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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.

-Terry Pratchett

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It Was Carrot Who'd

Terry Pratchett

...

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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There Can Be No Better Grounding For A Lifetime As An Author Than To See Humanity In All Its Various Guises Through The Lens Of The Reporter For The Town.

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

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

Pets Are Always A Great Help In Times Of Stress. And In Times Of Starvation Too, O'course.

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.

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

Cats Will Amusingly Tolerate Humans Only Until Someone Comes Up With A Tin Opener That Can Be Operated With A Paw.

Lots Of Ingenuity Gets You Through Times With No Money Better Than Money Gets You Through Times Of No Ingenuity.

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.

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.

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.

The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Become.

Inspirational Life

They Were Indeed What Was Known As 'old Money', Which Meant That It Had Been Made So Long Ago That The Black Deeds Which Had Originally Filled The Coffers Were Now Historically Irrelevant. Funny, That: A Brigand For A Father Was Something You Kept Quiet About, But A Slave-taking Pirate For A Great-great-great-grandfather Was Something To Boast Of Over The Port. Time Turned The Evil Bastards Into Rogues, And Rogue Was A Word With A Twinkle In Its Eye And Nothing To Be Ashamed Of.

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)

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.

As They Say In Discworld, We Are Trying To Unravel The Mighty Infinite Using A Language Which Was Designed To Tell One Another Where The Fresh Fruit Was.

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.

Happiness Is Not The Natural State Of Mankind, And Is Never Achieved From The Outside In.

As We All Know, The Discworld Is A Flat Planet - Like A Geological Pizza, But Without The Anchovies.

The Yen Buddhists Are The Richest Religious Sect In The Universe. They Hold That The Accumulation Of Money Is A Great Evil And A Burden To The Soul. They Therefore, Regardless Of Personal Hazard, See It As Their Unpleasant Duty To Acquire As Much As Possible In Order To Reduce The Risk To Innocent People.

I Reckon Responsible Behavior Is Something To Get When You Grow Older. Like Varicose Veins.

Ankh-morpork Had Dallied With Many Forms Of Government And Had Ended Up With That Form Of Democracy Known As One Man, One Vote. The Patrician Was The Man; He Had The Vote.

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.

I Staggered Into A Manchester Bar Late One Night On A Tour And The Waitress Said "you Look As If You Need A Screaming Orgasm". At The Time This Was The Last Thing On My Mind.

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

I Like Being A Writer.

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

He Thought About How It Might Be To Be, Say, A Fox Confronted With An Angry Sheep. A Sheep Moreover, That Could Afford To Employ Wolves.

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

Exclamation Marks

Money Makes People Rich; It Is A Fallacy To Think It Makes Them Better, Or Even That It Makes Them Worse. People Are What They Do, And What They Leave Behind.

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.

I Dinna Trust Him," Said Slightly Mad Angus. "he Reads Books An' Such.

Elves Are Wonderful. They Provoke Wonder. Elves Are Marvellous. They Cause Marvels. Elves Are Fantastic. They Create Fantasies. Elves Are Glamorous. They Project Glamour. Elves Are Enchanting. They Weave Enchantment. Elves Are Terrific. They Beget Terror. The Thing About Words Is That Meanings Can Twist Just Like A Snake, And If You Want To Find Snakes Look For Them Behind Words That Have Changed Their Meaning. No One Ever Said Elves Are Nice. Elves Are Bad.

Racism Was Not A Problem On The Discworld, Because - What With Trolls And Dwarfs And So On - Speciesism Was More Interesting. Black And White Lived In Perfect Harmony And Ganged Up On Green.

Black And White

I Know That I Am A Small, Weak Man, But I Have Amassed A Large Library; I Dream Of Dangerous Places.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Let Grammar, Punctuation, And Spelling Into Your Life! Even The Most Energetic And Wonderful Mess Has To Be Turned Into Sentences.

Imagination, Not Intelligence, Made Us Human.

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.

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

Ultimately, There Is The Freedom To Take The Consequences.

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.

