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'What would Deftmenes be if we went around obeying orders all the time?'
'They might be ruling the Carpet,' said Pismire.
'Ha!' said Brocando, 'but the trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.'
Terry Pratchett
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History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.
Terry Pratchett
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Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
Terry Pratchett
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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.
Terry Pratchett
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When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!
Terry Pratchett
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Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere and were doing a brisk trade. [Footnote: They always do, everywhere. No-one sees them arrive. The logical explanation is that the franchise includes the stall, the paper hat and a small gas-powered time machine.]
Terry Pratchett
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Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
Terry Pratchett
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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.
Terry Pratchett
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I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.
Terry Pratchett
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Animals never spend time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
Terry Pratchett
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But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.
Terry Pratchett
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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.
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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.
Terry Pratchett
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The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.
Terry Pratchett
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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.
Terry Pratchett
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Strength enough to build a home, Time enough to hold a child, Love enough to break a heart
Terry Pratchett
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Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.
Terry Pratchett
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Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possibly go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.
Terry Pratchett
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Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
Terry Pratchett
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I keep vaguely wondering what Macs are like, but the ones I've seen spend too much time being friendly.
Terry Pratchett
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The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, What about me? and you can just hear the universe replying, Well, what about you?
Terry Pratchett
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Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.
Terry Pratchett
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I always thought Detritus would be good at: "I bet you're wondrin' how many time I fired dis crossbow—"
Terry Pratchett
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The most important thing was that time had passed, pouring thousands of soothing seconds across the island. People need time to deal with the now before it runs away and becomes the then.
Terry Pratchett
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He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.
Terry Pratchett
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Quote of the day
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly … very slowly.
Gypsy Rose Lee
Terry Pratchett
Creative Commons
Born:
April 28, 1948
Died:
March 12, 2015
(aged 66)
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