MtheBird > MtheBird's Quotes

“-Mais comment feras-tu si tu tombes amoureuse?
-Ben, je tomberai amoureuse, et alors?
-Mais d'un mâle, ou d'une femelle?
-Ca n'a pas non plus d'importance pour moi, vous savez.”
― Morgan of Glencoe, Dans l'ombre de Paris

“C'est pas sale, c'est de la terre.”
― Morgan of Glencoe, Dans l'ombre de Paris

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“...William wondered why he always disliked people who said 'no offense meant.' Maybe it was because they found it easier to to say 'no offense meant' than actually to refrain from giving offense.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.
-Lord Vetinari”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“And these are your reasons, my lord?"
"Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent."
Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Ah," said Mr Pin. "Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Veil, you see, if I vas to say something portentous like "zer dark eyes of zer mind" back home in Uberwald, zer would be a sudden crash of thunder,' said Otto. 'And if I vas to point at a castle on a towering crag and say "Yonder is . . . zer castle" a volf would be bound to howl mournfully.' He sighed. 'In zer old country, zer scenery is psychotropic and knows vot is expected of it. Here, alas, people just look at you in a funny vay.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“The best way to describe Mr. Windling would be like this: You are at a meeting. You'd like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn't very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is putting their papers neatly together, a voice says "If I can raise a minor matter, Mr. Chairman..." and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr. Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term "in my humble opinion," which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, "these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed".”
― Terry Pratchett

“Mr Tulip raised a trembling hand. 'Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?' he said.

NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW.

'Which bit?'

THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOUR BEING BORN AND YOUR DYING.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Mr. Tulip lived his life on that thin line most people occupy just before they haul off and hit someone repeatedly with a wrench.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Repressive societies always seemed to understand the danger of "wrong" ideas.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“That educated didn’t mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I'd rather see the others."
"What others?"
"The ones who make it. The ones living in freedom now."
"If any do."
"They do."
"Some say they do. It's like dying, though, and going to heaven. Nobody ever comes back to tell you about it.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. 'The ease seemed so frightening.' I said. 'Now I see why.'
'What?'
'The ease. Us, the children ... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Then, somehow, I got caught up in one of Kevin's World War II books - a book of excerpts from the recollections of concentration camp survivors. Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation. As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred.

... Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture - quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.”
― Octavia Butler, Kindred

“in an interview Butler has stated that the meaning of the amputation is clear enough: “I couldn’t really let her come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole.”1 Time”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time. This confused me because I felt just about the same mixture of emotions for him myself. I had thought my feelings were complicated because he and I had such a strange relationship. But then, slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships. Only the overseer drew simple, unconflicting emotions of hatred and fear when he appeared briefly. But then, it was part of the overseer’s job to be hated and feared while the master kept his hands clean.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn't kill, but she seemed to die a little.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“She means it doesn't come off, Dana... The black. She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

“He wasn't a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred