I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.
Interpretation
This quote humorously highlights how society often overlooks the value and beauty of older women.
Terry Pratchett cleverly points out the discrimination faced by older women in literature and media, where the portrayal often favors youthfulness. By contrasting the age of characters in his books with the younger images on their covers, he critiques societal standards that devalue the experiences and wisdom of older individuals while using humor to raise awareness about ageism.
In practice
During a speech on gender equality, one might use this quote to discuss ageism in media.
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.
Sex and death. Two things that come but once in my lifetime, but at least after death you're not nauseous.
Middle-age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.
A bean bag is a perfect place to sulk. You can sink way down deep, and sulk for hours... You only have to stick your head up once in a while... to see if anybody cares.
The loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
That's the worst of girls," said Edmund to Peter and the Dwarf. "They never can carry a map in their heads." "That's because our heads have something inside them," said Lucy.
Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.
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