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Too Much Magic Could Wrap Time And Space Around Itself, And That Wasn't Good News For The Kind Of Person Who Had Grown Used To Things Like Effects Following Things Like Causes.

-Terry Pratchett

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Too Much Magic Could

Terry Pratchett

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Too Much Magic Could Wrap Time And Space Around Itself, And That Wasn't Good News For The Kind Of Person Who Had Grown Used To Things Like Effects Following Things Like Causes.

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

You're Not Allowed To Call Them Dinosaurs Any More," Said Yo-less. "it's Speciesist. You Have To Call Them Pre-petroleum Persons.

Political Correctness

Freedom Without Limits Is Just A Word.

Stupid Men Are Often Capable Of Things The Clever Would Not Dare To Contemplate.

These Weren't Cheap Modern Books; These Were Books Bound In Leather, And Not Just Leather, But Leather From Clever Cows Who Had Given Their Lives For Literature After A Happy Existence In The Very Best Pastures.

They Say That The Eyes Of Some Paintings Can Follow You Around The Room, A Fact That I Doubt, But I Am Wondering Whether Some Music Can Follow You For Ever.

The Thief, As Will Become Apparent, Was A Special Type Of Thief. This Thief Was An Artist Of Theft. Other Thieves Merely Stole Everything That Was Not Nailed Down, But This Thief Stole The Nails As Well.

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.

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

They May Be Called The Palace Guard, The City Guard, Or The Patrol. Whatever The Name, Their Purpose In Any Work Of Heroic Fantasy Is Identical: It Is, Round About Chapter Three (or Ten Minutes Into The Film) To Rush Into The Room, Attack The Hero One At A Time, And Be Slaughtered. No One Ever Asks Them If They Want To. This Book Is Dedicated To Those Fine Men.

What Can The Harvest Hope For, If Not For The Care Of The Reaper Man?

Good Or Bad, Do It As You. Too Many Lies And There's No Truth To Go Back To.

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.

A Hardback's Harder At Christmas Time Because That's A Good Hardback Buying Time.

Real Stupidity Beats Artificial Intelligence Every Time.

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

A Push-and-go Wooden Duck On Wheels Can Cause Quite A Lot Of Damage If Wielded With Enough Force.

I Saved A Man's Life Once," Said Granny. "special Medicine, Twice A Day. Boiled Water With A Bit Of Berry Juice In It. Told Him I'd Bought It From The Dwarves. That's The Biggest Part Of Doct'rin, Really. Most People'll Get Over Most Things If They Put Their Minds To It, You Just Have To Give Them An Interest.

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

Interesting Times

Somewhere Around The Place I've Got An Unfinished Short Story About Schrodinger's Dog; It Was Mostly Moaning About All The Attention The Cat Was Getting.

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

The Wages Of Sin Is Death But So Is The Salary Of Virtue, And At Least The Evil Get To Go Home Early On Fridays.

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!

A Good Plan Isn't One Where Someone Wins, It's Where Nobody Thinks They've Lost.

He'd Been Wrong, There Was A Light At The End Of The Tunnel, And It Was A Flamethrower.

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

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

Preston, I Don't Think This Creature Could Ever Find Its Way Into Your Head. Quite Apart From Anything Else, It Seems Pretty Crowded And Complicated To Me.

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

Whatever You Choose, Your Choice Will Mean There Are Two New Worlds. And Perhaps Sometimes, On The Edge Of Sleep, We Will See The Shadow Of The Other World. There Will Be No Unhappy Memories.

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

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.

I Know It's A Very Human Thing To Say 'is There Anything I Can Do', But In This Case I Would Only Entertain Offers From Very High-end Experts In Brain Chemistry.

This Is Space. It's Sometimes Called The Final Frontier. (except That Of Course You Can't Have A Final Frontier, Because There'd Be Nothing For It To Be A Frontier To, But As Frontiers Go, It's Pretty Penultimate . . .)

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

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.

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

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.

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

Wikipedia, Eh? Must Be Accurate Then.

Dark Fantasy Is Just Another Way Of Saying Horror.

Everything Is A Test.

Give Anyone A Lever Long Enough And They Can Change The World. It's Unreliable Levers That Are The Problem.

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.

