Only You Can Save Mankind

No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

One day, if he could master GCSE maths and reliably pick up a soldering iron by the end that wasn't hot, he was going to be a Big Man in computers.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"I saw a film where there was an alien crawling around inside a spaceship's air ducts and it could come out wherever it liked," said Johnny reproachfully. "Doubtless it had a map," said the Captain.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Basically, there were two sides to the world. There was the entire computer games software industry engaged in a tremendous effort to stamp out piracy, and there was Wobbler. Currently, Wobbler was in front.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Wobbler had written an actual computer game like this once. It was called "Journey to Alpha Centauri". It was a screen with some dots on it. Because, he said, it happened in real time, which no-one had ever heard of until computers. He'd seen on TV that it took three thousand years to get to Alpha Centauri. He had written it so that if anyone kept their computer on for three thousand years, they'd be rewarded by a little dot appearing in the middle of the screen, and then a message saying, "Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Now go home."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Wobbler thought that California was where good people went when they died.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

If Not You, Who Else?

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"We got a talk about it at school. There's lots of stuff most girls can't do, but you've got to pretend they can, so that more of them will."

-- Sexism explained (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

Bigmac's brother was reliably believed to be in the job of moving video recorders around in an informal way.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

He microwaved himself something called a Pour-On Genuine Creole Lasagne, which said it served four portions. It did if you were dwarfs.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

On Earth, No-one Can Hear You Say "Um".

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"Stuck? You're an alien," said Johnny. "Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)

"If we find a cat I'm going to kick it!"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Only You Can Save Mankind)