Terry Pratchett – At a Glance

டெர்ரி பிரட்சட்டின் புத்தகங்களில் (பார்க்க: முந்தைய பதிவு) இருந்து சில மேற்கோள்கள். முதலில் தமிழில் மொழிபெயர்க்க முயற்சித்தேன். ஆனால் மொழிபெயர்ப்பில் அந்த அங்கதம் தொலைந்துவிட்டதை போன்ற உணர்வு. ஆகவே ஆங்கிலத்திலேயே….

– [The tortoise] has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

– Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

– The trouble with being a god is that you’ve got no one to pray to.

– An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse.
An upturned tortoise who knows what’s going to happen to it next is, well, at least up there at number four.

– Seven thousand years ago Khuft had led his people …and had prayed in the desert and the gods of the place had shown him the Old Kingdom. And he had entered, yea, and taken possession thereof, that it should ever be the dwelling place of his seed. Something like that, anyway. There were probably more yeas and a few verilys, with added milk and honey.

– We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human to be really stupid.

– Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinctions for rank or creed.

– The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don’t find out about it.

– Teppic: “You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.”
Ptraci: “What will you do if it isn’t safe?”
Teppic: “Scream.”

– “Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,” said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to. [Footnote: A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable gods.]

– Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.

– Trolls are usually thought to be so stupid they can count only up to 4. […] In fact, trolls traditionally count like this: one, two, three… many, and people assume this means they can have no grasp of higher numbers. They don’t realize that many can be a number. As in: one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many-many-one, many-many-two, many-many-three, many many many, many-many-many-one, many-many-many-two, many-many-many-three, LOTS.

– 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.

– Eric: What are quantum mechanics?
Rincewind: I don’t know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.

😀

– சித்தார்த்