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The phrase may you live in interesting times is the lowest in a trilogy of Chinese curses that continue may you come to the attention of those in authority and finish with may the gods give you everything you ask for. I have no idea about its authenticity.

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
Ideas
Authority
Phrase
Live
Asks
Lowest
Attention
Phrases
Everything
Interesting
Finish
Come
Times
Curse
Trilogy
Giving
Idea
Gods
Trilogies
Give
Chinese
Curses
May
Continue
Authenticity

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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Death strode away, stopped, and came back. He pointed a skeletal finger at The Duck Man. WHY, he said, ARE YOU WALKING AROUND WITH THAT DUCK? What duck? AH. SORRY.
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Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.
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People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour.
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He's probably their battle poet, too. You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles? No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy....When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.
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Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.
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The bravest person I've ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.
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I have to write because if I don't get something down then after a while I feel it's going to bang the side of my head off.
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A hardback's harder at Christmas time because that's a good hardback buying time.
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Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
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It's hard to explain, said Brutha. But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.
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It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.
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You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing.
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There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.
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Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought.
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I just rearrange words into a pleasing order for money.
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Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.
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Granny Weatherwas was not a jouster in the lists of love, but, as an intelligent onlooker, she knew how the game was played.
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Blessings be on this house, Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house.
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People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.
Terry Pratchett
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Shoes, men, coffins never accept the first one you see.
Terry Pratchett