A Slip of the Keyboard Quotes

“Mind you, I do recall that Salman Rushdie actually came second in a science fiction writing competition organized by Gollancz in the late 1970s. Just imagine if he’d won – Ayatollahs from Mars! – he would have had none of that trouble over The Satanic Verses, ’cos it would have been SF and therefore unimportant. He’d have been coming along to cons. He’d be standing here now! Ah, but the little turns and twists of history . . .”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

“Right at the bottom, at the tip of the root, is the fear of the dark and the cold, but once you've given darkness a name you have a measure of control. Or at least you think you have, which is nearly as important.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“I read every book I could find. I picked up stuff like a Hoover, and remembered it out of the sheer joy of finding out that the universe is stuffed with interest.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“Stabbity, stabbity, stab. That will be two dollars.’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘that’s not how assassination works. You do not charge the corpse.’ So she thinks about it and says, ‘My friend Keith,’ (another small munchkin salutes) ‘he’s from the Guild of Alchemists and will bring you alive again for three dollars.’ So with rigor mortis setting in, I stuck my hand in my pocket and gave them some of the fake convention money and then she smiled sweetly and said, ‘And for five dollars, I won’t kill you again.’ It was amazing to see how this Ankh-Morpork system evolved during the con.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

“It was like an exercise bicycle for the mind—it doesn’t take you anywhere, but it certainly tones up the muscles.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“Where people stand is perhaps not as important as which way they face.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“Arthur Church, who as I say took local journalism very seriously, wrote an eloquent defence of reporting even the nasty things. The gist of it was this, that it was in the public interest that the truth be known and known because it has been carefully reported and published. Without it, you are relying on the man in the pub, and rumour, possibly malicious rumour. If the local paper does for some reason get it wrong, then this would be known, and an apology and clarification would be made. This was not the best of all worlds, but better than the world of hearsay.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“One of us says, “I don’t know how to deal with this tricky bit of plot”; the other one listens and says, “The solution, Grasshopper, is in the way you state the problem. Fancy a coffee?”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“practically impossible. There are plenty of other useful books. But you start with Brewer’s.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I suggest you let fun out of your lives? For it is, brothers and sisters, a mongrel word, an ersatz word, a fast-food bucket of a word! What does it mean? Consider the shameful usage: “I was doing it for a bit of fun,” or “I thought it would be fun,” or “I was only having fun” and, worst of all, the little bit of white on the top of this chicken dropping, “Are we having fun yet?” Why have fun when you could have enjoyment,”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“I grew up expecting to see the first man land on the moon. It never occurred to me that I’d see the last one. We thought there’d be a moon base.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and truly more fantastic.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“A retired postman tells you it’s not just the front end of dogs that can make early morning deliveries
so fraught….”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“and a change is nearly as good as a rest.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“They’re a loveable lot who drink like the rugby club and fight like the chess club.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“Remember the transatlantic phone calls, usually made at Christmas, which were a matter of a vast sum of money and a lot of technical negotiation? And then we spent a lot of time saying, “It’s dark here, is it dark where you are?” and marvelled at the fact that you could have two times at the same time. But recently I rang home while walking through Perth, Australia, to check that the cat was okay. I just dialled the number. It wasn’t very exciting. I didn’t even ask if it was dark.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“at its best science fiction is about us and our Faustian bargain with our big brains, which dragged us out of the trees but may yet drag us into the volcano.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“I was going to be an astronomer, because when you were an astronomer you didn’t have to be in bed by ten.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“The dinosaurs were thick as concrete, but they survived for 150 million years and it took a damn great asteroid to knock them out. I find myself wondering now if intelligence comes with its own built-in asteroid.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“n England, unlike Ireland, where I gather you punch one another’s lights out for fun and entertainment at both weddings and funerals, the government does not like to hold a referendum, because that would mean that stupid people, which is to say people who aren’t politicians, would make the decisions which are better left to stupid and, as we learn more and more, dishonest politicians instead. They despise us until an election comes around when they pretend that they do not.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“…the nature of humour. That stuff needs deep soil; you can grow wit on a damp flannel.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“…I went on reading; and, since if you read enough books you overflow, I eventually became a writer.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“... Катерихме и една скала и се държахме за въже, и заваля, и аз търсех къде да стъпя.... и там имаше една голяма змия, която душеше гущер. И аз подвикнах на екскурзовода:
- Там има змия!
А той рече:
- От какъв вид?
А аз се провикнах:
- Изкатерил съм се до половината на една скала, плющи дъжд, стискам едно въже, почвам да се подхлъзвам и няма да си играя на "Каква е моята змия?", ама мисля, че е някакъв питон.
- Защо мислите, че е някакъв питон?
- Защо очите на игуаната правят ей тъй... муааа!
И той дойде и каза:
- Айде, няма нищо, не се шашкай, изритай я в храстите."

"Направо от сърцето през чатала" 2004г.”
― Тери Пратчет, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction

“Unfortunately, there’s still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another: ‘He will grow wroth.’ Oh, my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar jaw-breaking, mock-archaic narrative. Belike, i’faith . . . this is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third-rate romantic literature. ‘Yonder lies the palace of my fodder, the king.’ That’s not fantasy – that’s just Tolkien reheated until the magic boils away.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

“Fun pretends to be about enjoyment, but is merely about the attempt.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction

“What we are, in fact, are electronic ape-men. We woke up just now in the electronic dawn and there, looming against the brightening sky, is this huge black rectangle. And we’re reaching out and touching it and saying, “Is it WAP enabled? Can we have sex with it? Can you get it in a different colour? Is it being sold cheap because the Monolith2 is being released next month and has a built-in PDA for the same price?”
― Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction