No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away
With the passing of Sir Terry Pratchett and the publication of The Shepherd’s Crown, I embarked on an epic re-reading of all 41 official Discworld novels, with the goal of finishing by 31 December, 2016.
Famous for its wit and wisdom, the series offers countless quotable quotes on a variety of subjects. The quotes I share should not be considered the whole of Sir Terry’s excellent prose; indeed, they are the tasty appetizers to a succulent, nourishing meal.
About The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
This is the 28th Discworld novel and Pratchett’s first Discworld young-adult novel.
Imagine the Pied Piper told from the other side: the Piper isn’t magic, but the rats are – thanks to eating Unseen University’s garbage. United by their sacred text Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure and The Rules and led by Maurice the talking cat, the rats have been playing the short con throughout the Plains.
To beat the heat, they head to the Uberwald town of Bad Blintz, where the rat catchers have been playing the long con. Now, the conmen must con the cons and set things right – all while battling an existential crisis.
5 stars
The Goodreads Blurb:
Is Discworld ready for educated rats?
Set in the Discworld, a brand new and marvellously eccentric fantasy tale for young readers.
Maurice, an amazing cat, who has survived four years on the toughest streets in the whole of the Discworld, reckons that rats are dumb. Clever, OK, but dumb. Maurice, however, is smart — smart enough to recognize that there’s a new kind of rat around; rats that have been eating wizards’ rubbish and can now talk. And Maurice is also smart enough to get a pretty amazing idea when he spots a kid playing the flute. Now he has his very own Pied Piper to go with his “plague of rats”. And Maurice’s money-bags are getting fuller and fuller. That is, until the group reaches the far flung village of Bad Blintz
To the Quotes!
The Librarian as he appears in The Discworld Companion, illustrated by Paul Kidby
A good plan isn’t one where someone wins, it’s where nobody thinks they’ve lost.
But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about, said the voice of Maurice. They’re so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.
People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.
The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn’t be so long as to make you miss mealtimes
The second mouse gets the cheese!
The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.
A good motto in life, he’d reckoned, was: don’t eat anything that glows
Humans, eh? Think they’re lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.
I am not so blind that I can’t see darkness.
It’s odd…but we didn’t know the shadows were there until we had the light.
OF COURSE THERE ARE NO CAT GODS. THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH LIKE . . . WORK.
What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it?
. . .
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Great Pratchett quotes. He had his own genius way of seeing things.
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