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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.

-Terry Pratchett

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The Four Horsemen Whose

Terry Pratchett

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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.

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Poets Have Tried To Describe Ankh-morpork. They Have Failed. Perhaps It's The Sheer Zestful Vitality Of The Place, Or Maybe It's Just That A City With A Million Inhabitants And No Sewers Is Rather Robust For Poets, Who Prefer Daffodils And No Wonder. So Let's Just Say That Ankh-morpork Is As Full Of Life As An Old Cheese On A Hot Day, As Loud As A Curse In A Cathedral, As Bright As An Oil Slick, As Colourful As A Bruise And As Full Of Activity, Industry, Bustle And Sheer Exuberant Busyness As A Dead Dog On A Termite Mound.

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

I Must Confess The Activities Of The Uk Governments For The Past Couple Of Years Have Been Watched With Frank Admiration And Amazement By Lord Vetinari. Outright Theft As A Policy Had Never Occurred To Him.

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

The People Who Guard The Rainbow Don't Like Those Who Get In The Way Of The Sun.

The Students Were Staring At Her In The Manner Of Those Who Have Heard Of The Species 'female' But Have Never Expected To Get This Close To One.

Just To Keep Bad Dreams At Bay, She Took A Swig Out Of A Bottle That Smelled Of Apples And Happy Brain-death.

Most Armies Are In Fact Run By Their Sergeants - The Officers Are There Just To Give Things A Bit Of Tone And Prevent Warfare Becoming A Mere Lower-class Brawl.

A True Beanie Should Have A Propellor On The Top.

There Is A Soak-the-rich Attitude In The Air, A Feeling That If You Have A Lot Of Money You Must Have Got It By Some Ghastly Means. I Can Quite Happily Say There Was Never Any Family Money. All The Money We Got Was Mine, Just From Writing Books.

An Assassin, A Real Assassin Had To Look Like One-black Clothes, Hood, Boots, And All. If They Could Wear Any Clothes, Any Disguise, Then What Could Anyone Do But Spend All Day In A Small Room With A Loaded Crossbow Pointed At The Door?

Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɴᴏ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴍᴇ. —death

Quit While You're A Head, That's What I Say.

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

I Don’t See Why It Matters What Is Written. Not When It’s About People. It Can Always Be Crossed Out.

Night Poured Over The Desert. It Came Suddenly, In Purple. In The Clear Air, The Stars Drilled Down Out Of The Sky, Reminding Any Thoughtful Watcher That It Is In The Deserts And High Places That Religions Are Generated. When Men See Nothing But Bottomless Infinity Over Their Heads They Have Always Had A Driving And Desperate Urge To Find Someone To Put In The Way.

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.

What Did I Tell You About Mister Safety Catch?' Said Vimes Weakly. When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend,' Recited Detritus, Saluting.

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

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

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.

Are You A Devious, Plotting, Unreliable Madman? Ah, Good, Then You Can Be My Most Trusted Advisor.

Interesting Times

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.

Sometimes I Feel That The World Is Made Up Of Sensible People Who Know The Plot And Bloody Idiots Who Don't.

Insanity Is Catching.

He Felt As If He Had Been Shipwrecked On The Titanic, But In The Nick Of Time Had Been Rescued. By The Lusitania

Most Of My Schooldays Were The Worst Day Of My Life.

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.

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

The Thing About Secrets Is That They Are Usually Best Kept By Just One Person. That Was The Special Thing About Secrets. Some People Seemed To Think That The Best Way To Keep A Secret Was To Tell As Many People As Possible; What Could Possibly Go Wrong For A Secret When There Were So Many People Defending It?

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.

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

There Are Times In Life When People Must Know When Not To Let Go. Balloons Are Designed To Teach Small Children This.

It Is True That Words Have Power, And One Of The Things They Are Able To Do Is Get Out Of Someone’s Mouth Before The Speaker Has The Chance To Stop Them.

Always Be Wary Of Any Helpful Item That Weighs Less Than Its Operating Manual.

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.

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

She Wore So Much Thick White Makeup In Order To Conceal Her Naturally Rosy Complexion That If She Turned Around Suddenly Her Face Would Probably End Up On The Back Of Her Head.

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

This Is Art Holding A Mirror Up To Life. That’s Why Everything Is Exactly The Wrong Way Around.

Your Own Brain Ought To Have The Decency To Be On Your Side!

Peace?' Said Vetinari. 'ah, Yes, Defined As Period Of Time To Allow For Preparation For The Next War.

The Thing About Stories Is You Have To Pick The Ones That Last.

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.

We Who Think We Are About To Die Will Laugh At Anything.

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

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

Unlike Wizards, Who Like Nothing Better Than A Complicated Hierarchy, Witches Don't Go In Much For The Structured Approach To Career Progression. It's Up To Each Individual Witch To Take On A Girl To Hand The Area Over To When She Dies. Witches Are Not By Nature Gregarious, At Least With Other Witches, And They Certainly Don't Have Leaders. Granny Weatherwax Was The Most Highly-regarded Of The Leaders They Didn't Have.

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.

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

I'm Interested In Mythology Generally, But India Has No Special Place In My Heart - Although Hindu Gods Seem A Lot More Fun.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Ye Ken, We've Been Robbin' And Running Aroound On All Kinds O' Worlds For A Lang Time, And I'll Tell Ye This: The Universe Is A Lot More Comp-li-cated Than It Looks From The Ooutside.

Well, The Traveling Teachers Do Come Through Every Few Months," Said The Baron. "yes, Sir, I Know, Sir, And They're Useless, Sir. They Teach Facts, Not Understanding. It's Like Teaching People About Forests By Showing Them A Saw. I Want A Proper School, Sir, To Teach Reading And Writing, And Most Of All Thinking, Sir, So People Can Find What They're Good At, Because Someone Doing What They Really Like Is Always An Asset To Any Country, And Too Often People Never Find Out Until It's Too Late.

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

I Think That Sick People In Ankh-morpork Generally Go To A Vet. It's Generally A Better Bet. There's More Pressure On A Vet To Get It Right. People Say "it Was God's Will" When Granny Dies, But They Get Angry When They Lose A Cow.

It's A Guilty Secret Of A Lot Of Writers, As You Get Older You Don't Read As Much Fiction As You Used To, Mainly Because It's Like You Are Deconstructing It All The Time.

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

The Real World Was Far Too Real To Leave Neat Little Hints. It Was Full Of Too Many Things. It Wasn't By Eliminating The Impossible That You Got To The Truth, However Improbable; It Was By The Much Harder Process Of Eliminating The Possibilities.

Have A Bit More Patience With Newbies. Of Course Some Of Them Act Dumb - They're Often Students, For Heaven's Sake.

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

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

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

The Female Mind Is Certainly A Devious One, My Lord." Vetinari Looked At His Secretary In Surprise. "well, Of Course It Is. It Has To Deal With The Male One.

This Is Morbidia," Said Vlad. "although She's Been Calling Herself Tracy Lately, To Be Cool.

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

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

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.

You Had To Hand It To The Patrician, He Admitted Grudgingly. If You Didn't, He Sent Men To Come And Take It Away.

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.

He Stared At His Feet. “i’m Still Very Ignorant,” He Said, “but At Least I’m Ignorant About Really Important Things.

Who'd Want A Pony When You Could Have The Whole Universe? It Was Far More Interesting And You Didn't Have To Muck It Out Once A Week.

Why Not? If Enough People Believe, You Can Be God Of Anything.

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.

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

(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.

The Secret Is Not To Dream," She Whispered. "the Secret Is To Wake Up. Waking Up Is Harder. I Have Woken Up And I Am Real. I Know Where I Come From And I Know Where I'm Going. You Cannot Fool Me Any More. Or Touch Me. Or Anything That Is Mine.

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.

What Is A Fantasy Map But A Space Beyond Which There Be Dragons?

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

[science Fiction Is] Out In The Mainstream Now. You Can Tell By The Way Mainstream Literary Authors Pillage Sf While Denying They're Writing It!

I Have A Living Will And I Have Friends, And I Have Money And I Have Hope.

I Have No Use For People Who Have Learned The Limits Of The Possible.

One Day A Tortoise Will Learn How To Fly.

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.

It Was Sad Music. But It Waved Its Sadness Like A Battle Flag. It Said The Universe Had Done All It Could, But You Were Still Alive.

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

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

And When The Patrician Was Unhappy, He Became Very Democratic. He Found Intricate And Painful Ways Of Spreading That Unhappiness As Far As Possible.

