Discworld
From Wikiquote
Discworld is a comedic fantasy book series by British author Terry Pratchett set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which are in turn standing on the back of a giant turtle, the Great A'Tuin. The stories are arranged in several different story arcs that are further explained in the Wikipedia article on the Discworld reading order.
[edit] The Colour of Magic (1983)
- If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'.
- What he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.
- "It could be worse," he said by way of farewell. "It could be me."
- That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.
- Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant "idiot."
- It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.
- 'You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree.'
One of the giants grinned at him.
Druellae snorted. 'Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?'
- What heroes like best is themselves.
- 'We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.'
'Precisely,' said a passing bush.
- The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal his gold teeth.
- 'It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground,' he said, and paused while he considered the sense of this. 'You know what I mean, anyway...'
- Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
- It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.
But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.
- I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.
- 'What's this wine — crushed octopus eyeballs?'
'Sea grape,' said the old man.
'Great,' said Rincewind, and swallowed a glassful. 'Not bad. A bit salty, maybe.'
'Sea grape is a kind of small jellyfish,' explained the stranger. '[...] Why has your friend gone that strange colour?'
'Culture shock, I imagine,' said Twoflower.
- 'We don't have gods where I come from,' said Twoflower.
'You do, you know,' said the Lady. 'Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.'
[edit] The Light Fantastic (1986)
- The pen is mightier than the sword ... if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
- The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.
- Of course I'm sane, when trees start talking to me, I don't talk back.
- Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it.
- Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.
- 'Dead?' said Rincewind, In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.
- Darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.
- Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course — it was not round and shiny — but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.
- The death of the warrior or the old man or the little child, this I understand, and I take away the pain and end the suffering. I do not understand this death-of-the-mind.
- Radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic.
It was a rather disappointing purple colour.
[edit] Equal Rites (1987)
- It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.
- She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.
- "They're both magic. If you can't learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse."
"What's an elephant?"
"A kind of badger."
- It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.
- One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.
- It was a small village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.
- "[...]Can't you read, Esk?"
The astonishment in his voice stung her.
"I expect so," she said defiantly. "I've never tried."
[edit] Mort (1987)
- This is the Death whose particular sphere of operations is, well, not a sphere at all, but the Discworld, which is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle Great A'Tuin, and which is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space.
Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
- What is your name?
'Uh,' said Mort. 'Mortimer...sir. They call me Mort.'
What a coincidence, said the skull.
- 'And he goes around killing people?' said Mort. He shook his head. 'There's no justice.'
Death sighed. No, he said, there's just me.
- He saw his life stretching out in front of him like a nasty black tunnel with no light at the end of it.
...He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
- 'It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever' he said.
'Have you thought of going into teaching?'
- Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass. A library is just a genteel black hole that can read
- Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn't entirely there.
You haven't heard of the Bay of Mante, have you? he said.
'No, sir,' said Mort.
Famous shipwreck there.
'Was there?'
There will be, said Death, if I can find the damn place.
- His father regarded him critically.
"Very nice," he said, "for the money."
"It itches," said Mort, "I think there's things in here with me."
"There's thousands of lads in the world'd be very thankful for a nice warm — " Lezek paused, and gave up — "garment like that, my lad."
"I could share it with them?" Mort said hopefully.
- You don't see people at their best in this job, said Death.
- "Look, I'll be frank," he said. "I could point you in the direction of a great brothel."
"I've already had lunch," said Mort vaguely.
- "I've — we've got a special on Cutwell's Shield of Passion ointment," said the face, and winked in a startling fashion. "Provides your wild oats while guaranteeing a crop failure, if you know what I mean."
- (That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. Death wasn't talking to the princess. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn't it? It's probably called a fast dissolve, or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where the senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything.)
- History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.
- Go away, Mort thought. His subconcious was worrying him. It appeared to have a direct line to parts of his body that he wanted to ignore at the moment.
- "Sodomy non sapiens," said Albert under his breath.
"What does that mean?"
"Means I'm buggered if I know."
- Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.
- The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
- Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.
- "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade hopefully.
I wouldn't know. I have done neither.
- "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."
No one gets pardoned for living.
- "You're dead," he said. Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.
- The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.
- Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
- I ushered souls into the next world. I was the grave of all hope. I was the ultimate reality. I was the assassin against whom no lock would hold.
"Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"
- Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much — in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all — but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.
