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You Had To Deal Every Day With People Who Were Foolish And Lazy And Untruthful And Downright Unpleasant, And You Could Certainly End Up Thinking That The World Would Be Considerably Improved If You Gave Them A Slap.

-Terry Pratchett

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You Had To Deal

Terry Pratchett

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You Had To Deal Every Day With People Who Were Foolish And Lazy And Untruthful And Downright Unpleasant, And You Could Certainly End Up Thinking That The World Would Be Considerably Improved If You Gave Them A Slap.

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I Know It’s Not The Right Thing To Say To A Lady, Miss, But You Are Sweating Like A Pig!" "my Mother Always Said That Horses Sweat, Men Perspire, And Ladies Merely Glow…" "is That So? Well, Miss, You Are Glowing Like A Pig!

He Talks Pretty Big For A Gutter Wizard," He Muttered. "you Don't Understand At All," Said The Wizard Wearily. "i'm So Scared Of You My Spine Has Turned To Jelly, It's Just That I'm Suffering From An Overdose Of Terror Right Now. I Mean, When I've Got Over That Then I'll Have Time To Be Decently Frightened Of You.

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.

What Have I Always Believed? That On The Whole, And By And Large, If A Man Lived Properly, Not According To What Any Priests Said, But According To What Seemed Decent And Honest Inside, Then It Would, At The End, More Or Less, Turn Out All Right.

Ninety Percent Of Most Magic Merely Consists Of Knowing One Extra Fact.

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?

I Stroll Along, Talk, I Sign Books, People Buy Me Drinks, I Forget Where My Hotel Is, I Get Lost And Fall Into Some Local Body Of Water... Done It Hundreds Of Times.

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.

Gravity Is A Habit That Is Hard To Shake Off.

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.

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

I Tell You, Commander, It's True That Some Of The Most Terrible Things In The World Are Done By People Who Think, Genuinely Think, That They're Doing It For The Best, Especially If There Is Some God Involved.

Evil Begins When You Begin To Treat People As Things.

The Kraken Stirs. And Ten Billion Sushi Dinners Cry Out For Vengeance.

What's The Good Of Having Mastery Over Cosmic Balance And Knowing The Secrets Of Fate If You Can't Blow Something Up?

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

It's An Interesting Fact That Fewer Than 17 % Of Real Cats End Their Lives With The Same Name They Started With. Much Family Effort Goes Into Selecting One At The Start ("she Looks Like A Winnifred To Me"), And The As The Years Roll By It Suddenly Finds Itself Being Called Meepo Or Ratbag.

He’sh Mad?’ ‘sort Of Mad. But Mad With Lots Of Money.’ ‘ah, Then He Can’t Be Mad. I’ve Been Around; If A Man Hash Lotsh Of Money He’sh Just Ecshentric.

Five Exclamation Marks: The Sure Sign Of An Insane Mind.

Exclamation Points

Exclamation Marks

There Is Always A Choice." "you Mean I Could Choose Certain Death?" "a Choice Nevertheless, Or Perhaps An Alternative. You See I Believe In Freedom. Not Many People Do, Although They Will Of Course Protest Otherwise. And No Practical Definition Of Freedom Would Be Complete Without The Freedom To Take The Consequences. Indeed, It Is The Freedom Upon Which All The Others Are Based.

I Reckon That Stonehege Was Build By The Contemporary Equivalent Of Microsoft, Whereas Avebury Was Definitely An Apple Circle.

The Auditors Fluttered Anxiously. And, As Always Happens In Their Species When Something Goes Radically Wrong And Needs Fixing Instantly, They Settled Down To Try To Work How Who Was To Blame.

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.

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.

The Universe Is, Instant By Instant, Recreated Anew. There Is In Truth No Past, Only A Memory Of The Past. Blink Your Eyes, And The World You See Next Did Not Exist When You Closed Them. Therefore, The Only Appropriate State Of The Mind Is Surprise. The Only Appropriate State Of The Heart Is Joy. The Sky You See Now, You Have Never Seen Before. The Perfect Moment Is Now. Be Glad Of It.

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

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.

