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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.

-Terry Pratchett

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Witches Aren’t Like That.

Terry Pratchett

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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.

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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.

The Consensus Seemed To Be That If Really Large Numbers Of Men Were Sent To Storm The Mountain, Then Enough Might Survive The Rocks To Take The Citadel. This Is Essentially The Basis Of All Military Thinking.

Personal’s Not The Same As Important. People Just Think It Is.

Rincewind Gave His Fingers A Long Shocked Stare, As One Might Regard A Gun That Has Been Hanging On The Wall For Decades And Has Suddenly Gone Off And Perforated The Cat.

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.

...roland De Chumsfanleigh (it Wasn't His Fault).

The Stories Never Said Why She Was Wicked. It Was Enough To Be An Old Woman, Enough To Be All Alone, Enough To Look Strange Because You Have No Teeth. It Was Enough To Be Called A Witch. If It Came To That, The Book Never Gave You The Evidence Of Anything. It Talked About "a Handsome Prince"... Was He Really, Or Was It Just Because He Was A Prince That People Called Handsome? As For "a Girl Who Was As Beautiful As The Day Was Long"... Well, Which Day? In Midwinter It Hardly Ever Got Light! The Stories Don't Want You To Think, They Just Wanted You To Believe What You Were Told.

Hat = Wizard, Wizard = Hat. Everything Else Is Frippery.

A Horse's Skull Always Looks Scary, Even If Someone Has Put Lipstick On It.

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

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.

You Have Reached The End Of Cake

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

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.

Whut's The Plan, Rob?" Said One Of Them. "okay, Lads, This Is What We'll Do. As Soon As We See Somethin', We'll Attack It. Right?" This Caused A Cheer. "ach, 'tis A Good Plan," Said Daft Wullie.

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.

She Was Beautiful, But She Was Beautiful In The Way A Forest Fire Was Beautiful: Something To Be Admired From A Distance, Not Up Close.

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.

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

Build A Man A Fire, And He'll Be Warm For A Day. Set A Man On Fire, And He'll Be Warm For The Rest Of His Life.

Pride Is All Very Well, But A Sausage Is A Sausage.

I'm Mean And Turf And I'm Mean And Turf And I'm Mean And Turf And I'm Mean And Turf, And Me An' My Friends Can Walk Towards You With Our Hats On Backwards In A Menacing Way, Yo!

It Was Carrot Who'd Suggested To The Patrician That Hardened Criminals Should Be Given The Chance To 'serve The Community' By Redecorating The Homes Of The Elderly, Lending A New Terror To Old Age And, Given Ankh-morpork's Crime Rate, Leading To At Least One Old Lady Having Her Front Room Wallpapered So Many Times In Six Months That Now She Could Only Get In Sideways.

You Have So Many Sources To Draw On When You're A Fantasy Writer.

[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!

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.

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.

Belief Was Never Mentioned At Home, But Right Actions Were Taught By Daily Example.

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.

Evil Begins When You Begin To Treat People As Things.

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.

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

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

Fantasy Stories

In The Words Of The Philosopher Sceptum, The Founder Of My Profession: Am I Going To Get Paid For This?

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.

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.

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.

Insanity Is Catching.

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

Not All Questions Are Answered, But Fortunately Some Answers Are Questioned.

This, Milord, Is My Family's Axe. We Have Owned It For Almost Nine Hundred Years, See. Of Course, Sometimes It Needed A New Blade. And Sometimes It Has Required A New Handle, New Designs On The Metalwork, A Little Refreshing Of The Ornamentation . . . But Is This Not The Nine Hundred-year-old Axe Of My Family? And Because It Has Changed Gently Over Time, It Is Still A Pretty Good Axe, Y'know. Pretty Good.

Gravity Is A Habit That Is Hard To Shake Off.

There Is No Doubt That Being Human Is Incredibly Difficult And Cannot Be Mastered In One Lifetime.

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.

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

Granny Sighed. "you Have Learned Something," She Said, And Thought It Safe To Insert A Touch Of Sternness Into Her Voice. "they Say A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing, But It Is Not One Half So Bad As A Lot Of Ignorance.

That’s Mortals For You, Death Continued. They’ve Only Got A Few Years In This World And They Spend Them All In Making Things Complicated For Themselves. Fascinating.

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.

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'.

I May Be Daft But I'm No' Stupid!

Noble Dragons Don't Have Friends. The Nearest They Can Get To The Idea Is An Enemy Who Is Still Alive.

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

After A While, Another Voice Said: One, Two, Three, Four- And The Universe Came Into Being. It Was Wrong To Call It A Big Bang. That Would Just Be Noise, And All That Noise Could Create Is More Noise And A Cosmos Full Of Random Particles. Matter Exploded Into Being, Apparently As Chaos, But In Fact As A Chord. The Ultimate Power Chord.

The Only Really Sane Person In There Is Igor, And Possibly The Turnip. And I'm Not Sure About The Turnip.

The Iq Of A Mob Is The Iq Of Its Dumbest Member Divided By The Number Of Mobsters.

Everything Makes Sense A Bit At A Time. But When You Try To Think Of It All At Once, It Comes Out Wrong.

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.

The Important Thing About Having Lots Of Things To Remember Is That You’ve Got To Go Somewhere Afterwards Where You Can Remember Them, You See? You’ve Got To Stop. You Haven’t Really Been Anywhere Until You’ve Got Back Home.

Historical Re-creation, He Thought Glumly, As They Picked Their Way Across, Under, Over Or Through The Boulders And Insect-buzzing Heaps Of Splintered Timber, With Streamlets Running Everywhere. Only We Do It With People Dressing Up And Running Around With Blunt Weapons, And People Selling Hot Dogs, And The Girls All Miserable Because They Can Only Dress Up As Wenches, Wenching Being The Only Job Available To Women In The Olden Days.

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

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.

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

In The Beginning There Was Nothing, Which Exploded.

Lords And Ladies

Plot Exposition That Can Be Gently Wound Out By The Authorial Voice And Internal Monologue Of A Character In The Length Of A Page Has To Be Delivered In A Matter Of Seconds On The Stage.

Ninety Percent Of True Love Is Acute, Ear-burning Embarrassment.

I'd Like To Stand Up For The Rights Of People Who Put Everything On Their Burger - Chutney, Mustard, Pickle, Mustard Pickle, Tomato Sauce... It Is Common Knowledge In My Family That I Can't Tell The Difference Between A Veggie Burger And A Meat One, Because The Ratio Of Burger To Pickles Is So High.

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