- "You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish — " He stopped talking.
- "What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.
- "You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"
[edit] Sourcery (1988)
RARE, said Death.
- 'And what would humans be without love?'
Rare, said Death.
- He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.
- The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.
- This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.
- These weren't the normal city watch, cautious and genially corrupt. These were walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because the Patrician could outbid anyone else.
- After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something — either away, out or even.
- It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.
- Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.
- 'My father always said that death is but a sleep,' said Conina.
'Yes, the hat told me that,' said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. 'But the way I see it, it's a lot harder to get up in the morning.'
- 'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.
Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.
'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine.'
- The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.
- A popular spell at the time was Pelepel's Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely.
- The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find...
- 'I don't trust this man,' said Nijel. 'I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he's up to no good.'
'He had you thrown in a snake pit!'
'Perhaps I should have taken the hint.'
- Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was nigh-well impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.*
-
- * Of course, wizards often killed each other by ordinary, non-magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.
- Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
- 'I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!' he hissed. 'I'm afraid of grounds!'
'You mean heights,' said Conina. 'And stop being silly.'
'I know what I mean! It's the grounds that kill you!'
- There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away.
- Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner's canary, and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.
- 'This is fun,' said Creosote. 'Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.'
'But you could throw yourself on your mercy,' said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.
'Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.'
- 'I can't hear anything,' said Nijel loudly. Nijel was one of those people who, if you say "don't look now", would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable.
- Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.
- They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.
- 'Poor I don't mind,' said the Seriph. 'It's sobriety that is giving me difficulties.'
- Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour.
- Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'.
- 'Quick, you must come with me,' she said. 'You're in great danger!'
'Why?'
'Because I will kill you if you don't.'
- "I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
Cats, he said finally. Cats are nice.
- The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.
- Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and terrorizing them into feeding it crisps.
- The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.
- How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced by a beautiful young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh is suddenly as willing as the spirit.
- And I didn't bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I'd just stick with the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl.
[edit] Wyrd Sisters (1989)
- A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.
- No gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
- The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
- It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.
- Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn't like its expression at all.
- If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.
- The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.
- Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.
- Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else — coincidence, maybe, or providence.
- This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.
- This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.
- Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the other way round.
- "Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."
- The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
- "There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."
- "I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because — well, June 12th was quite nice, and..."
- "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.
- Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying "Mother". No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
- "A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do," said Granny. "But right now he should go home."
- "I daresay," said Granny, pushing the Fool aside and stepping over a writhing taproot. "If anyone locked me in a dungeon, there'd be screams."
- "Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody."
- On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...
- The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and outgeneralled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man's brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles.
[edit] Pyramids (1989)
- All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.
- You scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and paid you back by getting educated.
- Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.
- It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.
- The king looked surprised.
"I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle," he said.
Death shrugged. Well. Now you know.
- It's not for nothing that advanced mathematics tends to be invented in hot countries. It's because of the morphic resonance of all the camels, who have that disdainful expression and famous curled lip as a natural result of an ability to do quadratic equations.
- The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins.*
-
- * Never trust a species that grins all the time. It's up to something.
- From here he could see past the long, low bulk of the palace and across the river to the Great Pyramid itself. It was almost hidden in dark clouds, but what he could see of it was definitely wrong. He knew it had four sides, and he could see all eight of them.
It seemed to be moving in and out of focus, which he felt instinctively was a dangerous thing for several million tons of rock to do.
- Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up.
- Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.
- "I bid you already know." (Discworld philosophers)
- The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one.
- There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.
- "Therefore I will have dinner sent in," said the priest. "It will be roast chicken."
"I hate chicken."
Dios smiled. "No sire. On Wednesdays the King always enjoys chicken, sire."
- She had a number of stoutly-held views on a variety of subjects, but most of them involved the flaying alive of people she disapproved of. This meant most people under the age of thirty-five, to start with.
- He [Ptaclusp] put his arms around his sons' shoulders.
"Lads", he said proudly. "It's looking really quantum"
- This is most irregular
We're sorry. It's not our fault.
How many of you are there?
More than 1300, I' afraid
Very well, then. Please form an orderly queue.
[edit] Guards! Guards! (1989)
- They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten mintues into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men.
- He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving — anything with meat on it would have done.
- It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.
- The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.
- 'No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they'd knew anything, they'd be sergeants.'
