And Then He Realized Why He Was Thinking Like This.

“And then he realized why he was thinking like this.

It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”

-Terry Pratchett’s Jingo

“This is all rather fun,” said Sybil an hour later as the coaches headed out of the city. “Do you remember when we last went on holiday, Sam?”

“That wasn’t really a holiday,” said Vimes. Above them, Young Sam swung back and forth in a little hammock, cooing.

“Well, it was very interesting, all the same,” said Sybil.

“Yes, dear. Werewolves tried to eat me.”

-Terry Pratchett’s Thud!

“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with a problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.”

-Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

“The world was ending then, it’s ending still, and I’m happy to belong to it again.” - Jonathan Franzen, How to Be Alone

"An alternative, favored by those of a religious persuasion, was that A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis."

-Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic

“It’s just that... I mean, people might...” she began. “I mean... well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns, don’t you?”

“Yes, miss.”

“You do?”

“Yes, miss. Lawyers, miss.”

“Good. Yes. Good.” said Angua slowly. “Now try another one...”

“Er... actors, miss?”

Angua gave up. “You look good in taffeta, Nobby.”

-Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant