Terry Pratchett quotes - page 38
Humans! They lived in the world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and anzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...
Terry Pratchett
But...but you can't treat religion as a sort of buffet, can you? I mean, you can't say yes please, I'll have some of the Celestial Paradise and a helping of the Divine Plan but go easy on the kneeling and none of the Prohibition of Images, they give me wind. Its table d´hôte or nothing, otherwise...well, it would be silly.
Terry Pratchett
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 of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases 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.
Terry Pratchett
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear And the correct answer is Hey, whatever I select.
Terry Pratchett
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.
Terry Pratchett
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.'
Terry Pratchett
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
I save about twenty drafts - that's ten meg of disc space - and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.
Terry Pratchett
