The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.
Interpretation
A humorous take on the concept of time, highlighting the impatience of New York drivers.
Terry Pratchett's quote playfully defines a 'New York Second' to illustrate how time can feel different depending on context. In this case, it captures the essence of urban impatience and the fast-paced nature of life in New York City, where mere seconds can feel like an eternity when you're being honked at for not moving right away.
In practice
Use this quote in a comedic speech about city 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.
Some people have such a talent for making the best of a bad situation that they go around creating bad situations so they can make the best of them.
But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.
You don't stop laughing because you grow older. You grow older because you stop laughing.
I felt very much like a hooker who had just been told she was a lady of the evening.
Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring... 'How to Build a Boat.'
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