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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.

-Terry Pratchett

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Take The Universe And

Terry Pratchett

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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.

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In The Beginning There Was Nothing, Which Exploded.

Lords And Ladies

I Hate Cats." Death's Face Became A Little Stiffer, If That Were Possible. The Blue Glow In His Eye Sockets Flickered Red For An Instant. "i See," He Said. The Tone Suggested That Death Was Too Good For Cat Haters.

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 Is Always Useful To Face An Enemy Who Is Prepared To Die For His Country," He Read. "this Means That Both You And He Have Exactly The Same Aim In Mind.

You’d Better Tell Me What You Know, Toad,” Said Tiffany. “miss Tick Isn’t Here. I Am.” “another World Is Colliding With This One,” Said The Toad. “there. Happy Now? That’s What Miss Tick Thinks. But It’s Happening Faster Than She Expected. All The Monsters Are Coming Back.” “why?” “there’s No One To Stop Them.” There Was Silence For A Moment. “there’s Me,” Said Tiffany.

It's Never A Good Idea To Ask A Man On A Tight-rope How He Keeps His Balance: A) He Would Probably Fall Off And B) He Probably Doesn't Know What The Muscles Are Called In Any Case.

Well, Yes, But It's Not About The Football." "you're Saying That Football Is Not About Football?" "it's The Sharing," She Said. "it's Being Part Of The Crowd. It's Chanting Together. It's All Of It. The Whole Thing.

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

I Wonder If It's Like This For Mountain Climbers, He Thought. You Climb Bigger And Bigger Mountains And You Know That One Day One Of Them Is Going To Be Just That Bit Too Steep. But You Go On Doing It, Because It’s So-o Good When You Breathe The Air Up There. And You Know You'll Die Falling.

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

If Women Were As Good As Men They'd Be A Lot Better!

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.

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.

I’m Not Superstitious. I’m A Witch. Witches Aren’t Superstitious. We Are What People Are Superstitious Of.

I Commend My Soul To Any God That Can Find It.

Quick, Someone's Coming! Look Real!

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

People Were Stupid, Sometimes. They Thought The Library Was A Dangerous Place Because Of All The Magical Books, Which Was True Enough, But What Made It Really One Of The Most Dangerous Places There Could Ever Be Was The Simple Fact That It Was A Library.

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

Don't Stick Your Nose Where Someone Can Pull It Off And Eat It.

Look At Satan. Created As An Angel, Grows Up To Be The Great Adversary. Hey, If You’re Going To Go On About Genetics, You Might As Well Say The Kid Will Grow Up To Be An Angel. After All, His Father Was Really Big In Heaven In The Old Days. Saying He’ll Grow Up To Be A Demon Just Because His Dad Became One Is Like Saying A Mouse With Its Tail Cut Off Will Give Birth To Tailless Mice. No. Upbringing Is Everything. Take It From Me.

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

The Reaper Does Not Listen To The Harvest.

Taxation Is Just A Sophisticated Way Of Demanding Money With Menaces.

Adventure! People Talked About The Idea As If It Were Something Worthwhile, Rather Than A Mess Of Bad Food, No Sleep And Strange People Inexplicably Trying To Stick Pointed Objects In Bits Of You.

Horoscope: Today Is A Good Time For Making New Friends. A Good Deed May Have Unforeseen Consequences. Don’t Upset Any Druids. You Will Soon Be Going On A Very Strange Journey. Your Lucky Food Is Small Cucumbers. People Pointing Knives At You Are Probably Up To No Good. Ps, We Really Mean It About The Druids.

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.

People Look Down On Stuff Like Geography And Meteorology, And Not Only Because They're Standing On One And Being Soaked By The Other. They Don't Look Quite Like Real Science. But Geography Is Only Physics Slowed Down And With A Few Trees Stuck On It, And Meteorology Is Full Of Excitingly Fashionable Chaos And Complexity. And Summer Isn't A Time. It's A Place As Well. Summer Is A Moving Creature And Likes To Go South For The Winter.

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.

So Much Universe, And So Little Time.

In The End The Problem Isn't That You Have The Wrong Sort Of Government For The People, But That You Have The Wrong Sort Of People.

Particles Of Raw Inspiration Sleet Through The Universe All The Time. Every Once In A While One Of Them Hits A Receptive Mind, Which Then Invents Dna Or The Flute Sonata Form Or A Way Of Making Light Bulbs Wear Out In Half The Time. But Most Of Them Miss. Most People Go Through Their Lives Without Being Hit By Even One.