- 'Brother Doorkeeper?'
Metaphorically.
- 'What's the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go round livin' in ordinary rooms?'
- 'You don't get big houses and carriages without grindin' the faces of the poor a bit.'
- 'Those are the royal hippos of Ankh,' said the man proudly. 'Reminders of our noble heritage.'
- He looked up at the hooded figure beside him. 'We never intended this,' he said weakly. 'Honestly. No offence. We just wanted what was due to us.' A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly. And Death said,
Congratulations.
- People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."
- The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
- "... a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting ..."
- "Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
"I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon," said Nobby.
- "'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm.
"All by himself?" said the captain.
"No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other.
- [Captain Vimes addresses a band of rioters] This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.
- There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
- All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.
- All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.
- He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter [footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force].
- It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
- Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.
- It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.
- A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.
- Thunder rolled. ... It rolled a six.
- Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography
- The significant owl hoots in the night.
- A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read
[edit] Faust Eric (1990)
- Just erotic, nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
- "I thought you were stuffed", said Rincewind.
[The parrot] "Up yours!"
- When he was left alone he wandered over to the lectern and looked at the book. The title, in impressively flickering red letters, was Mallificarum Sumpta Diabolicite Occularis Singularum, the Book of Ultimate Control. He knew about it. There was a copy in the Library somewhere, although wizards never bothered with it.
This might seem odd, because if there is one thing a wizard would trade his grandfather for, it is power. But it wasn't all that strange, because any wizard bright enough to survive for five minutes was also bright enough to realise that if there was any power in demonology, then it lay with the demons. Using it for your own purposes would be like trying to beat mice to death with a rattlesnake.
- The librarian was, ex officio, a member of the college council. No-one had been able to find any rule about orang-utans being barred, although they had surreptiously looked very hard for one.
- 'They never give him any of the things a sensitive growing wossname really needs, if you was to ask me.'
'What, you mean love and guidance?' said Rincewind.
'I was thinking of a bloody good wossname, thrashing.' said the parrot.
- Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.
- Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they think they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
- Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which is a) costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.
- 'According to Ephebian mythology, there's a girl who comes down here every winter.'
'To keep warm?'
'I think the story says she actually creates the winter, sort of.'
'I've known women like that,' said Rincewind, nodding wisely.
- 'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.'
[edit] Moving Pictures (1990)
- A crude hut of driftwood had been built on the long curve of the beach, although describing it as 'built' was a slander on skilled crude hut builders throughout the ages; if the sea had simply been left to pile the wood up it might have done a better job.
- The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.
- The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first.
- What the Bursar failed to consider was that no more bangs doesn't mean they've stopped doing it, whatever it is. It just means they're doing it right.
- Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleaning, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
- No-one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged.
- He'd looked at its ramshackle organisation, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always room at the top.
- 'She hwas dusting,' said Mrs Whitlow, helpfully. When Mrs Whitlow was in the grip of acute class consciousness she could create aitches where nature never intended them to be.
- Probably only one person in the world had been interested in whether the old man lived or died, and he'd been the first to know.
- Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
- The Wahooni Fruit grows only in certain parts of heathen Howondaland. It's twenty feet long, covered in spikes the colour of ear wax, and smells like an anteater that's eaten a very bad ant.
[edit] Reaper Man (1991)
- One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people?
One said, Got a crush on them, sort of thing?
- 'It's not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!'
'Older? Older than dead?'
- The Archchancellor was the first one to recover.
'Windle!' he said. 'We thought you were dead!'
He had to admit that it wasn't a very good line. You didn't put people on a slab with candles and lilies all round them because you think they have a bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour.
- Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse?*
-
- * No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry.
- Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place.
- Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just means that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.
- No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.
- "My name's Miss Flitworth."
Yes.
She waited.
"I expect you have a name too," she prompted.
Yes. That's right.
She waited again.
"Well?"
I'm sorry?
"What is your name?"
The stranger stared at her for a moment, the looked around wildly.
"Come on," said Miss Flitworth. I ain't employing no one without no name. Mr...?"
The figure stared upward.
Mr. Sky?
"No one's called Mr. Sky."
Mr... Door?
She nodded.
"Could be. Could be Mr. Door. There was a chap called Doors I knew once. Yea. Mr. Door. And your first name? Don't tell me you haven't got one of those too. You've got to be a Bill or a Tom or a Bruce or one of those names."