Only Ron's Dog Was Watching William. He Considered That It Had, For A Dog, A Very Offensive And Knowing Look. A Couple Of Months Ago Someaone Had Tried To Hand William The Old Story About There Being A Dog In The City That Could Talk. (...) The Dog In Front Of William Didn't Look As If It Could Talk, But It Did Look As If It Would Swear.

Several Sellers Of Hot Meat Pies And Sausages In A Bun Had Appeared From Nowhere And Were Doing A Brisk Trade. [footnote: They Always Do, Everywhere. No-one Sees Them Arrive. The Logical Explaination Is That The Franchise Includes The Stall, The Paper Hat And A Small Gas-powered Time Machine.]

Building A Temple Didn't Mean You Believed In Gods, It Just Meant You Believed In Architecture.

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.

I'd Like To Stand Up For The Rights Of People Who Put Everything On Their Burger - Chutney, Mustard, Pickle, Mustard Pickle, Tomato Sauce... It Is Common Knowledge In My Family That I Can't Tell The Difference Between A Veggie Burger And A Meat One, Because The Ratio Of Burger To Pickles Is So High.

You Have The Effrontery To Be Squeamish, It Thought At Him. But We Were Dragons. We Were Supposed To Be Cruel, Cunning, Heartless And Terrible. But This Much I Can Tell You, You Ape – The Great Face Pressed Even Closer, So That Wonse Was Staring Into The Pitiless Depths Of His Eyes – We Never Burned And Tortured And Ripped One Another Apart And Called It Morality.

There Are No Inconsistencies In The Discworld Books; Ocassionally, However, There Are Alternate Pasts.

There Is Always A Choice." "you Mean I Could Choose Certain Death?" "a Choice Nevertheless, Or Perhaps An Alternative. You See I Believe In Freedom. Not Many People Do, Although They Will Of Course Protest Otherwise. 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.

Seeing Things A Human Shouldn't Have To See Makes Us Human.

Don't You Understand?" Snarled Rincewind. "we Are Going Over The Edge, Godsdammit!" "can't We Do Anything About It?" "no!" "then I Can't See The Sense In Panicking," Said Twoflower Calmly.

The Price Of Being The Best Is Having To Be The Best.

Granny Bit Her Lip. She Was Never Quite Certain About Children, Thinking Of Them-when She Thought About Them At All-as Coming Somewhere Between Animals And People. She Understood Babies. You Put Milk In One End And Kept The Other As Clean As Possible. Adults Were Even Easier, Because They Did The Feeding And Cleaning Themselves. But In Between Was A World Of Experience That She Had Never Really Inquired About. As Far As She Was Aware, You Just Tried To Stop Them Catching Anything Fatal And Hoped That It Would All Turn Out All Right.

I Found While Driving In Wyoming That Wearing A Stetson And Driving A Beat-up Pickup Meant You Could Go As Fast As You Like, While The Police Picked Up Californian Winnebagos That Went One Mph Over 55. After All, They Wanted To Bring Money Into The State, Not Merely Circulate It.

And, As Always Happens, And Happens Far Too Soon, The Strange And Wonderful Becomes A Memory And A Memory Becomes A Dream. Tomorrow It's Gone.

Pride Is All Very Well, But A Sausage Is A Sausage.

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

There Are Times When The Best Writing You Can Do Is To Go For A Walk Or Drive, A Long Drive Is Ideal.

Coffee Is A Way Of Stealing Time That Should By Rights Belong To Your Older Self.

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.

I've Often Felt Depressed; Everyone Feels Depressed.

He Says Gods Like To See An Atheist Around. Gives Them Something To Aim At.

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.

... When Your Name Is Really And Truly Percy Blakeney, Pronounced 'black-knee', And You Still Have Bad Acne In Your Twenties, You Accept Pimple As A Nickname And Are Grateful That It Wasn't Anything Worse.

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

The Rising Sun Managed To Peek Around The Vast Column Of Smoke That Forever Rose From Ankh-morpork, City Of Cities, Illustrating Almost Up To The Edge Of Space That Smoke Means Progress Or, At Least, People Setting Fire To Things.

Wikipedia, Eh? Must Be Accurate Then.

If I Were You, I'd Sue My Face For Slander.

We Sleepwalk Through Our Lives, Because How Could We Live If We Were Always This Awake?

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.

But, In Truth, It Had Not Exactly Been Gold, Or Even The Promise Of Gold, But More Like The Fantasy Of Gold, The Fairy Dream That The Gold Is There, At The End Of The Rainbow, And Will Continue To Be There Forever - Provided, Naturally, That You Don't Go And Look. This Is Known As Finance.

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.

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.

People Couldn't Become Truly Holy, He Said, Unless They Also Had The Opportunity To Be Definitively Wicked.

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

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.

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.

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

Juliet's Version Of Cleanliness Was Next To Godliness, Which Was To Say It Was Erratic, Past All Understanding And Was Seldom Seen.

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

On The Disc The Gods Dealt Severely With Atheists.

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.

You Know, You're Rather Amusingly Wrong.

See A Pin And Pick It Up, And, All Day Long, You'll Have A Pin.

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

That's One Form Of Magic, Of Course." "what, Just Knowing Things?" "knowing Things That Other People Don't Know.

Whole New Theories Of Money Were Growing Here Like Mushrooms: In The Dark And Based On Bullshit.

Welcome To Fear, Said Moist To Himself. It's Hope, Turned Inside Out. You Know It Can't Go Wrong, You're Sure It Can't Go Wrong... But It Might.

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.

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.

The Significant Owl Hoots In The Night.

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.

Sometimes I Think A Man Could Wander Across The Disc All His Life And Not See Everything There Is To See,' Said Twoflower. 'and Now It Seems There Are Lots Of Other Worlds As Well. When I Think I Might Die Without Seeing A Hundredth Of All There Is To See It Makes Me Feel,' He Paused, Then Added, 'well, Humble, I Suppose. And Very Angry, Of Course.

They Say That There Can Never Be Two Snowflakes That Are Exactly Alike, But Has Anyone Checked Lately?

Once You've Ruled Out The Impossible Then Whatever Is Left, However Improbable, Must Be The Truth. The Problem Lay In Working Out What Was Impossible, Of Course. That Was The Trick, All Right. There Was Also The Curious Incident Of The Orangutan In The Night-time.

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

Guilt Was The Grease In Which The Wheels Of The Authority Turned.

Next Comes The Realist Phase ("after All, From A Purely Geometrical Point Of View A Cat Is Only A Tube With A Door At The Top.")

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.

Most Horses Don't Walk Backwards Voluntarily, Because What They Can't See Doesn't Exist.

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

Everywhere I Look, I See Something Holy.

What Would Have Happened If You Hadn't Saved Him? "yes! The Sun Would Have Risen Just The Same, Yes?" No "oh, Come On. You Can't Expect Me To Believe That. It's An Astronomical Fact." The Sun Would Not Have Risen. ... "really? Then What Would Have Happened, Pray?" A Mere Ball Of Flaming Gas Would Have Illuminated The World.

Education Had Been Easy. Learning Things Had Been Harder.

You Can't Go Around Building A Better World For People. Only People Can Build A Better World For People. Otherwise It's Just A Cage. Besides You Don't Build A Better World By Choppin' Heads Off And Giving Decent Girls Away To Frogs.

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

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

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.

Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do, If You Ever Find Anything I Wouldn't Do.

In Her Own Special Category, She Was Quite Beautiful. This Was The Category Of All The Women, In His Entire Life, Who Had Ever Thought He Was Worth Smiling At.

Sometimes Words Need Music Too. Sometimes The Descriptions Are Not Enough. Books Should Be Written With Soundtracks, Like Films.

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.

I Particularly Admire Are Mark Twain And Jerome K. Jerome Who Wrote In A Certain Tone Of Voice Which Was Humane And Understanding Of Humanity, But Always Ready To Annotate Its Little Foibles. I Think I'd Lay My Cards Down On That, And Say That It's That That I'm Trying To Do.