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.

Joy Is To Fun What The Deep Sea Is To A Puddle. It’s A Feeling Inside That Can Hardly Be Contained.

I Should Have Learned This, She Thought. I Wanted To Learn Fire, And Pain, But I Should Have Learned People.

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.

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.

The Three Rules Of The Librarians Of Time And Space Are: 1) Silence; 2) Books Must Be Returned By No Later Than The Date Shown; And 3) Do Not Interfere With The Nature Of Causality.

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.

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.

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

If It Wasn't For The Fun And Money, I Really Don't Know Why I'd Bother.

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

Anyway, It's Like With Bikes,' Said The First Speaker Authoritatively. 'i Thought I Was Going To Get This Bike With Seven Gears And One Of Them Razorblade Saddles And Purple Paint And Everything, And They Gave Me This Light Blue One. With A Basket. A Girl's Bike.' 'well. You're A Girl,' Said One Of The Others. 'that's Sexism, That Is. Going Around Giving People Girly Presents Just Because They're A Girl.

It Had A Very Long Pendulum, And The Pendulum Swung With A Slow Tick-tock That Set His Teeth On Edge, Because It Was The The Kind Of Delibrate, Annoying Ticking That Wanted To Make It Abundantly Clear That Every Tick And Every Tock Was Stripping Another Second Off Your Life.

Go On, Prove Me Wrong. Destroy The Fabric Of The Universe. See If I Care.

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

It Is Important That We Know Where We Come From, Because If You Do Not Know Where You Come From, Then You Don't Know Where You Are, And If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Where You're Going. And If You Don't Know Where You're Going, You're Probably Going Wrong.

Taxation, Gentlemen, Is Very Much Like Dairy Farming. The Task Is To Extract The Maximum Amount Of Milk With The Minimum Amount Of Moo.

I'm Fairy Godmothering A Girl Who Sounds Like Something You Put Up In The Rain.

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

I Didn't Go To University. Didn't Even Finish A-levels. But I Have Sympathy For Those Who Did.

Everything Is A Test.

At Such Times The Universe Gets A Little Closer To Us. They Are Strange Times, Times Of Beginnings And Endings. Dangerous And Powerful. And We Feel It Even If We Don't Know What It Is. These Times Are Not Necessarily Good, And Not Necessarily Bad. In Fact, What They Are Depends On What *we* Are.

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 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.

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.

You Haven't Really Been Anywhere Until You've Got Back Home.

I Certainly Don't Sit Down And Plan A Book Out Before I Write It. There's A Phrase I Use Called "the Valley Full Of Clouds." Writing A Novel Is As If You Are Going Off On A Journey Across A Valley. The Valley Is Full Of Mist, But You Can See The Top Of A Tree Here And The Top Of Another Tree Over There. And With Any Luck You Can See The Other Side Of The Valley. But You Cannot See Down Into The Mist. Nevertheless, You Head For The First Tree.

Every Intelligent Being, Whether It Breathes Or Not, Coughs Nervously At Some Time In Its Life.

'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.

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

It's Vital To Remember Who You Really Are. It's Very Important. It Isn't A Good Idea To Rely On Other People Or Things To Do It For You, You See. They Always Get It Wrong.

And Then You Bit Onto Them, And Learned Once Again That Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler Could Find A Use For Bits Of An Animal That The Animal Didn't Know It Had Got. Dibbler Had Worked Out That With Enough Fried Onions And Mustard People Would Eat Anything.

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?

If You Trust In Yourself. . .and Believe In Your Dreams. . .and Follow Your Star. . . You'll Still Get Beaten By People Who Spent Their Time Working Hard And Learning Things And Weren't So Lazy.

Humans! They Lived In A World Where The Grass Continued To Be Green And The Sun Rose Every Day And Flowers Regularly Turned Into Fruit, And What Impressed Them? Weeping Statues. And Wine Made Out Of Water! A Mere Quantum-mechanistic Tunnel Effect, That'd Happen Anyway If You Were Prepared To Wait Zillions Of Years. As If The Turning Of Sunlight Into Wine, By Means Of Vines And Grapes And Time And Enzymes, Wasn't A Thousand Times More Impressive And Happened All The Time.

I Have, Before Now, Waited For A Pen To Perform A Macro.

"right!" "right!" "you Can Get There!" "i Can Get There!" "you're A Natural At Counting To Two!" "i'm A Nat'ral At Counting To Two!" "if You Can Count To Two, You Can Count To Anything!" "if I Can Count To Two, I Can Count To Anything!" "and Then The World Is Your Mollusc!" "my Mollusc! What's A Mollusc?