You Couldn't Say 'i Had Orders.' You Couldn't Say 'it's Not Fair.' No One Was Listening. There Were No Words. You Owned Yourself. [...] Not 'thou Shalt Not'. Say 'i Will Not'.

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?

Many An Ancient Lord's Last Words Have Been, 'you Can't Kill Me Because I've Got Magic Aaargh.'

Gods Don't Like People Not Doing Much Work. People Who Aren't Busy All The Time Might Start To Think.

Bishops Move Diagonally. That's Why They Often Turn Up Where The Kings Don't Expect Them To Be.

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.

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.

Everyone Is Reading What They Like And That's A Good Thing.

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

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

The Sign, Which Says: "do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Open This Door!" - Of Course, I've Read It. Why Do You Think I Want It Opened?.. To See Why They Wanted It Shut, Of Course. This Exchange Contains Almost All You Need To Know About Human Civilization. At Least, Those Bits Of It That Are Now Under The Sea, Fenced Off Or Still Smoking.

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.

It's Beautiful," Said Mort Softly. "what Is It?" The Sun Is Under The Disc, Said Death. "is It Like This Every Night?" Every Night, Said Death. Nature's Like That. "doesn't Anyone Know?" Me. You. The Gods. Good, Isn't It? "gosh!" Death Leaned Over The Saddle And Looked Down At The Kingdoms Of The World. I Don't Know About You, He Said, But I Could Murder A Curry.

One Day I'll Work Out What It Is You Are Saying, My Lad, And Then You'll Be In Trouble.

Tiffany Has Been Apprenticing As A Witch By Visiting People In Need With Her Mentor. After Meeting With One Particularly Sad Case, She Tells Her Mentor, "it Shouldn't Be Like This." Her Mentor Replies, "there Isn't A Way Things Should Be. There's Just What Happens, And What We Do.

Cheery Was Aware That Commander Vimes Didn't Like The Phrase 'the Innocent Have Nothing To Fear', Believing The Innocent Had Everything To Fear, Mostly From The Guilty But In The Longer Term Even More From Those Who Say Things Like 'the Innocent Have Nothing To Fear'.

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.

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

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

Assassins Did Have A Certain Code, After All. It Was Dishonorable To Kill Someone If You Weren't Being Paid.

So Much Paperwork To Read! So Much Paperwork To Push Away! So Much Paperwork To Pretend He Hadn't Received And That Might Have Been Eaten By Gargoyles.

The Truth Is That Even Big Collections Of Ordinary Books Distort Space, As Can Readily Be Proved By Anyone Who Has Been Around A Really Old-fashioned Secondhand Bookshop, One That Looks As Though They Were Designed By M. Escher On A Bad Day And Has More Stairways Than Storeys And Those Rows Of Shelves Which End In Little Doors That Are Surely Too Small For A Full-sized Human To Enter. The Relevant Equation Is: Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass; A Good Bookshop Is Just A Genteel Black Hole That Knows How To Read.

But I Think You Have A Right To Know What It Is You’re Not Being Told.

Haven't You Got Any Romance In Your Soul?" Said Magrat Plaintively. "no," Said Granny. "i Ain't. And Stars Don't Care What You Wish, And Magic Don't Make Things Better, And No One Doesn't Get Burned Who Sticks Their Hand In A Fire. If You Want To Amount To Anything As A Witch, Magrat Garlick, You Got To Learn Three Things. What's Real, What's Not Real, And What's The Difference.

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

The Short Conversation That Follows Eventually Led To A Tree Religion. Its Tenet Of Faith Was This: A Tree That Was A Good Tree And Led A Clean Decent And Upstanding Life Could Be Assured Of A Future Life After Death. If It Was Very Good Indeed It Would Eventually Be Reincarnated As Five Thousand Rolls Of Lavatory Paper.

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.

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.

Dogs Are Not Like Cats, Who Amusingly Tolerate Humans Only Until Someone Comes Up With A Tin Opener That Can Be Operated With A Paw. Men Made Dogs, They Took Wolves And Gave Them Human Things - Unnecessary Intelligence, Names, A Desire To Belong, And A Twitching Inferiority Complex. All Dogs Dream Wolf Dreams, And Know They're Dreaming Of Biting Their Maker. Every Dog Knows, Deep In His Heart, That He Is A Bad Dog.

