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London Was Not Designed For Cars. Come To That, It Wasn't Designed For People. It Just Sort Of Happened. This Created Problems, And The Solutions That Were Implemented Became The Next Problems, Five Or Ten Or A Hundred Years Down The Line.

-Terry Pratchett

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London Was Not Designed

Terry Pratchett

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London Was Not Designed For Cars. Come To That, It Wasn't Designed For People. It Just Sort Of Happened. This Created Problems, And The Solutions That Were Implemented Became The Next Problems, Five Or Ten Or A Hundred Years Down The Line.

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Would A Minute Have Mattered? No, Probably Not, Although His Young Son Appeared To Have A Very Accurate Internal Clock. Possibly Even 2 Minutes Would Be Okay. Three Minutes, Even. You Could Go To Five Minutes, Perhaps. But That Was Just It. If You Could Go For Five Minutes, Then You'd Go To Ten, Then Half An Hour, A Couple Of Hours...and Not See Your Son All Evening. So That Was That. Six O'clock, Prompt. Every Day. Read To Young Sam. No Excuses. He'd Promised Himself That. No Excuses. No Excuses At All. Once You Had A Good Excuse, You Opened The Door To Bad Excuses.

Look, He Said To His Imagination, If This Is How You're Going To Behave, I Shan't Bring You Again.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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He Was Determined To Discover The Underlying Logic Behind The Universe. Which Was Going To Be Hard, Because There Wasn't One.

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

It's Daft, Locking Us Up," Said Nanny. "i'd Have Had Us Killed." "that's Because You're Basically Good," Said Magrat. "the Good Are Innocent And Create Justice. The Bad Are Guilty, Which Is Why They Invent Mercy.

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

Naughty And Nice? Said Death. But It's Easy To Be Nice If You're Rich. Is This Fair? Albert Wanted To Argue. He Wanted To Say, Really? In That Case, How Come So Many Of The Rich Buggers Is Bastards? And Being Poor Don't Mean Being Naughty, Neither.

His Progress Through Life Was Hampered By His Tremendous Sense Of His Own Ignorance, A Disability Which Affects All Too Few.

There's No Justice, Said Mort. Just Us.

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

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

If He'd Been A Hero, He Would Have Taken The Opportunity To Say, "that's What I Call Sorted!" Since He Wasn't A Hero, He Threw Up.

(about A Cookbook...) - What About This One? Maids Of Honor? - Weeelll, They Starts Out As Maids Of Honor...but They Ends Up Tarts.

Given Enough Coffee I Could Rule The World

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

She Was Convinced That She Was Anorexic, Because Every Time She Looked In The Mirror She Did Indeed See A Fat Person.

Aliens Don't Get Stuck In Air Ducts. It's Practically A Well-known Fact.

Legends Don't Have To Make Sense. They Just Have To Be Beautiful. Or At Least Interesting.

I Don't Think I've Ever Been Critical Of The Money Douglas Adams Makes, Especially Since, As Has Been Tactfully Pointed Out, I Myself Have Had To Change Banks Having Filled The First One Up.

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.

The Baby Boomers Are Getting Older, And Will Stay Older For Longer. And They Will Run Right Into The Dementia Firing Range. How Will A Society Cope? Especially A Society That Can't So Readily Rely On Those Stable Family Relationships That Traditionally Provided The Backbone Of Care?

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.

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

When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.

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

It's Hard To Be Famous And Alive.

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.

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

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People Aren't Just People, They Are People Surrounded By Circumstances.

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

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

Any Fool Could Be A Witch With A Runic Knife, But It Took Skill To Be One With An Apple Corer.

I [...] Vowed That Rather Than Let Alzheimer's Take Me, I Would Take It. I Would Live My Life As Ever To The Full And Die, before The Disease Mounted Its Last attack, In My Own Home, In A Chair On The Lawn, With A Brandy In My Hand To Wash Down Whatever Modern version Of The "brompton Cocktail" Some helpful Medic Could Supply. And With thomas Tallis On My Ipod, I Would Shake Hands With Death.

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

The Theater Troubled Her. It Had A Magic Of Its Own, One That Didn’t Belong To Her, One That Wasn’t In Her Control. It Changed The World, And Said Things Were Otherwise Than They Were. And It Was Worse Than That. It Was Magic That Didn’t Belong To Magical People. It Was Commanded By Ordinary People, Who Didn’t Know The Rules. They Altered The World Because It Sounded Better.

Some People Are Confident Because They Are Fools. Leonard Had The Look Of Someone Who Was Confident Because, So Far, He'd Never Found A Reason Not To Be.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Storm Was Really Giving It Everything It Had. This Was Its Big Chance. It Had Spent Years Hanging Around The Provinces, Putting In Some Useful Work As A Squall, Building Up Experience, Making Contacts, Occasionally Leaping Out On Unsuspecting Shepherds Or Blasting Quite Small Oak Trees. Now An Opening In The Weather Had Given It An Opportunity To Strut Its Hour, And It Was Building Up Its Role In The Hope Of Being Spotted By One Of The Big Climates.

Now He Knew: They Were Real. Who’d Make Up A Thing Like This? Okay, One Of Them Was A Cheese That Rolled Around Of Its Own Accord, But Nobody Was Perfect.

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.

Any True Wizard, Faced With A Sign Like 'do Not Open This Door. Really. We Mean It. We're Not Kidding. Opening This Door Will Mean The End Of The Universe,' Would Automatically Open The Door In Order To See What All The Fuss Is About. This Made Signs Rather A Waste Of Time, But At Least It Meant That When You Handed What Was Left Of The Wizard To His Grieving Relatives You Could Say, As They Grasped The Jar, 'we Told Him Not To."

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