Yes.
"What?"
One of those.
"Which one?"
Er. The first one?
"You're a Bill?"
Yes?
Miss Flitworth rolled her eyes.
"All right, Bill Sky..." she said.
Door.
"Yeah. Sorry. All right, Bill Door..."
Call me Bill.
- Drop the scythe, and turn around slowly!
- What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?
- A crown? I never wore a crown!
'You never wanted to rule.'
- Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
- Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
- Because you're all you've got, said Death.
'What? Oh. Yes. That as well. It's a great big cold universe out there.'
You'd be amazed.
'One lifetime just isn't enough.'
Oh, I don't know.
'Hmm?'
Windle Poons?
'Yes?'
That was your life.
And, with great relief, and general optimism, and a feeling that on the whole everything could have been much worse, Windle Poons died.
[edit] Witches Abroad (1991)
- 'Tell me,' said Magrat, 'you said your mummy knows about the big bad wolf in the woods, didn't you?'
'That's right.'
'But nonetheless she sent you out by yourself to take those goodies to your granny?'
- All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout. Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out.
- She heard Nanny say: 'Beats me why they're always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you've got value for money?'
She heard Granny say: 'No problem there. If you can't see 'em, you know you've got proper invisible runes.'
- Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short.
- Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.
- You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.
- The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people.
- "We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience"
"But the point is... the point is... the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you."
- The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match.
- People didn't hit you over the head with farmhouses back home.
- Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because — what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.
- Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards.
- "Emberella," thought Magrat. "I'm fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain."
- Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue.
- Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down. "You're a dwarf," she said.
- "'S called the Vieux River."
"Yes?"
"Know what that means?"
"No."
"The Old (Masculine) River," said Nanny.
"Yes?"
"Words have sex in foreign parts," said Nanny hopefully.
- Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Ybi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered.
- Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against any decent swordmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off.
- Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government.
- "Baths is unhygienic," Granny declared. "You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that."
- "Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy," said Granny, glaring at the sky. "But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say "I do", yes? You can't make happiness..."
[edit] Small Gods (1992)
- Time is like a drug. Too much of it kills you.
- Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Laste the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.
- Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word 'commence' in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say 'Enter', don't stop to pack.
- Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.
[Translated: "When you have a good grip on their balls, their hearts and minds will follow"]
- When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.
- The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly...
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
What have I always believed?
That, on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, in the end, more or less, turn out all right.
You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
Fri'it set out.
- Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
- One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.
- Vorbis was the head of the Quisition, whose job it was to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do.
- You do not ask people like that what they are thinking about in case they turn around very slowly and say 'You.'
- Tortoise: 'How many talking tortoises have you met?'
Brutha: 'I don't know.'
Tortoise: 'What d'you mean, you don't know?'
Brutha: 'Well, they might all talk. They just might not say anything when I'm there.'
- Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn't turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn't be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.
- Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, 'It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?'
- An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse.
An upturned tortoise who knows what's going to happen to it next is, well, at least up there at number four.
- I swear to me that I am the Great God Om, greatest of gods!
- Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
- It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong... It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected.
- Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.
- Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course.
- Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker.
- Something about him generally made people think of the word 'spry,' but, at the moment, they would be much more likely to think of the words 'mother naked' and possibly also 'dripping wet' and would be one hundred percent accurate, too.
- People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
- 'That's right,' he said. 'We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am.'
- 'We get that in here some nights, when someone's had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether the gods exist. Next thing, there's a bolt of lightning through the door with a note wrapped round it saying, "Yes, we do" and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out.'
- Because what gods need is belief, and what human want is gods.
- There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you when you were talking, as if he was listening.
- 'The God speaks to a chosen one and he becomes a great prophet,' said Nhumrod. 'Now, I am sure you wouldn't presume to consider yourself one of them? Mmm?'
- No matter what your skills, there was a place for you in the Citadel.
And if your skills lay in asking the wrong kinds of questions or losing the righteous kind of wars, the place might just be the furnaces of purity, or the Quisition's pits of justice
- And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
- The Omnians were a God-fearing people. They had a great deal to fear.
- He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually have to kill them before they saw the error of their ways.
- 'Did not the Great God declare, through the Prophet Abbys, that there is no greater and more honourable sacrifice than one's own life for the God?'
