Home > Work > The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28)
1 " A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows. "
― Terry Pratchett , The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28)
2 " I am not so blind that I can't see darkness. "
3 " 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. "
4 " Maurice watched them argue again. 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. "
5 " The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes. "
6 " Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead "
7 " The second mouse gets the cheese! "
8 " 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. "
9 " The thing about stories is you have to pick the ones that last. "
10 " What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterward and used it? "
11 " Here's what I suggest," he said. "You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too. "
12 " You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance. "
13 " If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story. "
14 " The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it. "
15 " A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost. "
16 " 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. "
17 " And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?'Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies... it’s just a word. "
18 " Can I ask a question, sir?" said Maurice, as Death turned to go.You May Not Get An Answer."I suppose there isn't a Big Cat in the Sky, is there?"I'm Surprised At You, Maurice. Of Course There Are No Cat Gods. That Would Be Too Much Like...Work.Maurice nodded. One good thing about being a cat, apart from the extra lives, was that the theology was a lot simpler. "
19 " To be a leader you have to learn to shout! But after you've learned to shout, you have to learn not to! "
20 " He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads. "
