No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.
Interpretation
Authors deeply reflect on their thoughts and perspectives, leading to personal philosophies.
Terry Pratchett highlights the introspective nature of authors, emphasizing that they engage in critical self-examination of their thoughts and beliefs. This analytical process not only influences their writing but also fosters the development of a personal philosophy shaped by their unique insights and experiences.
In practice
During a writers' workshop, someone might use this quote to emphasize the importance of introspection in developing a unique writing style.
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.
A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. Itβs not moral to lie to children. Itβs not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. Itβs immoral.
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
Utopias have their value -- nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities -- but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal.
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My⦠my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension.
The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.
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