'Indeed he did,' said Fri'it. He couldn't help recalling that Abbys had been a bishop in the Citadel for fifty years before the Great God has chosen him. Screaming enemies had never come at him with a sword. He'd never looked in to the eyes of someone who wished him dead.
- 'Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.
'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.
- The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote [footnote: Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman]. Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of ordinary philosopher in the streets looking for towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.
- 'I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. Now the light irascible tone had drained out of his voice. 'I remember before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?'
'It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and — '
'Don't know about soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.'
'The state of the body is not — '
'Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad that it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could.'
- Do unto others before they do unto you.
- Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
- No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.
- His philosophy was a mixture of three famous school — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink. Mine's double, if you are buying. Thank you. And a packet of nuts. Her left bosom is nearly uncovered, eh? Two more packets, then!'
- 'Now we've got a truth to die for!'
'No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for'
- "That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."
- The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.
- "Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain — the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."
- "It's a god-eat-god world."
- "You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."
- Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. Crabs thought he walked sideways.
- History, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles.
- And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!"
- Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.
- "There's very good eating on one of these, you know."- [Eyeing the tortoise for tea.]
- The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks.
- "Ah. Philosophy," said Om.
- "Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."
- Squeak.- The Death of Rats
- "Eureka," he said. "Going to have a bath then?"
- "Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?"
- Remind me again, he said, How the little horse-shaped ones move.
- "Go on, do Deformed Rabbit... it's my favourite."
- "Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy."
- The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.
- Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.
- "What's a philosopher ?" said Brutha. "Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head.
- "Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."
- "He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."
- "You're not one of us."
"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."
- Simony's eyes gleamed with the gleam of a man who had seen the future and found it covered with armour plating.
- "All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."
- When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.
- "Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place."
- "Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!"
"Yes, but perhaps he thought that you wanted it."
- The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).
- The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.
- "He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done anything with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."
- "You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."
- Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.
- "All the other prophets came back with commandments!"
"Where they get them?"
"I ... suppose they made them up."
"You get them from the same place."
- Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.
- Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.
- Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.
- You have perhaps heard the phrase that hell is other people? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. In time, he said, You will learn that this is wrong.
- "I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."
- "I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."
[edit] Lords and Ladies (1992)
- Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before.
The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus:
In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.
Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails and testicles of their father.† There are quite a lot of these. They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people. Hey, kids, which part do you think they made your town out of?
-
- † Gods like a joke as much as anyone else.
- Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.
- Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.
- Using metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu — was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.
- People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.
- 'But all them things exist,' said Nanny Ogg.
'That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.'
- 'I never said nothing,' said Nanny Ogg mildly.
'I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!'
- Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn't be bothered to make up something more interesting.
- She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
- 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.
- Dwarfs are generally scared of heights, since they don't often have the opportunity to get used to them.
- Magrat says a broomstick is one of them sexual metaphor things.†
-
- † Although this is a phallusy.
- 'It's certain death anyway,' said Ridcully. 'That's the thing about Death, certainty.'
- The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo†, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.
-
- † Cool, but not necessarily up to date
- Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meaning can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
[edit] Men at Arms (1993)
- He could think in italics. Such people need watching.
Preferably from a safe distance.
- Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding 'Your money or your life' had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on.
- The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.
- When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, 'Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!' or 'Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!'
- There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring morning.
- Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot.
He got really burned on that deal.
- Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fire ... Ever been in a burning house, miss?
- Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
- If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
[edit] Soul Music (1994)
- Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.
- The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.
- Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.
- The school encouraged fresh air, it was available in large amounts for free.
- He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal.
- Imp hesitated, as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they're told to 'say something'.
- 'We'll practise as we go along,' said Glod. 'Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.'
- Susan looked at the mess sizzling in the huge frying-pan. It wasn't a sight to be seen on an empty stomach, although it could probably cause one.
- 'You're a musician, ain't you?' said Glod. 'What do you think you do?'
'I hits 'em with de hammers,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers.
- There is something very sad about an empty dressing room. It's like a discarded pair of underpants, which it resembles in a number of respects. It's seen a lot of activity. It may even have witnessed excitement and a whole gamut of human passions. And now there's nothing much left but a faint smell.
- It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live.
- C. M. O. T. Dibbler liked to be up at first light, in case there was an opportunity to sell a worm to the early bird.
- 'We need to get it together if we're going to wow them at the Festival,' said Crash.
'What, you mean ... like ... learn to play?' said Jimbo.
