How can anyone not love Terry Pratchett?

[naodrith]

"Now we've got a truth to die for!"
"No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."

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.

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.

"Of course, just because we've heard a spine-chilling, blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's anything wrong."

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.

"I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!"

He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.

"What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."

"The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case..."

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk."

"In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?"

"We took pity on him because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that."

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

"Never age. Never die. Live forever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky. You will never grow old. They will never say you died."

In Ghat they believe in vampire watermelons, although folklore is silent about what they believe about vampire watermelons. Possibly they suck back.

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read "Endeavour to be the one inside" he'd rather lost heart.

"Remember -- that which does not kill us can only make us stronger."
"And that which does kill us leaves us dead!"

You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

"Some people are heroes. And some people jot down notes."

"Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes."

"Funny thing is, I keep wondering whether the apple thing wasn't the right thing to do, as well. A demon can get into real trouble, doing the right thing. Funny if we both got it wrong, eh? Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?"
"Not really."

Crowley (An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards)

"If you sit down and think about it sensibly, you come up with some very funny ideas. Like: why make people inquisitive, and then put some forbidden fruit where they can see it with a big neon finger flashing on and off saying 'THIS IS IT'?"
"I don't remember any neon."
"Metaphorically, I mean. I mean, why do that if you really don't want them to eat it, eh? I mean, maybe you just want to see how it all turns out. Maybe it's all part of a great big ineffable plan. All of it. You, me, him, everything. Some great big test to see if what you've built all works properly, eh? You start thinking: it can't be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire."

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 tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.

"You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?"

"Art thou a witch, viva espana?"

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island.

"?" he said.

- "ALL YOU CAN HOPE FOR IS THE MERCY OF HELL."
- "Yeah?"
- "JUST OUR LITTLE JOKE."
- "Ngk," said Crowley.

Death and Famine and War and Pollution continued biking towards Tadfield. And Grievous Bodily Harm, Cruelty To Animals, Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping but secretly No Alcohol Lager, and Really Cool People travelled with them.

Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call dramatic. Albrecht Duerer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."

"I don't see why it matters what is written. Not when it's about people. It can always be crossed out."

God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

"Surely you have considered terrorist activity?"
There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."

Something small and distant broke through the cloud layer, trailing shreds of vapour. In the stratospheric calm the sounds of bickering came sharp and clear. "You said you could fly one of these things!" "No I didn't; I just said you couldn't!"

"Pull me up, then," he hinted.
"I think that might be sort of difficult," grunted Twoflower. "I don't actually think I can do it, in fact."
"What are you holding on to, then?"
"You."
"I mean besides me."
"What do you mean, besides you?" said Twoflower.

"If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply.
"There is an alternative, then."
"Out with it, man."
"You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there," said Twoflower.
Dead silence from below him. Then Rincewind said, accusingly, "That was sarcasm."

I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
"Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish -- " He stopped talking.

"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."

The calender 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.

In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.

The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so.

"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind."

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands.
"It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."

"Have you any last words?"
YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO.
"Well. Succinct, anyway."



Pyrae, I am just going to keep harping on this. I can't understand how you can not like these books. That goes for you too, Lyra. Although less so.

Comments

[milestogo13.livejournal.com]

"Never age. Never die. Live forever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky. You will never grow old. They will never say you died."

That's probably one of my favorite quotes from any book anywhere, much less Discworld, although there are many good ones here. I loved the continuation of the one about the Alchemist Guild's location in relation to the Gambler's Guild, where people sometimes ask the Gamblers Guild why they continue to live so close to a building which habitually explodes, and they ask them if they read the sign over the door.

[naodrith.livejournal.com]

I pretty much love anything PTerry has ever written. But, yes, the one from Soul Music is probably my favorite quote ever.

Aside from, you know, all of Night Watch.

[milestogo13.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Night Watch is probably my favorite book ever, which is going quite a long ways. I just...you know, it's going to sound strange perhaps, but I was so satisfied at the end of that book that Pterry could have retired then and there, and it would have been a little easier for me to accept, because Night Watch just brought so much of it back together in one book. It was perfect.

[naodrith.livejournal.com]

I read it twice in the first two weeks after I bought it. Probably would have read it twice in one week, but it was the end of the semester and I was panicking about my grades. Then I wrote an essay about the symbolism in it for English class, and also did a book talk on it and forced two of my friends to act out one of the scenes.

Following that, I made another friend read every single book about the Watch, simply so I could hand over Night Watch in the end and smirk.

What, me, obsessed? Nooo.

[pyrae.livejournal.com]

Nice quotes. But there is no plot. There is no satisfactory resolution. People survive by luck and random chance.

[naodrith.livejournal.com]

Sometimes plot is unnecessary. The Hitchhiker's Guide didn't really have a plot except that they wandered the universe, and yet I will always maintain that So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish has the most perfect ending.

And you haven't been reading the right ones. You refuse to try the Watch series at all. Those are plot-like and fantabulous and beautiful and oh my God Night Watch is the best book ever. And for character development, you can do no better than any books about Death, because oh my God Reaper Man is the fourth best book ever.

And also, I must point out that Soul Music is a beautiful, beautiful book. But looking back, yeah, there wasn't a plot. But it was about music. And somehow the words on the page conveyed the spirit of Music With Rocks In better than the music does.

So, plot? Unnecessary. Nice, but unnecessary. My love for these books isn't about the plot. It's about the characters, the beauty, the overall perfection that beats you over the head at the end and makes you just scream with sheer delight (which I have, in fact, done. I was in school at the time.)

[pyrae.livejournal.com]

It's not necessary to publish something. It's not necessary to make people interested. But it is necessary to feel some kind of satisfying conclusion. And I'm sorry if it bothers you, but I can't appreciate a book that doesn't satisfy me, or at least provide characters I can relate to. Hitchhiker's Guide is classic and it's surprising when people haven't read it, but it was too absurd and pointless for me to reread. The characters weren't realistic. Arthur was just pathetic and useless. Terry Pratchett characters are plot devices, despite there not being much of a plot. They're satirical. And satires can be entertaining, but I will not read a series of satires concerning characters I could not care less about. The writing is witty. It's amusing sometimes. But I still can't relate to the characters, I can't get caught up in the plot, and so long as that is happening, there is nothing to keep me going back to the book to finish it. Ever heard the term "sympathetic character?" They're not sympathetic. They don't have character traits I can respect. I don't like them in any way. And it's not going to change. I can't decide my own preferences. So please stop bothering me about it.

[naodrith.livejournal.com]

But that's the point. You don't know the characters. How many have you read? Maskerade? But that was your first, not the best first choice. And Small Gods, but those aren't recurring characters. Same with Pyramids. You're reading the miscellaneous books, not the mini-series. The characters in those aren't particularly sympathetic or interesting, I think, but you can see the Witches or the Watch growing and changing and taking hold of their destinies. And you can see Death changing, becoming more human, less Azrael. But you have to read the right ones, and you won't. None of the ones I made you read before were excessively satisfying, I will grant you that. But it's been awhile since I actually handed over a book and insisted that you read that one in particular.

And I can't make you read these books, and I can't make you like them, and I'm well aware of that. But, really. How many books have you ever read that made you scream and throw the book across the room because a character just did something that was so stunning and horrifying and delicious and beautiful and unexpected that you couldn't read any more until it sank in that, yes, he did do that, and it makes sense that he did that?

[pyrae.livejournal.com]

None. And you can't claim that proves I need to read Pratchett, because I doubt I will ever do that no matter what I read.