The Elevator Shaft Was A Kind Of Heat Sink. Hot Food Was Cold By The Time It Arrived. Cold Food Got Colder. No One Knew What Would Happen To Ice Cream, But It Would Probably Involve Some Rewriting Of The Laws Of Thermodynamics.

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

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

Anyway, Why Would You Trust Anything Written Down? She Certainly Didn't Trust "mothers Of Borogravia!" And That Was From The Government. And If You Couldn't Trust The Government, Who Could You Trust? Very Nearly Everyone, Come To Think Of It.

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.

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

Yes, Sir, Thank You, Sir, And I Wouldn’t Trust Me One Little Inch, Sir. I Knows A Bad One When I Sees Them. I Have A Mirror.

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

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

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

I Don’t Think It's Weak To Admit You Made A Mistake. That Takes Strength, If You Ask Me.

Most Gods Throw Dice, But Fate Plays Chess, And You Don't Find Out Til Too Late That He's Been Playing With Two Queens All Along.

Monsters Are Getting More Uppity, Too (...) I Heard Where This Guy, He Killed This Monster In This Lake, No Problem, Stuck Its Arm Up Over The Door (...) And You Know What? Its Mum Come And Complained. Its Actual Mum Come Right Down To The Hall Next Day And Complained. Actually Complained. That's The Respect You Get.

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

The Librarian Considered Matters For A While. So…a Dwarf And A Troll. He Preferred Both Species To Humans. For One Thing, Neither Of Them Were Great Readers. The Librarian Was, Of Course, Very Much In Favor Of Reading In General, But Readers In Particular Got On His Nerves. There Was Something, Well, Sacrilegious About The Way They Kept Taking Books Off The Shelves And Wearing Out The Words By Reading Them. He Liked People Who Loved And Respected Books, And The Best Way To Do That, In The Librarian’s Opinion, Was To Leave Them On The Shelves Where Nature Intended Them To Be.

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

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.

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.

At Least Nine-tenths Of All The Original Reality Ever Created Lies Outside The Multiverse, And Since The Multiverse By Definition Includes Absolutely Everything That Is Anything, This Puts A Bit Of A Strain On Things. Outside The Boundaries Of The Universe Lie The Raw Realities, The Could-have-beens, The Might-bes, The Never-weres, The Wild Ideas, All Being Created And Uncreated Chaotically Like Elements In Fermenting Supernovas. Just Occasionally Where The Walls Of The Worlds Have Worn A Bit Thin, They Can Leak In.

Life Is Just Chemicals. A Drop Here, A Drip There, Everything's Changed. A Mere Dribble Of Fermented Juices And Sudenlly You're Going To Live Another Few Hours.

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

In The Ramtops Village Where They Dance The Real Morris Dance, For Example, They Believe That No-one Is Finally Dead Until The Ripples They Cause In The World Die Away - Until The Clock He Wound Up Winds Down, Until The Wine She Made Has Finished Its Ferment, Until The Crop They Planted Is Harvested. The Span Of Someone's Life, They Say, Is Only The Core Of Their Actual Existence.

Unseen University Was Much Bigger On The Inside. Thousands Of Years As The Leading Establishment Of Practical Magic In A World Where Dimensions Were Largely A Matter Of Chance In Any Case Had Left It Bulging In Places Where It Shouldn't Have Places. There Were Rooms Containing Rooms Which, If You Entered Them, Turned Out To Contain The Room You'd Started With, Which Can Be A Problem If You Are In A Conga Line.

In My Early Teens, I Read Every Bound Volume Of The Magazine Punch. Every Writer Of Any Distinction In The English Language, And I Mean Including America And England, At Some Time Wrote For Punch. Jerome K. Jerome, Who Wrote Three Men In A Boat, I Loved. I Was Very Impressed When I Read A Piece By Mark Twain In Punch, And Realized That Despite The Fact That They Were On Different Continents, Jerome K. Jerome And Mark Twain Had The Same Kind Of Laconic, Laid-back, "the Human Race Is Damn Stupid, But Quite Interesting" Attitude. They Were Almost Talking With The Same Voice.

Heaven Has No Taste." "now-" "and Not One Single Sushi Restaurant." A Look Of Pain Crossed The Angel's Suddenly Very Serious Face.

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

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.

Getting An Education Was A Bit Like A Communicable Sexual Disease. It Made You Unsuitable For A Lot Of Jobs And Then You Had The Urge To Pass It On.

