'Are we not all, in some way, looking for our cow?' (WMC)
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,AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!’ which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this. (HFS)
Life was a process of finding out how far you could go, and you could probably go too far in finding out how far you could go. (MR)
No wonder we dream our way through lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really was…no one could stand that for long. (WFM)
'And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairytale.'
'Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?’ said Keith. ‘Yeah, but in fairy-tales, when someone dies…it’s just a word.' (AM) 'In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on the box,’ said Lu-Tze. (TOT)
'So much universe, and so little time.' (LH)
'Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?'
YES 'Ghastly thought, really.’ Rincewind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’ I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’. (LC) IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT’S A HABIT THAT’S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU’LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER. (H)
'He’s had a near-death experience!'
'We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly. (H) Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists. (H)
Life was, he had heard, like a bird which flies out of the darkness and across a crowded hall and then through another window into the endless night again. In Rincewind’s case it had managed to do something incontinent in his dinner. (IT)
She was shaking. But she was still alive, and that felt good. That’s the thing about being alive. You’re alive to enjoy it. (LL)
'Will she live happily ever after?’ he said.
NOT FOREVER. BUT PERHAPS FOR LONG ENOUGH. (WA) Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and the very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.
Somewhere, the tiny voice of Bill Door said: from the point of view of the owner, longer ones are best. (RM) 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)
He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane. (RM) YOU FEAR TO DIE?
‘It’s not that I don’t want…I mean, I’ve always…it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break…' (RM) If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life. (GG)
The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practise before doing it for real. (P)
What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: ‘Why is it so dark in here?' (P)
'Pardon me for living, I’m sure.’
NO-ONE GETS PARDONED FOR LIVING. (M) All people really wanted, Dorcas considered, was to be left alone. The world was quite difficult enough as it was without people going around trying to make it better all the time. (Dig)
He wished he liked people more, but somehow he could never get on with them. He never knew what to say. If life was a party, he wasn’t even in the kitchen. He envied the people who made it as far as the kitchen. (TOT)
Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, and there were a few public ones run by the odder religious organizations, like the Balancing Monks, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged slackness and was in any case probably against Nature’s way. (GG)
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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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