"Young adults that actually read are reading bodice rippers and best-sellers and me. And Horror."
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Terry Pratchett quotes (page 27 of 72)
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"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."
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"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."
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""Right!" "Right!" "You can get there!" "I can get there!" "You're a natural at counting to two!" "I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!" "If you can count to two, you can count to anything!" "If I can count to two, I can count to anything!" "And then the world is your mollusc!" "My mollusc! What's a mollusc?"
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"One of the important things about being a small-town reporter is knowing what not to put in the paper."
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"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."
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"Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you’re going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he’ll grow up to be a demon just because his dad became one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me."
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"The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they'd be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armour. You didn't get the chance every day to see someone baked alive in their own armour. It would be something for the children to remember."
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"He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would've united ... the whole board could've been a republic in about a dozen moves."
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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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"That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people."
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"I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."
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"When millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, and there was no one there to hear it, does it - philosopically speaking - make a noise"
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"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree."
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"I know three people who have got better after a brain tumour. I haven't heard of anyone who's got better from Alzheimer's."
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"Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association."
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"Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous."
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"Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it."
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"If it wasn't for the fun and money, I really don't know why I'd bother."
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"I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me."
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