'Legends are prone to inflation.' (J)
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... where Nobby went wrong was thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community. (FC)
Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity. (GO)
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying. (COM)
'It’s not how you finish that matters,’ said Buddy. ‘It’s how you get there.' (SM)
'Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we’d be melting the bronze already.' (J)
In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away – until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. (RM)
No one remembers the singer. The song remains. (LH)
'I’ve got a sword and it’s a good one, but all the bleedin’ thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal.' (LH)
'Some people say you achieve immortality through your children,’ said the minstrel.
‘Yeah?’ said Cohen. ‘Name one of your great-granddads, then.' (LH) 'In the olden days,’ she said, ‘when a hero had been really heroic, the gods would put them up in the stars.’
THE HEAVENS CHANGE, said Death. WHAT TODAY LOOKS LIKE A MIGHTY HUNTER MAY LOOK LIKE A TEACUP IN A HUNDRED YEARS’ TIME. ‘That doesn’t seem fair.’ NO ONE EVER SAID IT HAD TO BE. BUT THERE ARE OTHER STARS. (LH) ‘It doesn’t matter how you live and die, it’s how the bards wrote it down.' (LH)
'What can you be, after you’ve been yourself, as big as possible?' (MP)
Not ambition for gold, or power, or land or all the things that were familiar parts of the human world.
Just ambition to be yourself, as big as possible. Not ambition for, but to be. (MP) 'Ah’, said Victor, trying to keep up with the psychology of this. ‘You decided you wanted to be someone?’
‘Don’t be silly. That’s when I decided I was going to be a lot more than just someone.' (MP) 'Make him a star? What’d he want a star for?’
‘I didn’t know you could make stars…I thought they were like, you know, stuck to the sky…’ ‘I think he meant make him a star. You know, him himself. Turn him into a star.’ ‘How can you make anyone into a star?’ ‘I dunno. I suppose you compress them right up small and they burst into this mass of flaming hydrogen?' (MP) |
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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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