'Things that are back to front are often easier to comprehend if they are upside down as well, said Lord Vetinari, tapping his chin with the silver knob of his can in an absent-minded way. 'In life as in politics.' (TT)
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'So ... we have what the people are interested in, and human interest stories, which is what humans are interested in, and the public interest, which no one is interested in?'
'Except the public, sir,' said William, trying to keep up. 'Which isn't the same as people and humans.' 'I think it's more complicated than that, sir.' (TT) 'We're on the same side here!'
'No. We're just on two different sides that happen to be side by side.' (TT) 'Did I say "thank you?"'
'No, you did not.' 'Oh, dear.' 'No, you noticed that you didn't, so zat is okay,' said Otto. (TT) What was the worst that could happen?
So many things, he thought as he set out again, that it would be hard to decide which one was the worst. (TT) DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. (TT)
The mountains of madness have many little plateaux of sanity. (TT)
'... they know they're on the right side because if they are on it it must be the right side, by definition...' (TT)
'... are you sure it's all true?'
'I'm sure it's all journalism', said William. 'And what is that supposed to mean?' 'It means it's true enough for now.' (TT) And something that distinguishes the Mr Windlings of the universe is the term 'in my humble opinion', which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, 'these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed'. (TT)
'... I'm useless. I was educated to be useless. What we've always been supposed to do is hang around until there's a war and do something really stupidly brave and then get killed. What we've mainly done is hang on to things. Ideas mostly.' (TT)
'The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.' (TT)
... to the kind of men who seek power, gratitude has very poor keeping qualities. (TT)
... Mrs Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts... (TT)
The press waited. It looked, now, like a great big beast. Soon he'd throw a lot of words into it. And in a few hours it would be hungry again, as if those had never happened. You could feed it, but you could never fill it up. (TT)
William's class understood that justice was like coal or potatoes. You ordered it when you needed it. (TT)
'He's a policeman. The truth usually confuses them. They don't often hear it.' (TT)
... the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. (TT)
He'd found hard truth less hard than an easy lie. (TT)
Sometimes the weather has no sense of narrative convenience. (TT)
'The world turns, your reverence, and we must spin with it.' (TT)
Three indeeds used by a person in one brief speech generally meant an internal spring was about to break. (TT)
He was all in favour of the countryside, provided that it was on the other side of a window. (TT)
... although it was possible to live on figs you soon wished you didn't. (TT)
'You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too.' (AM)
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The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
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