Learnin’ How Not To Do Things Is As Hard As Learning How To Do Them.

Of Course, It Is Very Important To Be Sober When You Take An Exam. Many Worthwhile Careers In The Street-cleansing, Fruit-picking And Subway-guitar-playing Industries Have Been Founded On A Lack Of Understanding Of This Simple Fact.

The Kappamaki, A Whaling Research Ship, Was Currently Researching The Question: How Many Whales Can You Catch In One Week?

Once Upon A Time The Plural Of 'wizard' Was 'war'.

Once Upon A Time

Sometimes The Crime Follows The Punishment, Which Only Serves To Prove The Foresight Of The Great God." "that's What My Grandmother Used To Say," Said Brutha Automatically. "indeed? I Would Like To Know More About This Formidable Lady." "she Used To Give Me A Thrashing Every Morning Because I Would Certainly Do Something To Deserve It During The Day," Said Brutha. "a Most Complete Understanding Of The Nature Of Mankind.

It Was, According To The History Books, The Fastest Coronation Since Bubric The Saxon Crowned Himself With A Very Pointy Crown On A Hill During A Thunderstorm, And Reigned For One And A Half Seconds.

They Say A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, But It's Not One Half So Bad As A Lot Of Ignorance.

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

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.

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.

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.

Tiffany Knew What The Problem Was Immediately. She'd Seen It Before, At Birthday Parties. Her Brother Was Suffering From Tragic Sweet Deprivation. Yes, He Was Surrounded By Sweets. But The Moment He Took Any Sweet At All, Said His Sugar-addled Brain, That Meant He Was Not Taking All The Rest. And There Were So Many Sweets He'd Never Be Able To Eat Them All. It Was Too Much To Cope With. The Only Solution Was To Burst Into Tears.

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

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

It's An Old Magical Principle - It's Even Filtered Down Into Rpg Systems - That Magic, While Taking A Lot Of Effort, Can Be 'stored' - In A Staff, For Example. No Doubt A Wizard Spends A Little Time Each Day Charging Up His Staff, Although You Go Blind If You Do It Too Much, Of Course.

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

Oh, He Did His Best To Make Their Short Lives Miserable, Because That Was His Job, But Nothing He Could Think Up Was Half As Bad As The Stuff They Thought Up Themselves.

William: "i'm Sure We Can All Pull Together, Sir." Vetinari: "oh, I Do Hope Not. Pulling Together Is The Aim Of Despotism And Tyranny. Free Men Pull In All Kinds Of Directions.

I Was Once A Journalist. And I Think Of Myself As A Journalist, And That's It. You Tell The Truth. I Even Wrote A Book Called 'the Truth'.

Telling The Truth

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

On The Disc The Gods Dealt Severely With Atheists.

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

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.

Needless To Say, They Refused To Submit To The Empire, Conducting Such A Persistent Guerrilla War That The Romans Gave Up Hope Of Conquering Scotland, And The Wee Free Men Remained Both Wee And Free.

Matter Exploded Into Being, Apparently As Chaos, But In Fact As A Chord. The Ultimate Power Chord.

The Duke Had A Mind That Ticked Like A Clock And, Like A Clock, It Regularly Went Cuckoo.

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

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

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.

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.

I Thought Jet Planes Were Just Trucks With More Wings And Less Wheels.

Gravity Is A Habit That Is Hard To Shake Off.

You Know, I Never Imagined There Were He-dryads. Not Even In An Oak Tree." One Of The Giants Grinned At Him. Druellae Snorted. "stupid! Where Do You Think Acorns Come From?

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.

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.

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

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

The Mountains Of Madness Have Many Little Plateau Of Sanity.

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.

In My Experience, What Every True Artist Wants, Really Wants, Is To Be Paid.

Escapism Isn't Good Or Bad In Itself. What Is Important Is What You Are Escaping From And Where You Are Escaping To.

I'm Referred To, I See, As 'the Biggest Banker In Modern Publishing'. Now There's A Line That Needed The Celebrated Guardian Proof-reading.

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.

People Don't Like To Say Fantasy They Say Magic Realism Which Means Fantasy Written By Somebody I Went To University With.

It Is Possibly Worth Mentioning At This Point That Mr. Young Thought That Paparazzi Was A Kind Of Italian Linoleum.