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.

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

There's No Such Thing As Writer's Block. That Was Invented By People In California Who Couldn't Write.

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.

Someone Out There Was About To Find That Their Worst Nightmare Was A Maddened Librarian. With A Badge.

Worst Nightmares

When You're All Singing Together, It Brings Things Together. I Know The Songs That My Grandfather And My Father Sang.

He’sh Mad?’ ‘sort Of Mad. But Mad With Lots Of Money.’ ‘ah, Then He Can’t Be Mad. I’ve Been Around; If A Man Hash Lotsh Of Money He’sh Just Ecshentric.

Take The Universe And Grind It Down To The Finest Powder And Sieve It Through The Finest Sieve And Then Show Me One Atom Of Justice, One Molecule Of Mercy. And Yet... And Yet You Act As If There Is Some Ideal Order In The World, As If There Is Some... Some Rightness In The Universe By Which It May Be Judged.

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

Look At Yourself

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.

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

Last Night There Seemed To Be A Chance. Anything Was Possible Last Night. That Was The Trouble With Last Nights. They Were Always Followed By This Mornings.

I Tell You, Commander, It's True That Some Of The Most Terrible Things In The World Are Done By People Who Think, Genuinely Think, That They're Doing It For The Best, Especially If There Is Some God Involved.

The Universe Was Bad Enough Without People Poking It.

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.

Mort Was Hurt By This. It Was One Thing Not To Want To Marry Someone, But Quite Another To Be Told They Didn't Want To Marry You.

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'.

He Helped The Librarian Up. There Was A Red Glow In The Ape's Eyes. It Had Tried To Steal His Books. This Was Probably The Best Proof Any Wizard Could Require That The Trolleys Were Brainless.

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

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.

I Never Said Nothing..." "i Know You Never! I Could Hear You Not Saying Anything! You've Got The Loudest Silences I Ever Did Hear From Anyone Who Wasn't Dead!

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

My Idea Of A Good Novel Was One You Made Enough Money Out Of To Buy A Greenhouse.

I Have A Suspicion - I Have To Be Careful What I Say - That You Might Actually Find The Best Comics Actually Written By People Who Are Comics Writers And Who Aren't Setting Out To Do Graphic Novels.

Previous Generations Understood About Death, And Undoubtedly Would Have Seen A Reasonable Amount Of Death. Once You Get Into The Victorian Era, You Might Well Have Seen The Funerals Of Many Of Your Siblings Before You Were Very Old.

They Always Gives Me Bath Salts," Complained Nobby. "and Bath Soap And Bubble Bath And Herbal Bath Lumps And Tons Of Bath Stuff And I Can't Think Why, 'cos It's Not As If I Hardly Ever Has A Bath. You'd Think They'd Take The Hint, Wouldn't You?

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

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

The Power Of Prayer And Faith Can Heal And Bring Happiness. The Real Tragedy Is That The People That Are Helped By This Don't Realize That This Power Is Really Coming From Within.

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

Of Course, Like All The Informal Inhabitants Of The University The Roaches Were A Little Unusual, But There Was Something Particularly Unpleasant About The Sound Of Billions Of Very Small Feet Hitting The Stones In Perfect Time. Rincewind Stepped Gingerly Over The Marching Column. The Librarian Jumped It. The Luggage, Of Course, Followed Them With A Noise Like Someone Tapdancing Over A Bag Of Crisps.

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.

Humans Had Built A World Inside The World, Which Reflected It In Pretty Much The Same Way As A Drop Of Water Reflected The Landscape. And Yet ... And Yet ... Inside This Little World They Had Taken Pains To Put All The Things You Might Think They Would Want To Escape From - Hatred, Fear, Tyranny, And So Forth. Death Was Intrigued. They Thought They Wanted To Be Taken Out Of Themselves, And Every Art Humans Dreamt Up Took Them Further In. He Was Fascinated.

Speak Softly And Employ A Huge Man With A Crowbar.

