‘Humans start with the world as it is and try and make it different. And that’s what makes them interesting.’ (LE)
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‘Extinct. Now there’s a terrible word if you like. A word beyond death, because extinction means your children are dead too, and your grandchildren and their children will never even be born.’ (LE)
‘Generally speaking,’ Lobsang pronounced, ‘reality having little sense of narrative, ancient sites are not heavy with swinging blades that decapitate, or rock panels that fold back to fire darts. It’s rather a shame isn’t it?’ (LE)
‘You don’t believe in modesty, do you, Mr Lobsang?’
‘Absolutely not, Henry. Modesty is only arrogance by stealth.’ (LE) … despite a nationwide debate it appeared that no two Frenchmen could agree exactly on what being French did mean. Although another school of thought held that arguing about what made you French was part of what made you French. (LE)
… where there is panic, profit isn’t far behind. (LE)
… the nuns were all possessed of laser eyesight and over-the-horizon hearing … (LE)
‘…. Whatever the truth of the universe was, it certainly wasn’t something that could have been discerned by a quarrelsome bunch of antique ecclesiasticals.’ (LE)
‘… you are not only very fluent in English, but also fluent in England, which means a lot down here.’ (LE)
There are moments when terror is like a treacle that slows down time. (LE)
… when your name is really and truly Percy Blakeney, pronounced ‘Black-knee’, and you still have bad acne in your twenties, you accept Pimple as a nickname and are grateful that it wasn’t anything worse. (LE)
‘A surfeit of wonders will dull the mind.’ (LE)
… he’d thought a wild surmise was some kind of exotic bird. Well, he was now looking out over new worlds with somewhat of a tame surmise. (LE)
… nuns somehow knew what you were up to wherever you were …. (LE)
‘Not every action carries symbolic freight.’
‘Every human action does.’ (LE) ‘But smart has to have a depth as well as a length. Some smart brushes over a problem. And some smart grinds exceedingly slow, like the mills of God, and it grinds fine, and when it comes up with an answer, it has been tested.’ (LE)
You always had to be very careful around Sarah. She wasn’t a Problem, but problems had happened to her. (LE)
But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions, which is just as well, or it wouldn’t be much of a career path, would it? (LE}
‘… while you are a scallywag, you are the right kind of scallywag …’ (Do)
There ought to be signs, and if there was a sign there should be a sign on it to show that it was a sign so that you definitely knew it was a sign. (Do)
‘… when the kings and queens and knights and rooks find it difficult to move, the pawn may win the game.’ (Do)
He smiled the smile of a policeman, which was only slightly better than the smile of a tiger …. (Do)
‘… kindness lasts a lot longer than love, because my mother always said that kindness was love in disguise.’ (Do)
… money doesn’t do much when it’s standing still. It’s when it’s moving around that it really works. (Do)
‘What I really like about the English is that they don’t have theories. No Englishman would ever have said, “I think, therefore I am.” Although possibly he might have said, “I Think therefore I am, I think.”’ (Do)
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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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