"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY."

And just a few more...

"Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness."

"​When we break down, it all breaks down."

"Words in the heart cannot be taken."

"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"

#TerryPratchett #Discworld #Bookstodon @bookstodon

"Now that’s what I call magic—seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ ‘em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ ‘em up, layin’ ‘em out, making ‘em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets—which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted—and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door ‘cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better’n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. That is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center! "
#TerryPratchett #Discworld #Bookstodon @bookstodon

7a years since Sir Terry Pratchett died and I'm all choked up. I started reading Discworld when I was around 9, and 27 years later his work has been by far the biggest influence on me as a person outside of family. He taught me how to be me in a way that helped me AND helped others. He taught me about magic and he taught me about right and wrong. I will always be grateful.

Here is a collection of Pratchett quotes. Some of them are included because they are perfect examples of the philosophy that shaped me; others, because they just felt really frickin' appropriate for the times.

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett.

🐢

"Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you."

"I have no use for people who have
learned the limits of the possible."

"So much universe, and so little time."

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it."

"People aren’t just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances."

"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."

"Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground." 🏳️‍⚧️

"You have to stand your ground because it’s *your* ground."

"You could say it was unfair, and that was true, but the universe didn’t care becuase it didn’t know what ‘fair’ meant."

“There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.”

"She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for."

#TerryPratchett #Discworld #Bookstodon @bookstodon

Redoing my intro because it's been a minute...

Hi! My name is Sarah, and I'm a queer neurodivergent poet, musician, and AuDHD/OCD advocate.

The words queer and neurodivergent are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that first sentence, though! The longhand is "bisexual nonbinary genderfluid demigirl who is autistic, PDA, ADHD, OCD, GAD, CPTSD, and bipolar", but that doesn't fit on a business card. 😅

I'm Australian, but I live in San Francisco. ostensibly working on a novel but mostly just sucking up life like I'm a vacuum cleaner and it's lint.

Special interests and hyperfixations: #Creativity, #Writing, #Poetry, #SFF/#SpecFic, #Drag, #ClassicalMusic, #ChoralMusic and #Musicals, #ContemporaryArt, #History (especially #QueerHistory and #DisabledHistory), #Biology and #Zoology, #Food, #FiberArts, #MBMBAM and #TheAdventureZone, #TerryPratchett, #AceAttorney, #AnimalCrossing, #StevenUniverse, #OurFlagMeansDeath, #RuPaulsDragRace, #Psychology, #Neurodivergence, #Autism and #OCD, #DisabledRights, #SocialJustice, #Ducks.

Current projects: the NOCD Autism/OCD support group, "The 17%" support Discord for autistic folk with OCD (link in bio!), Tabitha and the Nightingale (YA queer/neurodivergent/disabled fantasy novel), and OCD: The Musical. 🧡

#7Books (or book series) to get to know me:

🧡 The Neverending Story--Michael Ende
🧡 My Family and Other Animals--Gerald Durrell
🧡 The Discworld series (sorry, I couldn't pick one)--Sir #TerryPratchett
🧡 Trout Fishing In America--Richard Brautigan
🧡 Vanity Fair--William Makepeace Thackeray
🧡 The Wayward Children series (ditto)--Seanan McGuire
🧡 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life--Anne Lamott