Studies Have Shown That An Ant Can Carry One Hundred Times Its Own Weight, But There Is No Known Limit To The Lifting Power Of The Average Tiny Eighty-year-old Spanish Peasant Grandmother.

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

He Found That He Had This Sudden Desperate Longing For The Fuming, Smoky Streets Of Ankh-morpork, Which Was Always At Its Best In The Spring, When The Gummy Sheen On The Turbid Waters Of The Ankh River Had A Special Iridescence And The Eaves Were Full Of Birdsong, Or At Least Birds Coughing Rhythmically

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.

One Of The Highlights Of The First Good Omens Tour Was Neil And I Walking Through New York Singing Shoehorn With Teeth. Well, We'd Had A Good Breakfast. And You Don't Get Mugged, Either.

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

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.

- Don’t Worry, It Won’t Be Forever. - Good. - It May Seem Like Forever.

Logic Is A Wonderful Thing But Doesn't Always Beat Actual Thought.

When A Man Is Tired Of Ankh-morpork, He Is Tired Of Ankle-deep Slurry.

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 .

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

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.

Sybil's Female Forebears Had Valiantly Backed Up Their Husbands As Distant Embassies Were Besieged, Had Given Birth On A Camel Or In The Shade Of A Stricken Elephant, Had Handed Around The Little Gold Chocolates While Trolls Were Trying To Break Into The Compound, Or Had Merely Stayed At Home And Nursed Such Bits Of Husbands And Sons As Made It Back From Endless Little Wars. The Result Was A Species Of Woman Who, When Duty Called, Turned Into Solid Steel.

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

Aziraphale Collected Books. If He Were Totally Honest With Himself He Would Have To Have Admitted That His Bookshop Was Simply Somewhere To Store Them. He Was Not Unusual In This. In Order To Maintain His Cover As A Typical Second-hand Book Seller, He Used Every Means Short Of Actual Physical Violence To Prevent Customers From Making A Purchase. Unpleasant Damp Smells, Glowering Looks, Erratic Opening Hours - He Was Incredibly Good At It.

Seeing, Contrary To Popular Wisdom, Isn't Believing. It's Where Belief Stops, Because It Isn't Needed Any More.

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.

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

Be One Of The Crowd? It Went Against Everything A Wizard Stood For, And A Wizard Would Not Stand For Anything If He Could Sit Down For It, But Even Sitting Down, You Had To Stand Out.

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

I Do Not In Fact Use Many Puns. Certainly There Are Far Fewer Than People Believe. But I Suspect The Ones I Do Occasionally Use Tend To Hang Around In People's Memories For A While.

Igor?' Said Moist. 'you Have An Igor?' Oh, Yes,' Said Hubert. 'that's How I Get This Wonderful Light. They Know The Secret Of Storing Lightning In Jars! But Don't Let That Worry You, Mr Lipspick. Just Because I'm Employing An Igor And Working In A Cellar Doesn't Mean I'm Some Sort Of Madman, Ha Ha Ha!' Ha Ha,' Agreed Moist. Ha Hah Hah!,' Said Hubert. 'hahahahahaha!! Ahahahahahahhhhh!!!!!-' Bent Slapped Him On The Back. Hubert Coughed. Sorry About That, It's The Air Down Here,' He Mumbled.

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.

It's Lies. It's All Lies. Some Of Them Are Just Prettier Than Others, That's All. People See What They Think Is There.

I Read Anything That’s Going To Be Interesting. But You Don’t Know What It Is Until You’ve Read It. Somewhere In A Book On The History Of False Teeth There’ll Be The Making Of A Novel.

I Was Merely Endeavoring To Indicate That If We Do Not Grab Events By The Collar They Will Have Us By The Throat. -lord Vetinari

The Phrase "may You Live In Interesting Times" Is The Lowest In A Trilogy Of Chinese Curses That Continue "may You Come To The Attention Of Those In Authority" And Finish With "may The Gods Give You Everything You Ask For." I Have No Idea About Its Authenticity.

Rumour Is Information Distilled So Finely That It Can Filter Through Anything. It Does Not Need Doors And Windows -- Sometimes It Does Not Need People. It Can Exist Free And Wild, Running From Ear To Ear Without Ever Touching Lips.

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.")

If You Don't Turn Your Life Into A Story, You Just Become A Part Of Someone Else's Story.

Fantasy Stories

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.

We Are Monkeys. We Like To Chatter. Chattering Doesn't Cost Us Anything.