'No! Music With Rocks In just happens. If you go around learning you'll never get anywhere,' said Crash.
- The thought was flooding into his mind, and not for the first time, that Mr. Clete was not playing with a full orchestra, that he was one of those people who built their own hot madness out of sane and chilly parts.
- Bee There Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng
[edit] Interesting Times (1994)
- There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times.
- Assassination was meat and drink to the Hunghung court; in fact, meat and drink were often the means.
- 'I reckon it was some kind of firework. They're very big on fireworks here.'
'You mean the sort of things where you light the blue touch paper and stick it up your nose?'†
-
- † KIDS! Only very silly wizards with bad sinus trouble do this. Sensible people go off to a roped-off enclosure where they can watch a heavily protected man, in the middle distance, light (with the aid of a very long pole) something that goes 'fsst'. And then they can shout 'Hooray'.
- 'It's just that his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses.'
'Rape?' said Rincewind. 'That's not very — '
'He's eighty-seven,' said Cohen. 'Don't go and spoil an old man's dreams.'
- Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, 'What happens if I do this?'
- 'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly.
'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!'
'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?'
Rincewind took a deep breath.
'Continuously!'
- With him here, even uncertaincy is uncertain. And I'm not sure even about that.
- What is so surprising about bacon?
'I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig.'
- 'There's a lot of waiting in warfare,' said Boy Willie.
'Ah, yes,' said Mr. Saveloy. 'I've heard people say that. They say there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.'
'Not really, said Cohen. 'It's more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.'
- When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course, if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spill just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
[edit] Maskerade (1994)
- Nanny also recalled her as being rather thoughtful and shy, as if trying to reduce the amount of world she took up.
- No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.
- Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha!
BEWARE!!!!!
Yrs sincerely
The Opera Ghost
- "What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."
- His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people.
- The kicking and punching stopped only when it became apparent that all the mob was attacking was itself. And, since the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened.
- A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... If she had anything to do with it anyway - [Granny Weatherwax commits optimism]
- It was done far more often than the audiences ever realized — when singers had a sore throat, or had completely dried, or had turned up so drunk they could barely stand, or, in one notorious instance many years previously, had died in the interval and subsequently sung their famous aria by means of a broom-handle stuck up their back and their jaw operated with a piece of string.
- People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people
- "The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case..."
- "Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. 'There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, really."
- The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.
- Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat
- He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body was being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn't so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.
- She'd even given herself a middle initial - X - which stood for "someone who has a cool and exciting middle name".
- Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows. [footnote: Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded sayings can really cause misunderstandings.]-
- "...my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings."- [Agnes tells Christine after realising she isn't listening]
- "There have been...accidents."
"What kind of accidents?"
"The kind of accidents you prefer to call...accidents."
- "But I don't believe in reincarnation!" he protested.
SQUEAK.
And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: Reincarnation believes in you.
- After you'd known Christine for any length of time, you found yourself fighting a desire to look into her ear to see if you could spot daylight coming the other way.
- No male had ever touched Agnes before, except perhaps to push her over and steal her sweets.
- The pre-luncheon drinks were going quite well, Mr Bucket thought. Everyone was making polite conversation and absolutely no one had been killed up to the present moment.
- Nanny could get a statue to cry on her shoulder and say what it really thought about pigeons.
- Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harrassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room.
- It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end.
[edit] Feet of Clay (1996)
- I am Death, not taxes. I turn up only once.
- And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.
- It is traditionally the belief of policemen that they can tell what a substance is by sniffing it and then gingerly tasting it, but this practice had ceased in the Watch ever since Constable Flint had dipped his finger into a blackmarket consignment of ammonium chloride cut with radium, said "Yes, this is definitely slab wurble wurble sclup," and had to spend three days tied to his bed until the spiders went away.
- 'You listen to me,' hissed Vimes. 'I mix with crooks and thieves and thugs all day and that doesn't worry me at all but after two minutes with you I need a bath. And if I find that damn golem I'll shake its damn hand, you hear me?'
- 'We can rebuild him,' said Carrot, hoarsely. 'We have the pottery.'
- Today is a good day for someone else to die!
- Dwarfish warcry
- 'I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom Of Life-'
'True! Let's do it!'
'However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process.'
There was silence.
'That's not fair,' said a priest, after a while. 'All anyone has to do is bake up your dust again and you'll be alive...'
