... witches grew old inside. (ISWM)
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‘Spoons are not important at this point!’ (NW)
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. (HFS)
I wrote that in the days when I thought fantasy was all battles and kings. Now I'm inclined to think that the real concerns of fantasy ought to be about not having battles and doing without kings. (CP)
And they acted like savages*.
* Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia. (LC) '... it takes a lifetime to learn how to die.' (N)
That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there's food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so we don't have to think, because if we think we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be. (N)
'Life is a trick and you get one chance to learn it.' (N)
Mau was good at reading important things. He could read the sea, the weather, the tracks of animals, tattoos and the night sky. (N)
... while they had no great intelligence that had accumulated that mass of observations, experience, cynicism and memory that can pass for wisdom among people who don't know any better. (TG)
Sometimes I reckon it would be better if there was a Fountain of Growing Up. (NOC)
'You have got a choice. You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines ... or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are.' (Ma)
'Have you lost your senses?'
'Yes,' said the teacher, 'but I may have found some better ones.' (IT) The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they'd have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in battle against crossbows and broadswords. (SM)
The old bards said they got better as they got older, although the old men tend to say this sort of thing regardless of daily experience. (SM)
Sometimes, if you pay real close attention to the pebbles you find out about the ocean. (LL)
‘Everything happens because things have happened before. Stupid.’ (SG)
‘You could have helped.’
I’m helping by not helping.’ ‘You’re the one with experience of these creatures.’ ‘Children, Lobsang. They’re called children.’ (LU) “People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.” (P)
Could they do it? They were old men. And then he thought, Yes, they are old men. They have been old men for a long time, which means they have learned many things. Like lying, and being crafty and, most importantly, dissembling. (SC)
'You're going to need a powerful lot of nomes to do all this. And they're going to need training.'
'But, but all that they'd have to do is pull and push when they're told, won't they?' Dorcas hummed under his breath again. Masklin got the impression that he always did that if he was going to break some bad news. 'Well laddie,' he said. 'I'm six, I've seen a lot of people and I've got to tell you, if you lined up ten nomes and shouted "Pull", four of them would push and two of them would say "Pardon?" That's how people are.' (Truck) It was beginning to dawn on Masklin that there was a different sort of knowledge, and it consisted of the things you needed to understand in order to survive among other nomes. Things like: be very careful when you tell people things they don’t want to hear. And: the thought that they may be wrong makes people very angry. (Truck)
'Tak does not require that you think of him, but he does require that you think ...' (RS)
You didn’t need to be a cynic, you just had to understand people. (Sn)
Well, we live and learn, Vimes thought, or perhaps more importantly, we learn and live. (Sn)
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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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