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

The Disc, Being Flat, Has No Real Horizon. Any Adventurous Sailor Who Got Funny Ideas From Staring At Eggs And Oranges For Too Long And Set Out For The Antipodes Soon Learned That The Reason Why Distant Ships Sometimes Looked As Though They Were Disappearing Over The Edge Of The World Was That They Were Disappearing Over The Edge Of The World.

Magrat Had Used A Lot Of Powder To Make Her Face Pale And Interesting. It Combined With The Lavishly Applied Mascara To Give The Guard The Impression That He Was Looking At Two Flies That Had Crashed Into A Sugar Bowl.

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

She Got On With Her Education. In Her Opinion, School Kept On Trying To Interfere With It.

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

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

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.

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.

Only To People!' Shouted Rincewind. He Drew His Sword And, With A Smooth Overarm Throw, Completely Failed To Hit The Troll.

I Like The Idea Of Democracy. You Have To Have Someone Everyone Distrusts.

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.

Classically, Very Few People Have Considered That Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness. A Rank Loincloth And Hair In An Advanced State Of Matted Entanglement Have Generally Been The Badges Of Office Of Prophets Whose Injunction To Disdain Earthly Things Starts With Soap.

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

The Yen Buddhists Are The Richest Religious Sect In The Universe. They Hold That The Accumulation Of Money Is A Great Evil And A Burden To The Soul. They Therefore, Regardless Of Personal Hazard, See It As Their Unpleasant Duty To Acquire As Much As Possible In Order To Reduce The Risk To Innocent People.

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.

Last Night There Seemed To Be A Chance. Anything Was Possible Last Night. That Was The Trouble With Last Nights. They Were Always Followed By This Mornings.

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?'

Many Feel They Are Called To The Priesthood, But What They Really Hear Is An Inner Voice Saying, 'it's Indoor Work With No Heavy Lifting, Do You Want To Be A Ploughman Like Your Father?'

No, What He Didn't Like About Heroes Was That They Were Usually Suicidally Gloomy When Sober And Homicidally Insane When Drunk.

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.

The Book Is Not Completely Written Until Someone Else Has Read It.

Life Doesn't Happen In Chapters - At Least, Not Regular Ones.

The Truth Isn't Easily Pinned To A Page. In The Bathtub Of History The Truth Is Harder To Hold Than The Soap And Much More Difficult To Find.

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.

Balance. It Was All About Balance. That Had Been One Of The First Things That She Had Learned: The Centre Of The Seesaw Has Neither Up Nor Down, But Upness And Downness Flow Through It While It Remains Unmoved. You Had To Be The Centre Of The Seesaw So The Pain Flowed Through You, Not Into You. It Was Very Hard. But She Could Do It!

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.

We Live In A Science Fiction Universe. We Have Done For A Long Time.

It Is Said That Whomsoever The Gods Wish To Destroy, They First Make Mad. In Fact, Whomsoever The Gods Wish To Destroy, They First Hand The Equivalent Of A Stick With A Fizzing Fuse And Acme Dynamite Company Written On The Side. It's More Interesting, And Doesn't Take So Long.

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.

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.

I Don't Want Unnecessary Violence, Sergeant," Said Blouse. "right You Are, Sir!" Said The Sergeant. "carborundum! First Man Comes Through That Door Runnin', I Want Him Nailed To The Wall!" He Caught The Lieutenant's Eye, And Added: "but Not Too Hard!

Evolution Was Far More Thrilling To Me Than The Biblical Account. Who Would Not Rather Be A Rising Ape Than A Falling Angel? To My Juvenile Eyes, Darwin Was Proved True Every Day. It Doesn't Take Much To Make Us Flip Back Into Monkeys Again.

Real Education Happens When You Pick Up A Fact Here, And Another Fact There, And Put Them Together And Get An Insight.

It's Either Because Of The Number Of Times The Scholar Puts The Boot Into Peter Jackson The Director Of The Lord Of The Rings Films Or Is Making A Point They Have Never Heard Of.

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.

Currently, It Was Leading Him Through A Neighborhood That Was On The Downside Of Whatever Curve You Hoped You'd Bought Your Property On The Upside Of. Graffiti And Garbage Were Everywhere Here. They Were Everywhere In The City, If It Came To That, But Elsewhere The Garbage Was Better Quality, And The Graffiti Was Close To Being Correctly Spelled. The Whole Area Was Waiting For Something To Happen, Like A Really Bad Fire.

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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?

Credulous: Having Views About The World, The Universe And Humanity's Place In It That Are Shared Only By Very Unsophisticated People And The Most Intelligent And Advanced Mathematicians And Physicists.

Knowing Things Is Magical, If Other People Don't Know Them.

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

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.

Would A Minute Have Mattered? No, Probably Not, Although His Young Son Appeared To Have A Very Accurate Internal Clock. Possibly Even 2 Minutes Would Be Okay. Three Minutes, Even. You Could Go To Five Minutes, Perhaps. But That Was Just It. If You Could Go For Five Minutes, Then You'd Go To Ten, Then Half An Hour, A Couple Of Hours...and Not See Your Son All Evening. So That Was That. Six O'clock, Prompt. Every Day. Read To Young Sam. No Excuses. He'd Promised Himself That. No Excuses. No Excuses At All. Once You Had A Good Excuse, You Opened The Door To Bad Excuses.

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

You Can't Trample Infidels When You're A Tortoise. I Mean, All You Could Do Is Give Them A Meaningful Look.

I'm Trying To Have A Moment O' Existential Dreed Here, Right? Crivens, It's A Puir Lookout If A Man Canna Feel The Chilly Winds O' Fate Lashing Aroound His Netheres Wi'out Folks Telling Him He's Deid, Eh?

Mr. Tulip Lived His Life On That Thin Line Most People Occupy Just Before They Haul Off And Hit Someone Repeatedly With A Wrench.

It's A Terrible Thing For A Man When His Woman Gangs Up On Him Wi' A Toad

One Of The Recurring Philosophical Questions Is: 'does A Falling Tree In The Forest Make A Sound When There Is No One To Hear?' Which Says Something About The Nature Of Philosophers , Because There Is Always Someone In A Forest. It May Only Be A Badger, Wondering What That Cracking Noise Was, Or A Squirrel A Bit Puzzled By All The Scenery Going Upwards, But Someone.

"god Does Not Play Games With His Loyal Servants," Said The Metatron, But In A Worried Tone Of Voice. "whooo-eee," Said Crowley. "where Have You Been?"

Nothing I Can Say Or Devise, And Nothing Anybody Else Can Say Or Devise, Is Going To Be Perfect.

There's A Lot Of Science In It, And As Slartibartfast [in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy] Said: 'i Am A Great Fan Of Science, But I Cannot Do A Quadratic Equation.' I've Never, Ever Been Able To Do One. I Remember One Occasion At Warwick University, When Jack And Ian Were At Their Wits' End Because I Couldn't Get It. I Felt Totally Ashamed.

Quadratic Equation

What Your Soldier Wants - Really, Really Wants - Is No-one Shooting Back At Him.

Ye Know Full Well That The Meaning Of Life Is To Find Your Gift. To Find Your Gift Is Happiness. Never Tae Find It Is Misery.

Meaning Of Life

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

If Anyone Wants One My Advise Is To Go Where The Orthodox Jews Shop, Because When It Comes To A Big Black Fedora, The Guys With Ringlets And Long Black Coats Definitely Know A Stylish Hat When They See One. You Want To Get It Home And Use A Hot Steaming Kettle, And Bob's Your Uncle - You Have A Hat With All The Right Curves!

I Can No Longer Type, So I Use Talkingpoint And Dragon Dictate. It's A Speech-to-text Program, And There's An Add-on For Talking Which Some Guys Came Up With.

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

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.

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

It Doesn't Stop Being Magic Just Because You Know How It Works.

I Believe It Should Be Possible For Someone Stricken With A Serious And Ultimately Fatal Illness To Choose To Die Peacefully With Medical Help, Rather Than Suffer.

For Example, The Dwarfs Found Out How To Turn Lead Into Gold By Doing It The Hard Way. The Difference Between That And The Easy Way Is That The Hard Way Works.

No More Words. We Know Them All, All The Words That Should Not Be Said. But You Have Made My World More Perfect.

Most People Who Have Found That They Are More Intelligent Than Most Around Them, Have Yet To Learn That One Of The Most Intelligent Things They Can Do Is Prevent Said People Ever Finding This Out.