There was more silence.
- The Community Co-ordinator of Equal Heights for Dwarfs was demanding that dwarfs in the Watch be allowed to carry an axe rather than the traditional sword, and should be sent to investigate only those crimes committed by tall people.
- 'There's not a lot you can say about mining. "I mine in my mine and what's mine is mine,"' said Cheery in a singsong voice.
- 'He screamed a lot, Vimes. In a heart-rending fashion, I am told. And I gather he uttered a number of threats against you, for some reason.'
'I shall try to fit him into my busy schedule, sir.'
- 'No it's not! said Constable Visit. 'Atheism is a denial of a god.'
'Therefore It Is A Religious Position,' said Dorfl. 'Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.'
- 'What are your duties?' said Vimes.
'To Serve The Public Trust, Protect The Innocent, And Seriously Prod Buttock, Sir,' said Dorfl.
- 'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.'
Dorfl rumbled as he thought about this. 'Yes,' he said eventually. 'I Can See Why. Freedom Is Like Having The Top Of Your Head Opened Up.'
'I'll have to take your word for that, Constable.'
- He hated the very idea of the world being divided into the shaved and the shavers. Or those who wore the shiny boots and those who cleaned the mud off them. Every time he saw Willikins the butler fold his, Vimes's, clothes, he suppressed a terrible urge to kick the butler's shiny backside as an affront to the dignity of man.
- It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the wrong place and guess who's back? They returned more times than raw broccoli.
- Rumor is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows — sometimes it does not need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips
- Slab: Jus' say "AarrghaarrghpleeassennononoUGH"- [Detritus' war on drugs]
- There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.
- "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk ..."
- You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.
- In all, I've had seventeen demands for your badge. Some want parts of your body attached. Why did you have to upset everybody?- Lord Vetinari reproves Vimes.
- It was Carrot who'd suggested to the Patrician that hardened criminals should be given the chance to "serve the community" by redecorating the homes of the elderly, lending a new terror to old age and, given Ankh-Morpork's crime rate, leading to at least one old lady having her front room wallpapered so many times in six months that now she could only get in sideways.
- What a mess the world was in, reflected Vimes. Constable Visit had told him that the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?
- WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN -Dorfl
[edit] Hogfather (1996)
- 'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er...why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'†
-
- † This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilisation. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.
- Downey stood up with some relief and walked over to his large drinks cabinet. His hand hovered over the Guild's ancient and valuable tantalus, with its labelled decanters of Mur, Nig, Trop and Yksihw.†
-
- † It's a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be fooled if spirits were put into decanters that were cunningly labelled backwards. And also throughout history the more politically conscious butler has taken it on trust, and with rather more justification, that his employers will not notice if the whisky is topped up with eniru.
- Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
- She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.
- 'You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
It's a sword. said the Hogfather. They're not meant to be safe.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
It's educational.
'What if she cuts herself?'
That will be an important lesson.
- 'I...think my name is Bilious. I'm the...I'm the Oh God of Hangovers.'
'There's a God of Hangovers?'
'An oh god,' he corrected. 'When people witness me, you see, they clutch their head and say "Oh God..." How many of you are standing here?'
- 'So mistletoe, in fact, symbolises mistletoe?'
'Exactly, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on.
'Funny thing, that,' said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. 'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?'
'It could be both,' said the Senior Wrangler desperately.
'And that comment,' said Ridcully, 'is either very perceptive, or very trite.'
'It might be bo — '
'Don't push it, Senior Wrangler.'
- It's the expression on their little faces I like, said the Hogfather.
'You mean the sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?'
Yes. Now that is what I call belief.
- Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge through the ages.
'Why don't we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?' he said.
And Ridcully responded with the traditional response.
'It's got to be worth a try,' he said.
- 'I remember my father tellin' me some valuable advice about drinks,' said Ridcully. 'He said, "Son, never drink any drink with a paper umbrella in it, never drink any drink with a humorous name, and never drink any drink that changes colour when the last ingredient goes in. And never, ever, do this — "'
He dipped his finger into the beaker.
- While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they're probably all on first steps.
- Many people are aware of the weak and strong anthropic principle. The weak one says, basically, that is was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the strong one says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like 'Cosmic' and 'Chaos' in the titles.†
-
- † And they are correct. The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.
- Why are your hands on bits of string, chi