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Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both.

Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett
Age: 66 †
Born: 1948
Born: April 28
Died: 2015
Died: March 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Terence David John Terry Pratchett
Terence David John Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett
Moment
Crucial
Natural
Professional
Moments
Quickly
Life
Questions
Like
Hero
Lacked
Saws
Tended
Asks
Selection
Purpose
Heroes

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
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They were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.
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I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun. -I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.
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Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo.
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Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them... you could use them, you could change them.
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Building a temple didn't mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture.
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The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.
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So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn't received and that might have been eaten by gargoyles.
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You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. So we can believe the big ones? Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
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It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying isolated things like, Well, isn't this nice.
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It's not lying when you do it to officers!
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When much is taken, something is returned.
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There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.
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It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country, he read. This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.
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There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.
Terry Pratchett
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The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.
Terry Pratchett
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HOROSCOPE: Today is a good time for making new friends. A good deed may have unforeseen consequences. Don’t upset any druids. You will soon be going on a very strange journey. Your lucky food is small cucumbers. People pointing knives at you are probably up to no good. PS, we really mean it about the druids.
Terry Pratchett
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Its useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.
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The rising sun managed to peek around the vast column of smoke that forever rose from Ankh-Morpork, City of Cities, illustrating almost up to the edge of space that smoke means progress or, at least, people setting fire to things.
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The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.
Terry Pratchett