Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. (H)
Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those cuts who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life. (H)
In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practiced the ultimate democracy. You didn’t need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people. (H)
It’s a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally 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. (H)
Assassins were never employed. They were engaged, or retained or commissioned, but never employed. Only servants were employed. (H)
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.
Mister Teatime enjoyed himself too much. And other people, also. (H)
Like many people with no actual morals, Lord Downey did have standards…. (H)
There was considerable satisfaction in a clean kill. What there wasn't supposed to be was pleasure in a messy one. (H)
‘Real children don’t go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.’ (H)
The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. (H)
There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it. (H)
Education had been easy.
Learning things had been harder.
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. (H)
‘...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, 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 just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.’ (H)
‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach ... and wherever people are inanely credulous, thematically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’ (H)
‘Sit down, will you? Assassin’s are always late. ‘cos of style, right?’
‘This one’s mental.’
‘Eccentric.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘A bag of cash.’ (H)
He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. (H)
... he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. (H)
... life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can't, this takes a little longer. (H)
… the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, ‘Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?’ When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, ‘We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts …’ (H)
'... we're not going to be intimated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure ...' (H)
Everyone in Biers drank alone, even when they were in groups. (H)
… most pixies and gnomes weren’t the least interested in dressing up in little pointy hats with bells on when there were other far more interesting things to do. All that tinkly-wee stuff was for the old folks back home in the forest – when a tiny man hit Ankh-Morpork he preferred to get drunk, kick some serious ankle and search for tiny women. (H)
‘Well, the night is young,’ said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.
THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD.
The pigs galloped on. Then, ‘No, it ain’t.’
I’M SORRY?
‘The night isn’t any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.’
YES, BUT IT’S MORE DRAMATIC.
‘Oh. Right, then.’ (H)
...one of the symptoms of those going completely yoyo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who’d mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box. (H)
Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat. (H)
A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was, or where he was, but not both. (H)
The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn’t among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn’t do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain. (H)
Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it 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.
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. (H)
‘Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff,’ said Ridcully, still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest.
‘Oh, it’s largely intuitive, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though.’ (H)
‘Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’
‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’
‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.’ (H)
'That's the thing about gods. They'll always find a way to, you know ... hang on.' (H)
‘They always give me bath salts,’ complained Nobby. ‘And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can’t think why, ‘cos it’s not as if I hardly every has a bath. You’d think they’d take the hint, wouldn’t you?’ (H)
‘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?’ (H)
The senior wizards gathered round, ready to help those less fortunate than themselves remain that way. (H)
'Willow bark,' said the Bursar.
'That's a good idea,' said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. 'It's an analgesic.'
'Really? Well, possibly, though it's probably better to give it to him by mouth,' said Ridcully. (H)
‘How do we usually test stuff?’
‘Generally we ask for student volunteers,’ said the Dean.
‘What happens if we don’t get any?’ ‘We give it to them anyway.’
‘Isn’t that a bit unethical?’
‘Not if we don’t tell them, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah, good point.’ (H)
Good and bad were, to Nobby’s way of thinking, entirely relative terms. Most of his relatives, for example, were criminals. (H)
‘I am not losing my hair!’ snapped the Dean. ‘It is just very finely spaced.’
‘Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes.
‘No sense in bein’ bashful about goin’ bald, said Ridcully evenly. ‘Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.’
‘Yes, they say, “Look at him, he’s got no hair,”’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. (H)
The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps. (H)
I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY, said Death.
‘Ah, well, yes, you see, one of the things that makes folks even more jolly is knowing there’re people who ain’t,’ said Albert, in a matter-of-fact voice. (H)
Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. (H)
Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists. (H)
‘Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.’ (H)
Humans Are Not Always Wrong. (H)
... people like Ridcully are never, ever embarrassed about anything, although often people are embarrassed on their behalf. (H)
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated 'proper financial control' with the counting of paperclips. (H)
Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all local evidence ... (H)
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head. (H)
Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people ... (H)
‘Charity ain’t giving people what you wants to give, It’s giving people what they need to get.’ (H)
IT IS ... UNFAIR.
‘That’s life, master.’
BUT I’M NOT.
‘I meant this is how it’s supposed to go, master,’ said Albert.
NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES. (H)
‘I’ve worked out,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ‘that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents-’
‘Oh, everyone is,’ said the Chair. ‘You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the paper is cleared away is one slipper that’s the wrong colour and a book about earwax.’ (H)
The wizards shuddered. They weren’t against the outdoors, it was simply their place in it they objected to. (H)
One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of ‘fellowship and good cheer’ as if it were something that can be applied to life like a poultice. Turn your back for a moment and they may well organize a Maypole dance and, frankly, there’s no option then but to try and make it to the treeline. (H)
Goodwill to all men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn’t met Foul Ole Ron. (H)
IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT.
‘No, master, it’s just a lot more expensive.’ (H)
IT WASN’T STEALING. IT WAS JUST ... REDISTRIBUTION. IT WILL BE A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD.
‘No, it won’t!’
THEN IT WILL BE A NAUGHTY DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD AND WILL PASS COMPLETELY UNNOTICED. (H)
This isn’t food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they’d stay at home, isn’t that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn’t cookery, Bill. This is cuisine.’ (H)
Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound.
Always provided, of course, you couldn’t hear the actual words. (H)
‘He seemed very cheerful, anyway.’
‘It’s the dried frog pills, he eats them by the handful,’ said the Senior Wrangler dismissively. ‘I say, why don’t -’
‘Oh dear. I hope they’re not addictive.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t keep on eating them if they were addictive,’ said the Senior Wrangler. (H)
‘He’s had a near-death experience!’
‘We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly. (H)
IT IS THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE WHICH MAKE YOU HUMAN. GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS, IT’S ALL THE SAME. (H)
MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF. (H)
IT GETS UNDERYOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT’S A HABIT THAT’S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU’LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER. (H)
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little -’
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
‘So we can believe the big ones?’
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. (H)
… TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
‘Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point -’
MY POINT EXACTLY. (H)
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? (H)
THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR ANOTHER LAST MINUTE. (H)
The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars’ Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away. (H)
Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those cuts who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life. (H)
In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practiced the ultimate democracy. You didn’t need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people. (H)
It’s a sad and terrible thing that high-born folk really have thought that the servants would be totally 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. (H)
Assassins were never employed. They were engaged, or retained or commissioned, but never employed. Only servants were employed. (H)
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.
Mister Teatime enjoyed himself too much. And other people, also. (H)
Like many people with no actual morals, Lord Downey did have standards…. (H)
There was considerable satisfaction in a clean kill. What there wasn't supposed to be was pleasure in a messy one. (H)
‘Real children don’t go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.’ (H)
The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed. (H)
There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it. (H)
Education had been easy.
Learning things had been harder.
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. (H)
‘...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, 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 just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.’ (H)
‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd ... and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach ... and wherever people are inanely credulous, thematically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering ... yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’ (H)
‘Sit down, will you? Assassin’s are always late. ‘cos of style, right?’
‘This one’s mental.’
‘Eccentric.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘A bag of cash.’ (H)
He was known to Ankh-Morpork's professional underclass as a thoughtful, patient man, and considered something of an intellectual because some of his tattoos were spelled right. (H)
... he was honest, because good criminals have to be honest. (H)
... life lives everywhere that life can. Where life can't, this takes a little longer. (H)
… the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, ‘Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?’ When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, ‘We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts …’ (H)
'... we're not going to be intimated by the certain prospect of complete and utter failure ...' (H)
Everyone in Biers drank alone, even when they were in groups. (H)
… most pixies and gnomes weren’t the least interested in dressing up in little pointy hats with bells on when there were other far more interesting things to do. All that tinkly-wee stuff was for the old folks back home in the forest – when a tiny man hit Ankh-Morpork he preferred to get drunk, kick some serious ankle and search for tiny women. (H)
‘Well, the night is young,’ said Albert, sitting back in the sacks.
THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD.
The pigs galloped on. Then, ‘No, it ain’t.’
I’M SORRY?
‘The night isn’t any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.’
YES, BUT IT’S MORE DRAMATIC.
‘Oh. Right, then.’ (H)
...one of the symptoms of those going completely yoyo was that they broke out in chronic cats. Usually cats who’d mastered every detail of feline existence except the whereabouts of the dirt box. (H)
Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat. (H)
A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was, or where he was, but not both. (H)
The late (or at least severely delayed) Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was generally recognized as the worst inventor in the world, yet in a very specialized sense. Merely bad inventors made things that failed to operate. He wasn’t among these small fry. Any fool could make something that did absolutely nothing when you pressed the button. He scorned such fumble-fingered amateurs. Everything he built worked. It just didn’t do what it said on the box. If you wanted a small ground-to-air missile, you asked Johnson to design an ornamental fountain. (H)
Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it 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.
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. (H)
‘Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff,’ said Ridcully, still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest.
