... a cartwheel rolled out of the smoke and away down the road. This always happens. (NW)
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Sometimes the weather has no sense of narrative convenience. (TT)
No-one could be so simple, no-one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor. (J)
'You ain't supposed to understand the jokes, this is a play,' said Jason. (LL)
'She's gone in the head, if you ask me. She's one of those people like ... actors.' (AM)
The Librarian, an ape of simple but firmly-held tastes, considered an episode with custard pies, buckets of whitewash and especially that bit when someone takes someone else's hat off, fills it with something oozy, and replaces it on the deadpan head, while the orchestra plays 'WHAH ... whah ... whah ... whaaa ...' to be an absolutely essential part of any theatrical performance. (LL)
… Magrat had never been any good at acting. She’d always felt she wasn’t very good at being Magrat, if it came to that. (LL)
The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out yourself from the clues.
And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for the second house. (MP) ‘What’re you supposed to be?’ he said at last.
‘A leader of a pack of desert bandits, apparently,’ said Victor. ‘Romantic and dashing.’ ‘Dashing where?’ ‘Just dashing generally, I guess.’ (MP) ‘It’s got him,’ said Gaspode quietly. ‘Got him worse than anyone, I reckon.’
‘What has? How can you tell?’ Victor hissed. ‘Partly a’cos of subtle signs what you don’t seem to be abler recognise,’ said Gaspode, ‘and partly because he’s actin’ like a complete twerp, really.’ (MP) 'I read the Comedy of Errors last night,’ said the Dean. ‘And I could see the error right there. There wasn’t any comedy.' (TG)
He was not, as an actor and a writer, averse to alcohol bought by other people ... (TG)
'Well, the night is young,’ said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.
THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD. The pigs galloped on. Then, ‘No, it ain’t.’ I’M SORRY? ‘The night isn’t any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.’ YES, BUT IT’S MORE DRAMATIC. ‘Oh. Right, then.' (H) Nanny rather liked the theatrical world. It was its own kind of magic. That was why Esme disliked it, she reckoned. It was the magic of illusions and misdirection and foolery, and that was fine by Nanny Ogg, because you couldn’t be married three times without a little fooling. (Ma)
There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It’s like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It’s seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there’s nothing much left but a faint smell. (SM)
Nothing created by Holy Wood magic was real for long. But you could make it real for long enough. (MP)
'Er, I was just wondering, Mr. Dibbler ... what is my motivation for this scene?’
‘Motivation?’ ‘Yes. Er, I got to know, see,’ said Rock. ‘How about: I’ll fire you if you don’t do it properly?’ Rock grinned. ‘Right you are, Mr. Dibbler,’ he said. (MP) 'I don’t know if I’d be any good at acting, though,’ Victor confessed.
Silverfish looked surprised. ‘Oh, you’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘It’s very hard to be bad at acting in moving pictures.' (MP) Granny subsided into unaccustomed, trouble silence, and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her. It
had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her to control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better. (WS) 'Actors,’ said Granny, witheringly. ‘As if the world weren’t full of enough history without inventing more.' (WS)
'Ah, ‘tis a hard trade, horse-holding,’ said the man. ‘It’s learning the proper grovellin’ and the irreverent-but-not-too-impudent cheery ‘oss-’older’s banter. People don’t just want you to look after the ‘oss, see. They want a ‘oss-’olding hexperience.’
‘They do?’ ‘They want an amusin’ encounter and a soup-son of repartee,’ said the little man. ‘It’s not just a matter of ‘oldin’ reins.’ Realization began to dawn on Victor. 'It’s a performance,’ he said. (MP) Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought. And because the theatre was fiction made flesh, she hated the theatre most of all. But that
was it – hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned. (Ma) '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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