Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that one should engage with life's hardships without delay, reflecting a sarcastic view of suffering.
Terry Pratchett's quote employs dark humor to address the inevitability of suffering and the absurdity of avoiding difficult encounters. By advising one to 'call in at the torturer,' it highlights the comical notion that we often take on life's challenges head-on, even when those challenges are painful or uncomfortable, essentially pointing out the often ironic and absurd nature of existence.
In practice
During a comedy routine about the struggles of adult life.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
Status is always ripe for satire, status is always good for comedy.
It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.
I think as much as I talk about humour being a defence mechanism, I'm also really grateful that I developed it, because I now have it as a choice, rather than a panic button. I feel like it's there if I want to use it. It's fun.
I saw a startling sight today, a politician with his hands in his own pockets.
Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.
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