‘Oh, it’s largely intuitive, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though.’ (H)
‘Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’
‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’
‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.’ (H)
'That's the thing about gods. They'll always find a way to, you know ... hang on.' (H)
‘They always give me bath salts,’ complained Nobby. ‘And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can’t think why, ‘cos it’s not as if I hardly every has a bath. You’d think they’d take the hint, wouldn’t you?’ (H)
‘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?’ (H)
The senior wizards gathered round, ready to help those less fortunate than themselves remain that way. (H)
'Willow bark,' said the Bursar.
'That's a good idea,' said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. 'It's an analgesic.'
'Really? Well, possibly, though it's probably better to give it to him by mouth,' said Ridcully. (H)
‘How do we usually test stuff?’
‘Generally we ask for student volunteers,’ said the Dean.
‘What happens if we don’t get any?’ ‘We give it to them anyway.’
‘Isn’t that a bit unethical?’
‘Not if we don’t tell them, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah, good point.’ (H)
Good and bad were, to Nobby’s way of thinking, entirely relative terms. Most of his relatives, for example, were criminals. (H)
‘I am not losing my hair!’ snapped the Dean. ‘It is just very finely spaced.’
‘Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes.
‘No sense in bein’ bashful about goin’ bald, said Ridcully evenly. ‘Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.’
‘Yes, they say, “Look at him, he’s got no hair,”’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. (H)
The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps. (H)
I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY, said Death.
‘Ah, well, yes, you see, one of the things that makes folks even more jolly is knowing there’re people who ain’t,’ said Albert, in a matter-of-fact voice. (H)
Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. (H)
Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists. (H)
‘Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.’ (H)
Humans Are Not Always Wrong. (H)
... people like Ridcully are never, ever embarrassed about anything, although often people are embarrassed on their behalf. (H)
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated 'proper financial control' with the counting of paperclips. (H)
Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all local evidence ... (H)
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head. (H)
Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people ... (H)
‘Charity ain’t giving people what you wants to give, It’s giving people what they need to get.’ (H)
IT IS ... UNFAIR.
‘That’s life, master.’
BUT I’M NOT.
‘I meant this is how it’s supposed to go, master,’ said Albert.
NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES. (H)
‘I’ve worked out,’ said the Senior Wrangler, ‘that over the years I have been a net exporter of Hogswatch presents-’
‘Oh, everyone is,’ said the Chair. ‘You spend a fortune on other people and what you get when all the paper is cleared away is one slipper that’s the wrong colour and a book about earwax.’ (H)
The wizards shuddered. They weren’t against the outdoors, it was simply their place in it they objected to. (H)
One should always be wary of people who talk unashamedly of ‘fellowship and good cheer’ as if it were something that can be applied to life like a poultice. Turn your back for a moment and they may well organize a Maypole dance and, frankly, there’s no option then but to try and make it to the treeline. (H)
Goodwill to all men was a phrase coined by someone who hadn’t met Foul Ole Ron. (H)
IT IS BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE, ALBERT.
‘No, master, it’s just a lot more expensive.’ (H)
IT WASN’T STEALING. IT WAS JUST ... REDISTRIBUTION. IT WILL BE A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD.
‘No, it won’t!’
THEN IT WILL BE A NAUGHTY DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD AND WILL PASS COMPLETELY UNNOTICED. (H)
This isn’t food. No one expects it to be food. If people wanted food they’d stay at home, isn’t that so? They come here for ambience. For the experience. This isn’t cookery, Bill. This is cuisine.’ (H)
Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound.
Always provided, of course, you couldn’t hear the actual words. (H)
‘He seemed very cheerful, anyway.’
‘It’s the dried frog pills, he eats them by the handful,’ said the Senior Wrangler dismissively. ‘I say, why don’t -’
‘Oh dear. I hope they’re not addictive.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t keep on eating them if they were addictive,’ said the Senior Wrangler. (H)
‘He’s had a near-death experience!’
‘We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly. (H)
IT IS THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE WHICH MAKE YOU HUMAN. GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS, IT’S ALL THE SAME. (H)
MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF. (H)
IT GETS UNDERYOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT’S A HABIT THAT’S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU’LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER. (H)
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little -’
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
‘So we can believe the big ones?’
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. (H)
… TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
‘Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point -’
MY POINT EXACTLY. (H)
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? (H)
THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR ANOTHER LAST MINUTE. (H)
The beggars, despite being too disreputable even to belong to the Beggars’ Guild, lived quite well by their own low standards. This was generally by careful application of the Certainty Principle. People would give them all sorts of things if they were certain to go away. (H)
