After hearing the sad but, I think, not wholly unexpected news earlier this evening, I don't have a lot to say about it that others haven't said more eloquently elsewhere. I have been reading and re-reading (and re-reading) his books for at least the past twenty-five years and I'm pretty much certain that my tastes in literature and indeed my outlook on the world would be very different if I had not done so. Not only are they really funny, they've got a lot of heart and a lot of common sense. I think the world was much the richer for having him writing in it, and is now much the poorer for him having left.
There's a line from The Colour of Magic, which was the very first Pratchett I read:
“Magic never dies. It merely fades away.”
Although, Pratchett's depiction of magic being what it was, it's much, much scarier in context.
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