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

I Know It’s Not The Right Thing To Say To A Lady, Miss, But You Are Sweating Like A Pig!" "my Mother Always Said That Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, And Ladies Merely Glow…" "is That So? Well, Miss, You Are Glowing Like A Pig!

The Figures Looked More Or Less Human. And They Were Engaged In Religion. You Could Tell By The Knives (it's Not Murder If You Do It For A God).

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

Theres No Stink More Sorrorful Than The Stink Of Wet, Burnt Paper. It Means: The End.

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.

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.

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.

Moist Was Sure Doctors Keep Skeletons Around To Cow Patients. Nyer, Nyer, We Know What You Look Underneath.

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].

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

The Truth Is A Fog, In Which One Man Sees The Heavenly Host And The Other One Sees A Flying Elephant.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

People Whose Concept Of Ancient History Is The First Series Of Star Trek May Be Treated With Patience, Because It's Usually Not Their Fault They Were Reduced To Getting Their Education From School.

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.

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

Polly Felt Questing Eyes Boring Into Her. She Was Embarrassed, Of Course. But Not For The Obvious Reason. It Was For The Other One, The Little Lesson That Life Sometimes Rams Home With A Stick: You Are Not The Only One Watching The World. Other People Are People; While You Watch Them They Watch You, And They Think About You While You Think About Them. The World Isn’t Just About You.

Cake Is Not The Issue Here.

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

Lords And Ladies

If Failure Had No Penalty Success Would Not Be A Prize.

Inside Every Sane Person There's A Madman Struggling To Get Out," Said The Shopkeeper. "that's What I've Always Thought. No One Goes Mad Quicker Than A Totally Sane Person.

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

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.

First Sight Means You Can See What Really Is There, And Second Thoughts Mean Thinking About What You Are Thinking. And In Tiffany's Case, There Were Sometimes Third Thoughts And Fourth Thoughts Although These...sometimes Led Her To Walk Into Doors.

An Author Writes A Book, And That's The Book At That Point. And If The Author Writes The Book Again, Then Somehow Something Has Gone Wrong, If You See What I Mean.

I Know Loads Of Coppers And Dealt With Them A Lot When I Was A Journalist - Coppers Are Easy To Write For; They Tend To Run On Rails.

Our Garden Was Debated Territory Between Five Local Cats, And We'd Heard That The Best Way To Keep Other Cats Out Of The Garden Was To Have One Yourself. A Moment's Rational Thought Here Will Spot The Slight Flaw In This Reasoning.

Eight Years Involved With The Nuclear Industry Have Taught Me That When Nothing Can Possible Go Wrong And Every Avenue Has Been Covered, Then Is The Time To Buy A House On The Next Continent.

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

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.

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.

Everyone Should Occasionally Break The Law In Some Small And Delightful Way. It's Good For The Hygiene Of The Brain.

Contrary To Popular Belief And Hope, People Don't Usually Come Running When They Hear A Scream. That's Not How Humans Work. Humans Look At Other Humans And Say, 'did You Hear A Scream?' Because The First Scream Might Have Been You Screaming Inside Your Head, Or A Horse Backfiring.

He's Out Of His Depth On A Wet Pavement.

They Obeyed, As Wise Men Do When A Woman Puts Her Foot Down . . .

You Were The Kind Of Kid Who Couldn't See The Difference Between Throwing Rocks At A Cat And Setting It On Fire.

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.

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.

You Have To Start Out Learning To Believe The Little Lies. "so We Can Believe The Big Ones?" Yes. Justice, Mercy, Duty. That Sort Of Thing.

You Fear To Die? "it's Not That I Don't Want... I Mean, I've Always...it's Just That Life Is A Habit That's Hard To Break.

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.

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.

All I Am Really Promoting In The Books Is The Golden Rule, Which I Hope Everybody Knows To Be "do As You Would Be Done By." It Has One Or 2 Flaws, But It Is A Good Soundbite. Evil Starts When You Treat Other People As Things. There Are Perhaps Worse Crimes, But They Begin When You Treat Other People As Things.

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.

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