![]() AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.” And let’s not forget this brilliant discussion from Hogfather, about why “small lies” (i.e., the ones we tell our kids all the time) are a thing: Sure, I was ten at the time this book came out, but upon reading, it nudged me towards a certain mindset that absolutely influenced how I handled being the father of a female human. One of his earliest Discworld works, Equal Rites, deals with gender roles (the eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard… but what if it’s a girl?). He strongly influenced my own writing 1.īut more importantly, Sir Terry Pratchett made me a better father. ![]() While he’s often thought of as a humorist, his work can also make you cry I read Wee Free Men not long after my own grandmother passed, and there’s one passage about the protagonist’s grandmother that had me curled up in a tiny ball. I’ve watched his work metamorphose from simple (but great!) parody ( The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic) to biting satire ( Small Gods, The Fifth Elephant, to just powerful novels ( The Night Watch). It has to deal with the male one.”Īll tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.I’ve been a Terry Pratchett fan for a long time, ever since a friend sent me a copy of Mort (my grandfather’s nickname for me, you see). Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. ![]() “The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord.” ― Men at Arms: The Play Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane? This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. ![]() Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.īut the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it. If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you. In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life. Here are some of my favourite Terry Pratchett quotes to get you through the Friday… So, really, that’s all the pretence I need. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and rogue was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.” Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port. Yesterday, some words of his bubbled back to me, unbidden, as they have a wont to do, and they made me both sad and happy at the same time: “They were indeed what was known as ‘old money’, which meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. His humor, his humanism, his skill with words it all added up to this wonderful attitude to the insanity that is life, the prism through which he viewed things and reported back on them acting almost as a guide for millions of people. The phrase ‘one of a kind’ is often bandied about, but Pratchett really was exactly that. Even after he died, over two years ago, on 12th March 2015, he remains just that, with his words and his ideals continuing to resonate throughout the collective consciousness. While alive, Terry Pratchett was a singular gift to the world.
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