drink And Fight And Feast Forever? So Maybe This Is Theirs." "but This Is A Real Place!" "so? That's What They Believe. Besides, They're Only Small. Maybe The Universe Is A Bit Crowded And They Have To Put Heavens Anywhere There's Room? I'm A Toad, So You'll Appreciate That I'm Having To Guess A Lot Here.

I Would Advise Budding Writers Some Other Kind Of Job, Unless They Think They're Very, Very Lucky.

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

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

Knowing That You Are Going To Die Is, I Suspect, The Beginning Of Wisdom.

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

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

Everything Happens For A Reason

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.

This Was The Definition Of Eternity; It Was The Space Of Time Devised By The Great God Om To Ensure That Everyone Got The Punishment That Was Due To Them.

Tragic Heroes Always Moan When The Gods Take An Interest In Them, But It's The People The Gods Ignore Who Get The Really Tough Deals

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

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

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.

Cats Gravitate To Kitchens Like Rocks Gravitate To Gravity.

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

Never F*!k With The Ineffable.

Even A Really Bad Creator Would At Least Have Started With Earth, Air, Fire, Water And Surprise.

Here's What I Suggest," He Said. "you Pretend That Rats Can Think, And I'll Promise To Pretend That Humans Can Think, Too.

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

I Read The Best Works Of Some Of The Best Satirists, And Indeed Best Writers From The Beginning Of The Victorian Era To About The 1960s. If You Want To Be A Blacksmith, You Go And Watch The Blacksmith Working, And You Work Out What The Blacksmith Does.

The Singers All Loathe The Sight Of One Another, The Chorus Despises The Singers, They Both Hate The Orchestra, And Everyone Fears The Conductor; The Staff On One Prompt Side Won't Talk To The Staff On The Opposite Prompt Side, The Dancers Are All Crazed From Hunger In Any Case.

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.

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

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

The Brain Works Fast When It Thinks It’s About To Be Cut In Half.

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.

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

Of Course, Ankh-morpork's Citizens Had Always Claimed That The River Water Was Incredibly Pure. Any Water That Had Passed Through So Many Kidneys, They Reasoned, Had To Be Very Pure Indeed.

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.

I Get It,' Said The Prisoner. 'good Cop, Bad Cop, Eh?' If You Like.' Said Vimes. 'but We're A Bit Short Staffed Here, So If I Give You A Cigarette Would You Mind Kicking Yourself In The Teeth?

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'.

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.

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?'

Gods Prefer Simple, Vicious Games, Where You Do Not Achieve Transcendence But Go Straight To Oblivion; A Key To The Understanding Of All Religion Is That A God's Idea Of Amusement Is Snakes And Ladders With Greased Rungs.

Did I Do Anything Last Night That Suggested I Was Sane?

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

The Auditors Fluttered Anxiously. And, As Always Happens In Their Species When Something Goes Radically Wrong And Needs Fixing Instantly, They Settled Down To Try To Work How Who Was To Blame.

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!

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

Books Must Be Treated With Respect, We Feel That In Our Bones, Because Words Have Power. Bring Enough Words Together They Can Bend Space And Time.

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

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.

Wisdom Is One Of The Few Things That Looks Bigger The Further Away It Is.

I Would Like You To Teach [the Orcs] Civilised Behaviour," Said Ladyship Coldly. He Appeared To Consider This. "yes Of Course, I Think That Would Be Quite Possible," He Said. "and Who Would You Send To Teach The Humans?

She Was Also, By The Standards Of Other People, Lost. She Would Not See It Like That. She Knew Where She Was, It Was Just That Everywhere Else Didn't.

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's Tough At The Top. It's Tough At The Bottom. But In Between You Could Use Them For Horse-shoes.

Got To Be Worth A Try, I Suppose," Said Crowley. "it's Not As If I Haven't Got Lots Of Other Work To Do, God Knows." His Forehead Creased For A Moment, And Then He Slapped The Steering Wheel Triumphantly. "ducks!" He Shouted. "what?" "that's What Water Slides Off!" Aziraphale Took A Deep Breath. "just Drive The Car, Please," He Said Wearily.

Her Singing Always Cheered Him Up. Life Seemed So Much Brighter When She Stopped.

I Thought Unicorns Were More . . . Fluffy.

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.

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

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

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

She Got On With Her Education. In Her Opinion, School Kept On Trying To Interfere With It.

Natural Selection Saw To It That Professional Heroes Who At A Crucial Moment Tended To Ask Themselves Questions Like 'what Is My Purpose In Life?' Very Quickly Lacked Both.

Just Because Something Is A Metaphor Doesn't Mean It Can't Be Real.

The Key To Winning, As Always, Was Looking As If You Had Every Right, Nay, Duty To Be Where You Were. It Helped If You Could Also Suggest In Every Line Of Your Body That No One Else Had Any Rights To Be Doing Anything, Anywhere, Whatsoever.

Winston Churchill Said 'in War Time, Truth Is So Precious That She Should Always Be Attended By A Bodyguard Of Lies'. Any Book Called The Truth Should Therefore Have One.

The Characters Are The Plot. What They Do And Say And The Things That Happen To Them Are, In A Sense, What The Plot Is. You Can't Take Character And Plot Apart From Each Other, Really.

If You Kept Changing The Way People Saw The World, You Ended Up Changing The Way You Saw Yourself.

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.

Experience Has Taught Me That You Feel Better On A Flight If You Avoid Chicken Fat In Plastic Sauce.

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

What Kind Of Man Would Put A Known Criminal In Charge Of A Major Branch Of Government? Apart From, Say, The Average Voter.

Witches Aren’t Like That. We Live In Harmony With The Great Cycles Of Nature, And Do No Harm To Anyone, And It’s Wicked Of Them To Say We Don’t. We Ought To Fill Their Bones With Hot Lead.

You Can't Kill Me, I've Got A Magic... Aaaargh !

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

He Was, He Would Be The First To Admit, A Coward, An Incompetent, And Not Even Very Good At Being A Failure.

No, I Happen To Be One Of Those People Whose Memory Shuts Down Under Pressure. The Answers Would Come To Me In The Middle Of The Night In My Sleep! Besides, I Am A Millionaire.

It's Not Lying When You Do It To Officers!

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

Certainly The Americans Want To Buy Rights, But Have No Idea What To Do With Them.

And Our Lady Friend, She Thinks Life Works Like A Fairy Tale.' Well, That’s Harmless, Isn’t It?' Yeah, But In Fairy Tales, When Someone Dies... It’s Just A Word.

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.

Granny Sighed. "you Have Learned Something," She Said, And Thought It Safe To Insert A Touch Of Sternness Into Her Voice. "they Say A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, But It Is Not One Half So Bad As A Lot Of Ignorance.

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.

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.

These Weren't Cheap Modern Books; These Were Books Bound In Leather, And Not Just Leather, But Leather From Clever Cows Who Had Given Their Lives For Literature After A Happy Existence In The Very Best Pastures.

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.

Letitia! What A Name. Halfway Between A Salad And A Sneeze.

It Was Sci-fi And Fantasy That Got Me Reading, And Sci-fi Writers In Particular Have Pack Rat Minds. They Introduce All Sorts Of Interesting Themes And Ideas Into Their Books, And So For Me It Was A Short Leap To Go From The Fantasy And Sci-fi Genres To Folklore, Mythology, Ancient History And Philosophy. I Did Not Read Philosophy Because I Set Out To Become A Philosopher; I Read It Because It Looked Interesting.

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.

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.

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.

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Richard M. Daley

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