Perhaps It Would Be Simpler If You Just Did What You're Told And Didn't Try To Understand Things.

"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?

Ankh-morpork! Pearl Of Cities! This Is Not A Completely Accurate Description, Of Course — It Was Not Round And Shiny — But Even Its Worst Enemies Would Agree That If You Had To Liken Ankh-morpork To Anything, Then It Might As Well Be A Piece Of Rubbish Covered With The Diseased Secretions Of A Dying Mollusc.

This Is Where The Gods Play Games With The Lives Of Men, On A Board Which Is At One And The Same Time A Simple Playing Area And The Whole World. And Fate Always Wins.

It Was The Heart Of Any Scam Or Fiddle -- Keep The Punter Uncertain, Or, If He Is Certain, Make Him Certain Of The Wrong Thing.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

She Was A Beefy Young Woman And, Whatever Piece Of Music She Was Playing, It Was Definitely Losing.

Tv People In The Uk... I'm Getting On A Lot Better With Them.

Wizards Don't Believe In Gods In The Same Way That Most People Don't Find It Necessary To Believe In, Say, Tables. They Know They're There, They Know They're There For A Purpose, They'd Probably Agree That They Have A Place In A Well-organised Universe, But They Wouldn't See The Point Of Believing, Of Going Around Saying "o Great Table, Without Whom We Are As Naught." Anyway, Either The Gods Are There Whether You Believe In Them Or Not, Or Exist Only As A Function Of The Belief, So Either Way You Might As Well Ignore The Whole Business And, As It Were, Eat Off Your Knees.

And The New Day Was A Great Big Fish.

If Not You, Who Else?

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

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

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.

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

Chaos Is Found In Greatest Abundance Wherever Order Is Being Sought. It Always Defeats Order, Because It Is Better Organized.

It's Going To Look Pretty Good, Then, Isn't It," Said War Testily, "the One Horseman And Three Pedestrians Of The Apocalypse.

It Must Be Hard For Humans, Forever Floundering Through Inconvenient Geography. Humans Are Always Lost. It's A Basic Characteristic. It Explains A Lot About Them.

What's A Philosopher?' Said Brutha. Someone Who's Bright Enough To Find A Job With No Heavy Lifting,' Said A Voice In His Head.

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

When Much Is Taken, Something Is Returned.

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

Little Crimes Breed Big Crimes. You Smile At Little Crimes And Then Big Crimes Blow Your Head Off.

One Person Is Nothing. Two People Are A Nation.

Nigeria Independence

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.

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.

Magic Never Dies. It Merely Fades Away.

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'.

The Thing With Crowns Is, It Isn't The Putting Them On That's The Problem, It's The Taking Them Off.

I've Often Felt Depressed; Everyone Feels Depressed.

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.

Ritual And Ceremony In Their Due Times Kept The World Under The Sky And The Stars In Their Courses. It Was Astonishing What Ritual And Ceremony Could Do.

For The First Time In Her Life Granny Wondered Whether There Might Be Something Important In All These Books People Were Setting Store By These Days, Although She Was Opposed To Books On Strict Moral Grounds, Since She Had Heard That Many Of Them Were Written By Dead People And Therefore It Stood To Reason Reading Them Would Be As Bad As Necromancy. Among The Many Things In The Infinitely Varied Universe With Which Granny Did Not Hold Was Talking To Dead People, Who By All Accounts Had Enough Troubles Of Their Own.

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

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

I Am A Technophile, So There Is No Such Thing As A First Draft. The First Draft Plunges On, And About A Quarter Of The Way Through It I Realise I'm Doing Things Wrong, So I Start Rewriting It. What You Call The First Draft Becomes Rather Like A Caterpillar; It Is Progressing Fairly Slowly, But There Is Movement Up And Down Its Whole Length, The Whole Story Is Being Changed. I Call This Draft Zero, Telling Myself How The Story Is Supposed To Go.

He Had About The Same Life Expectancy As A Three Legged Hedgehog On A Six Lane Motorway.

But What's Worth More Than Gold?" "practically Everything. You, For Example. Gold Is Heavy. Your Weight In Gold Is Not Very Much Gold At All. Aren't You Worth More Than That?

...william Wondered Why He Always Disliked People Who Said 'no Offense Meant.' Maybe It Was Because They Found It Easier To To Say 'no Offense Meant' Than Actually To Refrain From Giving Offense.

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.

Some People Are Heroes. And Some People Jot Down Notes.

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.

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

Everything Happens For A Reason

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

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

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

What Was Supposed To Be So Special About A Full Moon? It Was Only A Big Circle Of Light. And The Dark Of The Moon Was Only Darkness. But Halfway Between The Two, When The Moon Was Between The Worlds Of Light And Dark, When Even The Moon Lived On The Edge...maybe Then A Witch Could Believe In The Moon.

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.

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

A Lot Hinges On The Fact That, In Most Circumstances, People Are Not Allowed To Hit You With A Mallet. They Put Up All Kinds Of Visible And Invisible Signs That Say, 'do Not Do This' In The Hope That It'll Work, But If It Doesn't, Then They Shrug, Because There Is, Really, No Real Mallet At All.

Science: A Way Of Finding Things Out And Then Making Them Work. Science Explains What Is Happening Around Us The Whole Time. So Does Religion, But Science Is Better Because It Comes Up With More Understandable Excuses When It's Wrong.

Some Shadows Are So Long, They Arrive Before The Light.

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

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

A Marriage Is Always Made Up Of Two People Who Are Prepared To Swear That Only The Other One Snores.

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.

At Some Time In The Recent Past Someone Had Decided To Brighten The Ancient Corridors Of The University By Painting Them, Having Some Vague Notion That Learning Should Be Fun. It Hadn’t Worked. It’s A Fact Known Throughout The Universes That No Matter How Carefully The Colors Are Chosen, Institutional Decor Ends Up As Either Vomit Green, Unmentionable Brown, Nicotine Yellow Or Surgical Appliance Pink. By Some Little-understood Process Of Sympathetic Resonance, Corridors Painted In Those Colors Always Smell Slightly Of Boiled Cabbage—even If No Cabbage Is Ever Cooked In The Vicinity.

Consider The Situation. There You Are, Forehead Like A Set Of Balconies, Worrying About The Long-term Effects Of All This New 'fire' Stuff On The Environment, You're Being Chased And Eaten By Most Of The Planet's Large Animals, And Suddenly Tiny Versions Of One Of The Worst Of Them Wanders Into The Cave And Starts To Purr.

The City's Full Of People Who You Just See Around.

The Whole Of Life Is Just Like Watching A Film. Only It's As Though You Always Get In Ten Minutes After The Big Picture Has Started, And No-one Will Tell You The Plot, So You Have To Work It Out All Yourself From The Clues.

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

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.

What Was The Point Of Education, He Thought, If People Went Out Afterward And Used It?

Generally I Start Writing When I Have Even The Smallest Idea Of How A Book Is Going To Go, Because The Physical Process Of Writing Itself Keeps The Mind Active And Focused On The Job At Hand. Usually I Write In About 5 Drafts, But That Simply Means There Are 5 Definite Times When I Go In A Linear Fashion From The Beginning To The End Of The Book.

The Diplomatic Thing For Me To Say Is That If Publishers Are Dressing Up Other Authors As Terry Pratchett Clones Then They Are Doing A Disservice To Those Authors. If They Didn't Dress Them As Clones But Did Something Different, Then Those Authors Could Be Pioneering In A Different Sense.

My Advice Is This. For Christ's Sake, Don't Write A Book That Is Suitable For A Kid Of 12 Years Old, Because The Kids Who Read Who Are 12 Years Old Are Reading Books For Adults. I Read All Of The James Bond Books When I Was About 11, Which Was Approximately The Right Time To Read James Bond Books.

If Complete And Utter Chaos Was Lightning, Then He'd Be The Sort To Stand On A Hilltop In A Thunderstorm Wearing Wet Copper Armour And Shouting 'all Gods Are Bastards!

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.

He'd Been An Angel Once. He Hadn't Meant To Fall. He'd Just Hung Around With The Wrong People.

Despite Rumor, Death Isn't Cruel--merely Terribly, Terribly Good At His Job.

However, You Do Need Rules. Driving On The Left (or The Right Or, In Parts Of Europe, On The Left And The Right As The Mood Takes You) Is A Rule Which Works, Since Following It Means You're More Likely To Reach Your Intended Rather Than Your Final Destination.

All Property Is Theft, Except Mine.

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