And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that excessive enthusiasm or punctuation may indicate a lack of seriousness or stability.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett uses humor to illustrate a whimsical perspective on the use of exclamation marks, associating them with an eccentricity that suggests a person is not quite stable. It pokes fun at how people might express exaggerated excitement, evoking the imagery of someone who is not only playful but potentially unhinged, highlighting the absurdity in over-enthusiasm.
In practice
Use this quote when discussing the use of punctuation in writing during a language class.
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.
And stop pointing that beard at me, it might go off!
"I've learned what's funny verbally ain't so funny on e-mail: They don't hear your intonations. Melissa broke up with somebody over that. She tried to tell him: "That was a joke!" But he just didn't get it. Mick Jagger said, "F- 'em if they don't get the joke." And I love him. That comes with age: Knowing it's their problem, not mine."
As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction.
Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward.
According to a new survey, 40 percent of adults in Mexico say they would move to the United States if they got a chance. The number would have been higher, but the other 60 percent already live here.
The secret to humor is surprise.
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