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They Called Themselves The Munrungs. It Meant The People, Or The True Human Beings. It's What Most People Call Themselves, To Begin With. And Then One Day The Tribe Meets Some Other People Or, If It's Not Been A Good Day, The Enemy. If Only They'd Think Up A Name Like Some More True Human Beings, It'd Save A Lot Of Trouble Later On

-Terry Pratchett

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They Called Themselves The

Terry Pratchett

...

They Called Themselves The Munrungs. It Meant The People, Or The True Human Beings. It's What Most People Call Themselves, To Begin With. And Then One Day The Tribe Meets Some Other People Or, If It's Not Been A Good Day, The Enemy. If Only They'd Think Up A Name Like Some More True Human Beings, It'd Save A Lot Of Trouble Later On

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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.

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She'd Stopped Reading The Kind Of Women's Magazine That Talked About Romance And Knitting And Started Reading The Kind Of Women's Magazine That Talked About Orgasms, But Apart From Making A Mental Note To Have One If Ever The Occasion Presented Itsel

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

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And Sam Vimes Thought: Why Is Young Sam's Nursery Full Of Farmyard Animals Anyway? Why Are His Books Full Of Moo-cows And Baa-lambs? He Is Growing Up In The City. He Will Only See Them On A Plate! They Go Sizzle!

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Now That Their Long War Was Over, They Could Get On With The Proper Concern Of All Civilised Nations, Which Is To Prepare For The Next One.

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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!

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Oh, There's Plenty Of Reasons. I Just Don't Know Which One.

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Evil Begins When You Begin To Treat People As Things.

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

The Trouble With Having An Open Mind, Of Course, Is That People Will Insist On Coming Along And Trying To Put Things In It.

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.

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.

Were You Proposing To Shoot These People In Cold Blood, Sergeant?" "nossir. Just A Warning Shot Inna Head, Sir.

Maybe The Only Significant Difference Between A Really Smart Simulation And A Human Being Was The Noise They Made When You Punched Them.

I'm Trying To Remember How You Tell The Time By Looking At The Sun." -"i Should Leave It For A While, It's Too Bright To See The Numbers At The Moment.

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

We're Dealing Here," Said Vimes, "with A Twisted Mind." "oh, No! You Think So?" "yes." "but... No... You Can't Be Right. Because Nobby Was With Us All The Time." "not Nobby," Said Vimes Testily. "whatever He Might Do To A Dragon, I Doubt If He'd Make It Explode. There's Stranger People In This World Than Corporal Nobbs, My Lad." Carrot's Expression Slid Into A Rictus Of Intrigued Horror. "gosh," He Said.

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

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.

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

Don't Look Back!" "why Not?" "because I Just Did! Run Faster!

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

It's Hard To Be Famous And Alive.

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

Vimes Had Got Around To A Clean Desk Policy. It Was A Clean Floor Strategy That Eluded Him At The Moment.

And Therefore Education At The University Mostly Worked By The Age-old Method Of Putting A Lot Of Young People In The Vicinity Of A Lot Of Books And Hoping That Something Would Pass From One To The Other, While The Actual Young People Put Themselves In The Vicinity Of Inns And Taverns For Exactly The Same Reason.

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.

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.

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.

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

He Said It Was Better To Belong Where You Don't Belong Than Not To Belong Where You Used To Belong, Remembering When You Used To Belong There.

In Fact, Very Few People On The Face Of The Planet Know That The Very Shape Of The M25 Forms The Sigil *odegra* In The Language Of The Black Priesthood Of Ancient Mu, And Means 'hail The Great Beast, Devourer Of Worlds'.

Its Useful To Go Out Of This World And See It From The Perspective Of Another One.

Granny Weatherwax Was Often Angry. She Considered It One Of Her Strong Points. Genuine Anger Was One Of The World's Greatest Creative Forces. But You Had To Learn How To Control It. That Didn't Mean You Let It Trickle Away. It Meant You Dammed It, Carefully, Let It Develop A Working Head, Let It Drown Whole Valleys Of The Mind And Then, Just When The Whole Structure Was About To Collapse, Opened A Tiny Pipeline At The Base And Let The Iron-hard Stream Of Wrath Power The Turbines Of Revenge.

It Looked The Sort Of Book Described In Library Catalogues As 'slightly Foxed,' Although It Would Be More Honest To Admit That It Looked As Though It Had Beed Badgered, Wolved And Possibly Beared As Well.

I Think What Drove Me Away From Being A Reporter Was An Inability To Accept That The World Came In Neat Stories. Every Story You Have To Report Is Just Part Of Something Bigger. The News Isn't What Happened Last Night - It's Some Cumulative Thing That's Happened Over Centuries. I Found It Hard To Think Of One Event And Drag It Out Of A Bubbling Pot And Present It As The Story That Explains It All.

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

Always Face What You Fear. Have Just Enough Money, Never Too Much, And Some String. Even If It’s Not Your Fault, It’s Your Responsibility. Witches Deal With Things. Never Stand Between Two Mirrors. Never Cackle. Do What You Must Do. Never Lie, But You Don’t Always Have To Be Honest. Never Wish. Especially Don’t Wish Upon A Star, Which Is Astronomically Stupid. Open Your Eyes, And Then Open Your Eyes Again.

And The People Next Door Oppress Me All Night Long. I Tell Them, I Work All Day, A Man's Got To Have Some Time To Learn To Play The Tuba. That's Oppression, That Is. If I'm Not Under The Heel Of The Oppressor, I Don't Know Who Is.

You Can’t Say ‘if This Didn’t Happen Then That Would Have Happened’ Because You Don’t Know Everything That Might Have Happened. You Might Think Something’d Be Good, But For All You Know It Could Have Turned Out Horrible. You Can’t Say ‘if Only I’d…’ Because You Could Be Wishing For Anything. The Point Is, You’ll Never Know. You’ve Gone Past. So There’s No Use Thinking About It.

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

I Am Death, Not Taxes. I Turn Up Only Once.

Albert Grunted. "do You Know What Happens To Lads Who Ask Too Many Questions?" Mort Thought For A Moment. "no," He Said Eventually, "what?" There Was Silence. Then Albert Straightened Up And Said, "damned If I Know. Probably They Get Answers, And Serve 'em Right.

Books Bend Space And Time. One Reason The Owners Of Those Aforesaid Little Rambling, Poky Secondhand Bookshops Always Seem Slightly Unearthly Is That Many Of Them Really Are, Having Strayed Into This World After Taking A Wrong Turning In Their Own Bookshops In Worlds Where It Is Considered Commendable Business Practice To Wear Carpet Slippers All The Time And Open Your Shop Only When You Feel Like It.

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

As Far As I'm Concerned, I'm A Writer Who's Writing Books, And Therefore, I Don't Want To Die. You'd Miss The End Of The Book, Wouldn't You? You Can't Die With An Unfinished Book.

If You Were Going To Be Successful In The World Of Crime, You Needed A Reputation For Honesty.

When I Was A Kid, I Read The Science-fiction Shelves, And I Read The Fantasy Shelves.

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

And All The Stories Had, Somewhere, The Witch. The Wicked Old Witch. And Tiffany Had Thought: Where's The Evidence?

Inside Every Sane Person There’s A Madman Struggling To Get Out.

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)

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.

Nanny Ogg Could See The Future In The Froth On A Beer Mug. It Invariably Showed That She Was Going To Enjoy A Refreshing Drink Which She Almost Certainly Was Not Going To Pay For.

I Like Being A Writer.

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

It's Not Brits Who Think American Readers Are A Bunch Of Whinging Morons With The Geo-social Understanding Of A Wire Coathanger, It's American Editors.

The Enemy Isn’t Men, Or Women, It’s Bloody Stupid People And No-one Has The Right To Be Stupid.

The Point Of Page One Is To Make People Turn To Page Two And If At The End Of The Book People Think That The Book Was Good Value For Money, You Have Achieved Something, Because If You Haven't Achieved Those Things You're Not Going To Achieve The Other Thing.

People's Whole Lives Do Pass In Front Of Their Eye Before They Die. The Process Is Called "living".

I Dare Say That Quite A Few People Have Contemplated Death For Reasons That Much Later Seemed To Them To Be Quite Minor.

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

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.

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

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

Interesting Times

No It's Not!" Said Constable Visit. "atheism Is A Denial Of A God." "therefore It Is A Religious Position," Said Dorfl. "indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms Of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.

But What Should We Do When The Highborn And Wealthy Take To Crime? Indeed, If A Poor Man Will Spend A Year In Prison For Stealing Out Of Hunger, How High Would The Gallows Need To Be To Hang The Rich Man Who Breaks The Law Out Of Greed?

And We Don't Often Get Any Wading Birds In The River Ankh, Mainly Because The Pollution Would Eat Their Legs Away And Anyway, It's Easier For Them To Walk On The Surface.

There Are Many Horrible Sights In The Multiverse. Somehow, Though, To A Soul Attuned To The Subtle Rhythms Of A Library, There Are Few Worse Sights Than A Hole Where A Book Ought To Be.

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

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.

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.

We've Got A Lot Of Experience Of Not Having Any Experience

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