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

Nigel Gave The Lamp A Cautious Buff And Small Smoking Red Letters Appeared In The Air. "hi," Nigel Read Aloud, "do Not Put Down The Lamp Because Your Custom Is Important To Us. Please Leave A Wish After The Tone And, Very Shortly, It Will Be Our Command. In The Meantime, Have A Nice Eternity."

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.

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

I Was A Very Keen Reader Of Science Fiction, And During The Time I Was Going To Libraries, It Was Good, Written By People Who Knew Their Science.

We Live And Learn, Or, Perhaps More Importantly We Learn And Live.

Speak Softly And Employ A Huge Man With A Crowbar.

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.

[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!

Of Course, Like All The Informal Inhabitants Of The University The Roaches Were A Little Unusual, But There Was Something Particularly Unpleasant About The Sound Of Billions Of Very Small Feet Hitting The Stones In Perfect Time. Rincewind Stepped Gingerly Over The Marching Column. The Librarian Jumped It. The Luggage, Of Course, Followed Them With A Noise Like Someone Tapdancing Over A Bag Of Crisps.

In Her Own Special Category, She Was Quite Beautiful. This Was The Category Of All The Women, In His Entire Life, Who Had Ever Thought He Was Worth Smiling At.

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

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

Once You Gave A Thing A Name, You Gave It Life.

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

The Only Thing More Dangerous Then A Vampire Crazed With Blood Lust Was A Vampire Crazed With Anything Else. All The Meticulous Single-mindedness That Went Into Finding Young Women Who Slept With Their Bedroom Window Open Got Channeled Into Some Other Interest, With Merciless And Painstaking Efficiency.

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

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

-oh Yes? Can You Identify Yourself? -certainly. I'd Know Me Anywhere.

That's What I Don't Like About Magic, It Does Everything By Magic!

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

Hello, Inner Child, I'm The Inner Babysitter!

I Like Being A Writer.

The Days Followed One Another Patiently. Right Back At The Beginning Of The Multiverse They Had Tried All Passing At The Same Time, And It Hadn't Worked.

There Are, Always And Only, The Bad People, But Some Of Them Are On Opposite Sides.

Funny Inspirational

Anyway, Just Because You're Sworn Enemies Doesn't Mean You Can't Be Friends, Does It?

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

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

The Worst Thing You Can Do Is Nothing.

Most Horses Don't Walk Backwards Voluntarily, Because What They Can't See Doesn't Exist.

When People Say Things Are A Lot More Complicated Than That, They Means They're Getting Worried That They Won't Like The Truth.

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

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

This Book Had Two Authors, And They Were Both The Same Person.

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.

He Helped The Librarian Up. There Was A Red Glow In The Ape's Eyes. It Had Tried To Steal His Books. This Was Probably The Best Proof Any Wizard Could Require That The Trolleys Were Brainless.

I Taught Myself More In The Library Than School Taught Me.

Granny Weatherwax Was Not A Good Loser. From Her Point Of View, Losing Was Something That Happened To Other People.

The Universe Danced Towards Life. Life Was A Remarkably Common Commodity. Anything Sufficiently Complicated Seemed To Get Cut In For Some, In The Same Way That Anything Massive Enough Got A Generous Helping Of Gravity. The Universe Had A Definite Tendency Towards Awareness. This Suggested A Certain Subtle Cruelty Woven Into The Very Fabric Of Space-time.

People Were People, Even If They Had Four Legs And Had Called Themselves Names Like Dangerous Beans, Which Is The Kind Of Name You Gave Yourself If You Learned To Read Before You Understood What All The Words Actually Meant.

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.

I Don't Want To Hurt You, Mistress Weatherwax," Said Mrs Gogol. "that's Good," Said Granny. "i Don't Want You To Hurt Me Either.

You Must Learn The Compassion Proper To Your Trade" "and What's That?" "a Sharp Edge.

My Name Is Unpronounceable In Your Tongue, Woman,” It Said. “i’ll Be The Judge Of That,” Warned Granny, And Added, “don’t Call Me Woman.” “very Well. My Name Is Wxrthltl-jwlpklz,” Said The Demon Smugly.

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

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.

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

Even The Blind And Meek And Voiceless Have Gods.

Ankh-morpork Had Dallied With Many Forms Of Government And Had Ended Up With That Form Of Democracy Known As One Man, One Vote. The Patrician Was The Man; He Had The Vote.

Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Wizards Because A Refusal Often Offends, I Read Somewhere.

Things Like Crowns Had A Troublesome Effect On Clever Folk; It Was Best To Leave All The Reigning To The Kind Of People Whose Eyebrows Met In The Middle When They Tried To Think. In A Funny Sort Of Way, They Were Much Better At It.

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.

Don't You Understand?" Snarled Rincewind. "we Are Going Over The Edge, Godsdammit!" "can't We Do Anything About It?" "no!" "then I Can't See The Sense In Panicking," Said Twoflower Calmly.

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

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

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

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

It's Not Worth Doing Something Unless You Were Doing Something That Someone, Somewere, Would Much Rather You Weren't Doing.

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

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

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

Next Comes The Realist Phase ("after All, From A Purely Geometrical Point Of View A Cat Is Only A Tube With A Door At The Top.")

Someone Got Killed Up Here.... It Was Outside. A Tall Man. He Had One Leg Longer’n The Other. And A Beard. He Was Probably A Hunter." "how’d You Know All That?" "i Just Trod On ‘im.

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.

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

"it Would Seem That You Have No Useful Skill Or Talent Whatsoever" He Said. "have You Thought Of Going Into Teaching?"

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.

Granny Knew All About Bad Fortune-telling. It Was Harder Than The Real Thing. You Needed A Good Imagination.

Fortune Telling

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

People Are Often So Busy Living That They Never Stop To Wonder Why.

Rings Try To Find Their Way Back To Their Owner. Someone Ought To Write A Book About It.

The Ideal Death, I Think, Is What Was The Ideal Victorian Death, You Know, With Your Grandchildren Around You, A Bit Of Sobbing. And You Say Goodbye To Your Loved Ones, Making Certain That One Of Them Has Been Left Behind To Look After The Shop.

The Calendar Of The Theocracy Of Muntab Counts Down, Not Up. No-one Knows Why, But It Might Not Be A Good Idea To Hang Around And Find Out.

On The Disc, The Gods Aren't So Much Worshipped, As They Are Blamed.

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'.

London Was Not Designed For Cars. Come To That, It Wasn't Designed For People. It Just Sort Of Happened. This Created Problems, And The Solutions That Were Implemented Became The Next Problems, Five Or Ten Or A Hundred Years Down The Line.

Two Types Of People Laugh At The Law: Those That Break It And Those That Make It.

Tourist, Rincewind Decided, Meant ‘idiot.

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

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.

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.

Remember - That Which Does Not Kill Us Can Only Make Us Stronger. And That Which Does Kill Us Leaves Us Dead!

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

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.

It's Still Magic Even If You Know How It's Done.

I Don't Think I've Drunk Enough Beer To Understand That.

It Was All Very Well Going On About Pure Logic And How The Universe Was Ruled By Logic And The Harmony Of Numbers, But The Plain Fact Of The Matter Was That The Disc Was Manifestly Traversing Space On The Back Of A Giant Turtle And The Gods Had A Habit Of Going Round To Atheists' Houses And Smashing Their Windows.

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

In The Beginning There Was Nothing, Which Exploded.

Lords And Ladies

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

Putting Up A Statue To Someone Who Tried To Stop A War Is Not Very, Um, Statuesque. Of Course, If You Had Butchered Five Hundred Of Your Own Men Out Of Arrogant Carelessness, We'd Be Melting The Bronze Already.

The Trouble With Thinking Was That, Once You Started, You Went On Doing It.

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

It's A God-eat-god World.

They Obeyed, As Wise Men Do When A Woman Puts Her Foot Down . . .

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.

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.

Creatures Which, Lacking Mankind's Superior Brain Power, Did Not Concern Themselves With Finding Someone To Blame, And Instead Tried To Find Someone To Eat.

Finding Someone

Most Of The Great Triumphs And Tragedies Of History Are Caused Not By People Being Fundamentally Good Or Fundamentally Evil, But By People Being Fundamentally People.

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

Words Are The Litmus Paper Of The Mind.

Natural Selection Saw To It That Professional Heroes Who At A Crucial Moment Tended To Ask Themselves Questions Like 'what Is My Purpose In Life?' Very Quickly Lacked Both.

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