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

Nanny Ogg Looked Under Her Bed In Case There Was A Man There. Well, You Never Knew Your Luck.

By The Time You've Reached Your Sixties, You Do Know That One Day You Will Die, And Knowing That Is At Least The Beginning Of Wisdom.

After You've Been Working Fairly Intensively On A Novel For Six Months You Never Want To See The Damn Thing Again.

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.

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.

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

It Wasn't That Nanny Ogg Sang Badly. It Was Just That She Could Hit Notes Which, When Amplified By A Tin Bath Half Full Of Water, Ceased To Be Sound And Became Some Sort Of Invasive Presence.

You Can't Remember The Plot Of The Dr Who Movie Because It Didn't Have One, Just A Lot Of Plot Holes Strung Together. It Did Have A Lot Of Flashing Lights, Though.

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

She Was, In Fact, Quite A Pleasant Looking Girl, Even If Her Bosom Had Clearly Been Intended For A Girl Two Feet Taller; But She Was Not Her. The Egregious Professor Of Grammar And Usage Would Have Corrected This To "she Was Not She," Which Would Have Caused The Professor Of Logic To Spit Out His Drink.

Just Call In At The Torturer On Your Way Out. See When He Can Fit You In.

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

Time Is A Drug. Too Much Of It Kills You.

Thinking. This Book Contains Some. Whether You Try It At Home Is Up To You.

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

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

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

My Dream Holiday Would Be A) A Ticket To Amsterdam B) Immunity From Prosecution And C) A Baseball Bat.

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

Worst Nightmares

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.]

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.

And Never Resist A Perfect Moment.

Perfect Moments

They Say That The Prospect Of Being Hanged In The Morning Concentrates A Man's Mind Wonderfully; Unfortunately, What The Mind Inevitably Concentrates On Is That, In The Morning, It Will Be In A Body That Is Going To Be Hanged.

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.

I Try To Make Computers Say Things Like You Have 60 Seconds To Achieve Safe Distance.

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

Lords And Ladies

This Looks Like A Job For Inadvisably Applied Magic If Ever I Saw One.

Fantasy Is An Exercise Bicycle For The Mind. It Might Not Take You Anywhere, But It Tones Up The Muscles That Can.

I'm Up To My Neck In The Real World, Every Day. Just You Try Doing Your Vat Return With A Head Full Of Goblins.

And So The Children Of The Revolution Were Faced With The Age-old Problem: It Wasn't That You Had The Wrong Kind Of Government, Which Was Obvious, But That You Had The Wrong Kind Of People. As Soon As You Saw People As Things To Be Measured, They Didn't Measure Up.

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

I’m A Witch. It’s What We Do. When It’s Nobody Else’s Business, It’s My Business.

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

Dreams Come True

...no-one Is Finally Dead Until The Ripples They Cause In The World Die Away... The Span Of Someone's Life, They Say, Is Only The Core Of Their Actual Existence.

Scientists Have Calculated That The Chances Of Something So Patently Absurd Actually Existing Are Millions To One. But Magicians Have Calculated That Million-to-one Chances Crop Up Nine Times Out Of Ten.

It Was Written In Some Holy Book, Apparently, So That Made It Okay, And Probably Compulsory.

Whatever Happens, They Say Afterwards, It Must Have Been Fate. People Are Always A Little Confused About This, As They Are In The Case Of Miracles. When Someone Is Saved From Certain Death By A Strange Concatenation Of Circumstances, They Say That's A Miracle. But Of Course If Someone Is Killed By A Freak Chain Of Events -- The Oil Spilled Just There, The Safety Fence Broken Just There -- That Must Also Be A Miracle. Just Because It's Not Nice Doesn't Mean It's Not Miraculous.

I Meant," Said Ipslore Bitterly, "what Is There In This World That Truly Makes Living Worthwhile?" Death Thought About It. Cats, He Said Eventually. Cats Are Nice.

My Experience In Amsterdam Is That Cyclists Ride Where The Hell They Like And Aim In A State Of Rage At All Pedestrians While Ringing Their Bell Loudly, The Concept Of Avoiding People Being Foreign To Them.

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

‎no One Remembers The Singer. The Song Remains.

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

A Good Banana Daiquiri Is Hard To Come By. I've Only Ever Found One Place In This Country That Makes A Proper One, And That's In Leeds.

He Moved On, In The Centre Of A Widening Circle. He Wasn't An Enemy, He Was A Nemesis.

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

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).

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

Education Had Been Easy. Learning Things Had Been Harder.

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