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Science Fiction
Douglas Adams
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Greg Bear
David Brin
Julie Czerneda
Harlan Ellison
Joe Haldeman (though, avoid Forever Free)
Neal Stephenson
Connie Willis
Fantasy
David Eddings
Diana Wynne Jones
Mercedes Lackey
Robin McKinley
Tamora Pierce
Terry Pratchett
Melanie Rawn
Mickey Zucker Reichert
Both
Lois McMasters Bujold
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Orson Scott Card
C.J. Cherryh
Kate Elliot
C.S. Friedman
Neil Gaiman
Stephen R. Lawhead
Ursula K. LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Terry Pratchett
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it's the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it's just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)
"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.
--(Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)
He had the look of a lawn mower just after the grass had organised a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)
They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past.
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)
This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts..."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)
He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)
A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it anyway.
-- Granny Weatherwax commits optimism (Terry Pratchett, Maskerade)
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
Thunder rolled. ... It rolled a six.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
No! No! I didn't! I never said "I" . . . oh, bugger . . .
-- One Auditor Of Reality, Reaper Man
"The merest accident of microgeography meant that the first man to hear the voice of (the God) Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and need to be led."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
NO, YOU CAN'T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)
AND WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HOGSWATCH, SMALL HUMAN?
HO.HO.HO.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)
Quotes from Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett:
The [Assassin's] Guild library was one of the largest in the city. In certain specialized areas it was the largest. These areas mainly had to do with the regrettable brevity of human life and the means of bringing it about. p 10
He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance. p 13
The river slunk sullenly in the bottom of its bed, like a student around 11 am. p 27
"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage." Gaspode, p 62
It was true that normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done. Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored. p 73
"There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my friend."
Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror. "Gosh," he said. p 87
You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful. p 94
The funeral was over. The jesters, jokers, and clowns were going about their business, getting stuck in doorways on the way. There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring morning. p 143
Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days. And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer. p 155
"And then there's the wizards. Tinker, tinker, tinker. Never think twice before grabbing a thread of the fabric of reality and giving it a pull." Vetinari p 197
He wasn't actually a bad man. He didn't have the imagination. He dealt more in that sort of generalized low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it.* (Rather like British Rail.) p 225
Sometimes its better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. p 259
Foul Ole Ron was a Beggar's Guild member in good standing. He was a Mutterer, and a good one. He would walk behind people muttering in his own private language until they gave him money not to. People thought he was mad, but this was not technically the case. It was just that he was in touch with reality on the cosmic level, and had a bit of trouble focusing on things smaller, like other people, walls, and soap (although on very small things, such as coins, his eyesight was Grade A.) p 277
Other sci-fi related ones
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
-- Robert Heinlein
"I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune."
-- Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor
Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.
-- Bujold, Barrayar
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
-- Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams
Nothing beats a little death and destruction if you want to start the day off right.
-- Nannla, from The Gathering Flame by Debra Doyle & James MacDonald
"That's because I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop."
-- Miles Naismith Vorkosigan
Lately, I have come to believe that the principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
-- Simon Illyan, from A Civil Campaign by L.M. Bujold
If rebellion were simple, everyone would be doing it.
-- Giles, from Simon R. Green's Deathstalker
Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
-- Robert Heinlein, Glory Road
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling
"We're planning to pluck all the best stars out of the sky and stuff them in our pockets, so that when we meet you once again and thrust our hands deep inside to hide our embarrassment, our fingertips will smart on them, as if they were desert grains, caught down in the seams, and we'll smile at you on your way to a glory that, for all our stellar thefts, we shall never be able to duplicate."
-- Marq Dyeth, Delaney, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
"You don't fight your destiny, no sir. And you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future."
-- The Tick
"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
-- The Princess Bride
"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."
-- George Orwell
"Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor?"
-- Spock
When mankind thought that his was the only intelligence and earth the only place, it was perhaps fitting to believe that each man had individual importance. We were all there was. Like frogs, each thinking its own puddle was the center of the universe, we believed that God worried over each of us. Strange that we should realize Pride is a sin yet still be willing prey to such arrogance.
We had only to look around us to know how foolish the idea was. Where was the farmer who knew each of his seeds by name? Where was the beekeeper who labeled his bees? Where was the herdsman who distinguished among individual blades of grass? Compared to the size of creation, what were we but very small beings, as bees are small, as seeds of corn are small, as blades of grass are small?
And yet corn becomes bread; bees make honey; grass is turned into flesh, or into gardens. Very small beings are important, not individually but for what they become, if they becomeS˙
-- Sheri Tepper, Grass
"I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature," he said, irritated at my failure to respond.
"Nature's virtue is intact," I reassured him. "I just know some different laws."
-- Orson Scott Card, Treason
From The Old Man and Mr. Smith by Peter Ustinov:
"God? Presumably with two "d"s," said the concierge, without looking up.
"With one "d"," said the Old Man, apologetically.
"That's unusual," remarked the concierge.
"Unusual? It's unique." And the Old Man laughed mildly at his own observation.
"Given name?"
"I haven't one."
"Initials will do."
"It stands to reason since I haven't a first name, I haven't initials either."
The concierge looked at the Old Man penetratingly, and for the first time. The Old Man fidgeted, eager to put an end to the awkwardness. "Are you going to say that that's unusual too?" he suggested, and then went on, reassuringly, "There's a perfectly normal reason for it, which should satisfy you. I had no parents, you see."
"Everyone has parents," stated the concierge, dangerously.
"I haven't," retorted the Old Man, hotly.
There was a moment while the two protagonists weighed each other up. The concierge resumed the verbal contact in a tone of enforced relaxation. "And this for how long?"
"I can't say. I am subject to whims."
"Whims," echoed the concierge. "And what will be your method of payment when you leave?"
(Page one the best part of the book.)
It was just like the powers that be to employ a hideous creature of indeterminate age, with a mane of greasy hair and a dirty T-shirt with a frivolous message on it, to mend complicated hardware. He had probably graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
(Page 133, of Satan.)
Godzilla 2000
"I guarantee it'll go through Godzilla like crap through a goose!" missile technician, Godzilla 2000
"Did you see that flying rock go by?" General, Godzilla 2000
"Great Caesar's ghost!" shocked man, Godzilla 2000
"Quit your bitchen'!" Journalist
"What's tomorrow's forecast?"
::with unnatural dread and melodrama:: "Sunny and clear!"
"I'm going to strangle that imbecile!" of Euki
::piously:: "Godzilla is inside each one of us."
Captain Video:
Use the cosmic vibrator!
Cover us with the optic enscalometer!
In a moment I'll let you show me where your apparatus isS˙
Barbarella:
"You're so good, you actually made the Matmos vomit!" Black Queen
"Wait while I get my devices!" - Duran Duran
Good Omens
The Earth is a Libra.
God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitious ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
This section is a little empty because Wellesley policy forbids us to steal copyrighted images. That means all the images here must be uncopyrighted or copyrighted to the club or people who don't mind us using them. Therefore, please draw us some pictures for this section or bug your more artistic friends and family members to do it for you.
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