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 My Father Could Have Sat Up In Bed And Said Goodbye, I'd Have Pressed The Button. I Wouldn't Have Been Able To See For Crying, But I Would Have Considered That A Duty.

And What Had He Wanted? He'd Never Sat Down To Think About It. But Mostly, He Wanted Yesterday To Be Different From Today.

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.

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

She Walked Quickly Through The Darkness With The Frank Stride Of Someone Who Was At Least Certain That The Forest, On This Damp And Windy Night, Contained Strange And Terrible Things And She Was It.

He Sighed. It Had Come To This. He Was A Responsible Authority, And People Could Use Terms Like "core Values" At Him With Impunity.

Because No Man Wants To Be A Coward In Front Of A Cheese.

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

Everyone's Heard Of Erwin Schrodinger's Famous Thought Experiment. You Put A Cat In A Box With A Bottle Of Poison, Which Many People Would Suggest Is About As Far As You Need To Go.

Down There - He Said - Are People Who Will Follow Any Dragon, Worship Any God, Ignore Any Inequity. All Out Of A Kind Of Humdrum, Everyday Badness. Not The Really High, Creative Loathsomeness Of The Great Sinners, But A Sort Of Mass-produced Darkness Of The Soul. Sin, You Might Say, Without A Trace Of Originality. They Accept Evil Not Because They Say Yes, But Because They Don't Say No.

Picture A Tall, Dark Figure, Surrounded By Cornfields... No, You Can't Ride A Cat. Who Ever Heard Of The Death Of Rats Riding A Cat? The Death Of Rats Would Ride Some Kind Of Dog. Picture More Fields, A Great Horizon-spanning Network Of Fields, Rolling In Gentle Waves... Don't Ask Me I Don't Know. Some Kind Of Terrier, Maybe. ...fields Of Corn, Alive, Whispering In The Breeze... Right, And The Death Of Fleas Can Ride It Too. That Way You Kill Two Birds With One Stone. ...awaiting The Clockwork Of The Seasons. Metaphorically.

The Best Research Is The Research That You Don't Know That You Are Doing.

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.

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.

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.

…we Were Born Vampires." "i Thought You Became –" "— Vampires By Being Bitten? Dear Me, No. Oh, We Can Turn People Into Vampires, It’s An Easy Technique, But What Would Be The Point? When You Eat… Now What Is It You Eat? Oh Yes, Chocolate… You Don’t Want To Turn It Into Another Agnes Nitt, Do You? Less Chocolate To Go Around." He Sighed. "oh Dear, Superstition, Superstition Everywhere We Turn.

...and The Funny Thing Was That People Who Weren't Entirely Certain They Were Right Always Argued Much Louder Than Other People, As If The Main Person They Were Trying To Convince Were Themselves.

Nothing Has To Be True Forever. Just For Long Enough, To Tell You The Truth.

Around It Are Those Countries Which, According To History, Constitute The Civilised World Ie, A World That Can Support Historians

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.

Aziraphale. The Enemy, Of Course. But An Enemy For Six Thousand Years Now, Which Made Him A Sort Of Friend.

It Was One Of Those Problematic Occasions With Long Silences, Sporadic Coughs, And People Saying Isolated Things Like, "well, Isn't This Nice.

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.

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.

Everyone Knew There Were Wolves In The Mountains, But They Seldom Came Near The Village-the Modern Wolves Were The Offspring Of Ancestors That Had Survived Because They Had Learned That Human Meat Had Sharp Edges.

One Of The Hardest Lessons In Young Sam's Life Had Been Finding Out That The People In Charge Weren't In Charge. It Had Been Finding Out That Governments Were Not, On The Whole, Staffed By People Who Had A Grip, And That Plans Were What People Made Instead Of Thinking.

They Were Also Slightly Less Intelligent Than He Was. This Is A Quality You Should Always Pray For In Your Would-be Murderer.

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

That, Lad," He Said Proudly, "was Some Of The Worst Poetry I Have Heard For A Long Time. It Was Offensive To The Ear And A Torrrture To The Soul....we'll Make A Gonnagle Out Of Ye Yet!

Questions Don't Have To Make Sense, Vincent," Said Miss Susan. "but Answers Do.

Always Remember That The Crowd That Applauds Your Coronation Is The Same Crowd That Will Applaud Your Beheading. People Like A Show.

...the Proliferation Of Luminous Fungi Or Iridescent Crystals In Deep Caves Where The Torchlessly Improvident Hero Needs To See Is One Of The Most Obvious Intrusions Of Narrative Causality Into The Physical Universe.

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.

You Are Very Clever," Said The Old Man Shyly. "i Would Like To Eat Your Brains, One Day.

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'.

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.

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.

I Have No Fear Of Death Whatsoever. I Suspect That Few People Do, What They All Fear Is What Might Happen In The Years Or Months Before Death.

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

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.

What Did They Feed The Lions And Tigers With In The Ark, Sir?

"multiple Exclamation Marks," He Went On, Shaking His Head, "are A Sure Sign Of A Diseased Mind."

Exclamation Marks

She Had Heard It Said That, Before You Could Understand Anybody, You Needed To Walk A Mile In Their Shoes, Which Did Not Make A Whole Lot Of Sense, Because Probably After You Had Walked A Mile In Their Shoes, You Would Understand That They Were Chasing You And Accusing You Of The Theft Of A Pair Of Shoes--although, Of Course, You Could Probably Outrun Them, Owing To Their Lack Of Footwear.

Maybe The Best Comics Are Written By People Who Really Are At Ease In The Comic World.

It's Not Morbid To Talk About Death. Most People Don't Worry About Death, They Worry About A Bad Death.

Just Because Things Are Obvious Doesn't Mean They're True.

Chain-mail Isn't Much Defence Against An Arrow. It Certainly Isn't When The Arrow Is Being Aimed Between Your Eyes.

Don't Be Smart. Smart Is Only A Polished Version Of Dumb. Try Intelligence. It Will Surely See You Through.

Who Shall I Shoot? You Choose. Now, Listen Very Carefully: Where's Your Coffee? You've Got Coffee, Haven't You? C'mon, Everyone's Got Coffee! Spill The Beans!

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.

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 .

In The World I Live In, 'not Worse' Is Nearly As Good As 'better'.

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.

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

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

Smaller-than-medium-jock-but-bigger-than-wee-jock-jock

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

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

It's Hard To Be Famous And Alive.

Sergeant Colon Of The Ankh-morpork City Guard Was On Duty. He Was Guarding The Brass Bridge, The Main Link Between Ankh And Morpork. From Theft. When It Came To Crime Prevention, Sergeant Colon Found It Safest To Think Big.

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.

Even The Blind And Meek And Voiceless Have Gods.

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.

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.

If You Kept Changing The Way People Saw The World, You Ended Up Changing The Way You Saw Yourself.

Ah," Said Mr Pin. "right. I Remember. You Are Concerned Citizens." He Knew About Concerned Citizens. Wherever They Were, They All Spoke The Same Private Language, Where 'traditional Values' Meant 'hang Someone'.

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

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.

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.

This Time It Had Been Magic. And It Didn't Stop Being Magic Just Because You Found Out How It Was Done.

A Good Bookshop Is Just A Genteel Black Hole That Knows How To Read.

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.

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

I Can See We're Going To Get Along Like A House On Fire," Said Miss Tick. "there May Be No Survivors.

But There Was More To It Than That. As The Amazing Maurice Said, It Was Just A Story About People And Rats. And The Difficult Part Of It Was Deciding Who The People Were, And Who Were The Rats.

No One Is Actually Dead Until The Ripples They Cause In The World Die Away.

Raise The Stakes! Always Push Your Luck Because No One Else Would Push It For You.

In The Beginning There Was Nothing, Which Exploded.

Lords And Ladies

There's Some Things That You Wouldn't Tackle In A Children's Book Because It Would Be Beyond, Not The Mental Capabilities, But The Experience Of Someone Under The Age Of Say Ten Or Eleven To Encompass. But That Field Is Smaller Than You Might Think. They Can Easily Cope With Death And Things Like That; They Know About It And It's A Subject That Often Preoccupies Them.

The Jurisdiction Of A Good Man Extends To The End Of The World.

End Of The World

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.

I Keep Vaguely Wondering What Macs Are Like, But The Ones I've Seen Spend Too Much Time Being Friendly.

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?

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.

... All Reputable Falconers Agreed That For Hunting Purposes The Only Way You Could Reliably Bring Down Prey With A Wowhawk Was By Using It In A Slingshot.

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

People Are Content To Wait A Long Time For Salvation, But Prefer Dinner To Turn Up Inside An Hour.

Knowing How Bad You Could Be Is A Great Encouragement To Being Good.

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

Knowledge Is Dangerous, Which Is Why Governments Often Clamp Down On People Who Can Think Thoughts Above A Certain Caliber.

...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.

Rincewind Shivered. He Was Not, Of Course, An Atheist; On The Disc The Gods Dealt Severely With Atheists. On The Few Occasions When He Had Some Spare Change He Had Always Made A Point Of Dropping A Few Coppers Into A Temple Coffer, Somewhere, On The Principle That A Man Needed All The Friends He Could Get. But Usually He Didn't Bother The Gods, And He Hoped The Gods Wouldn't Bother Him. Life Was Quite Complicated Enough.

I Had A Deprived Childhood, You See. I Had Lots Of Other Kids To Play With And My Parents Bought Me Outdoor Toys And Refused To Ill-treat Me, So It Never Occurred To Me To Seek Solitary Consolation With A Good Book.

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

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

Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat, But Her's Curiosity Could Have Massacred A Pride Of Lions.

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

Omens Are Everywhere In This World You Just Have To Find The One That Fits.

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.

The Brain Works Fast When It Thinks It’s About To Be Cut In Half.

Fantasy Doesn't Have To Be Fantastic. American Writers In Particular Find This Much Harder To Grasp. You Need To Have Your Feet On The Ground As Much As Your Head In The Clouds. The Cute Dragon That Sits On Your Shoulder Also Craps All Down Your Back, But This Makes It More Interesting Because It Gives It An Added Dimension.

I Read The Best Works Of Some Of The Best Satirists, And Indeed Best Writers From The Beginning Of The Victorian Era To About The 1960s. If You Want To Be A Blacksmith, You Go And Watch The Blacksmith Working, And You Work Out What The Blacksmith Does.

You 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.

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.

Death: Human Beings Make Life So Interesting. Do You Know, That In A Universe So Full Of Wonders, They Have Managed To Invent Boredom.

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.

I Would Like Permission To Fetch A Note From My Mother, Sir' Ridcully Sighed. 'rincewind, You Once Informed Me, To My Everlasting Puzzlement, That You Never Knew Your Mother Because She Ran Away Before You Were Born. Distinctly Remember Writing It Down In My Diary. Would You Like Another Try?' 'permission To Go And Find My Mother?'

Given Enough Coffee I Could Rule The World

I Ushered Souls Into The Next World. I Was The Grave Of All Hope. I Was The Ultimate Reality. I Was The Assassin Against Whom No Lock Would Hold. - "yes, Point Taken, But Do You Have Any Particular Skills?"

Rincewind Had Always Been Happy To Think Of Himself As A Racist. The One Hundred Meters, The Mile, The Marathon -- He'd Run Them All.

Imagination Is Only Intelligence Having Fun. A Healthy Mind Knows How To Switch Between Worlds, And Which One You Need To Eat And Sleep In.

Too Much Magic Could Wrap Time And Space Around Itself, And That Wasn't Good News For The Kind Of Person Who Had Grown Used To Things Like Effects Following Things Like Causes.

The Author Can Always Delve Into His Own Personality And Find Aspects Of Himself With Which He Can Dress His Characters.

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

Only In Our Dreams Are We Free. The Rest Of The Time We Need Wages.

You Did Something Because It Had Always Been Done, And The Explanation Was, ‘but We’ve Always Done It This Way.’ A Million Dead People Can’t Have Been Wrong, Can They?

Tourist, Rincewind Decided, Meant ‘idiot.

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.

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

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

Strength Enough To Build A Home, Time Enough To Hold A Child, Love Enough To Break A Heart

Light Thinks It Travels Faster Than Anything But It Is Wrong. No Matter How Fast Light Travels, It Finds The Darkness Has Always Got There First, And Is Waiting For It.

Although The Scythe Isn't Pre-eminent Among The Weapons Of War, Anyone Who Has Been On The Wrong End Of, Say, A Peasants' Revolt Will Know That In Skilled Hands It Is Fearsome.

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

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

It Was Possibly The Most Circumspect Advance In The History Of Military Maneuvers, Right Down At The Bottom End Of The Scale That Things Like The Charge Of The Light Brigade Are At The Top Of.

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