A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
Interpretation
A good bookstore captivates readers and absorbs their attention much like a black hole does with matter.
This quote by Terry Pratchett cleverly compares a good bookshop to a black hole, suggesting that a well-curated bookstore is irresistibly engaging, drawing in readers and enveloping them in stories, much like a black hole attracts everything in its vicinity. The phrase 'that knows how to read' adds an element of sophistication, implying that the curated selection in the shop speaks to the art of literature and the thoughtfulness behind selecting the right books to entice readers.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community spaces, one might say, 'A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.'
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.
Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.
I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.
An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything.
The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship
Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.
Kid ... Comics will break your heart.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.