Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
People don’t live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls. Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads. (LC)
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of ‘true’. (LC)
We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question ‘Where else should we be?’ It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, ‘Damn, are you lot still here?’ (LC)
Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. (LC)
‘I don’t think I’m related to any apes,’ said the Senior Wrangler thoughtfully. ‘I mean, I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’d get invited to their weddings and so on. My parents would have said something like, “Don’t worry about Uncle Charlie, he’s supposed to smell like that,” wouldn’t they?’ (LC)
Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it. (LC)
Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day? (LC)
The hypothesis behind invisible writings was laughably complicated. All books are tenuously connected through L-space and, therefore, the content of any book ever written or yet to be written may, in the right circumstances, be deduced from a sufficiently close study of books already in existence. Future books exist in potentia, as it were, in the same way that a sufficiently detailed study of a handful of primal ooze will eventually hint at the future existence of prawn crackers. (LC)
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along.
* In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. (LC)
Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herrod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.
His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled ‘Me, who does the telling’ and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled ‘Everyone else.’
Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. (LC)
‘Be what?’
‘Pro-active, I think. It’s a word he’s using a lot.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well…in favour of activity, I suppose.’
‘Really? Dangerous. In my experience, inactivity sees you through.’ (LC)
Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There’s no point in wondering what it was. Don’t go digging things up in case they won’t let you bury them again. (LC)
He was spending more nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (LC)
Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. (LC)
Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening the door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. (LC)
Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre. (LC)
…the Unseen University Library was a magical library, built on a very thin patch of space-time. There were books on distant shelves that hadn’t been written yet, books that never would be written. At least, not here. It had a circumference of a few hundred yards, but there was no known limit to its radius. (LC)
‘But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?’
‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely. (LC)
Ridcully felt there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. (LC)
Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them in Ridcully's head. (LC)
Logic is a wonderful thing but it doesn’t always beat actual thought. (LC)
‘Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘It’s against reason. What’s in it for them?’
‘So how do you explain fossils, then?’ said Ponder.
‘Ah, you see, I don’t,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. ‘It saves so much trouble in the long run.’ (LC)
Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon – he’d run them all. (LC)
‘One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself,’ said the Dean. ‘Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it just disappeared. So old Chancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it.’
‘Very sensible idea,’ said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful.
‘We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.’ (LC)
‘…when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.’ (LC)
Rincewind woke with a scream, to get it over with. (LC)
Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot. (LC)
It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Caper). (LC)
A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes. (LC)
The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame. (LC)
He was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all. (LC)
There are many reasons for being friends with someone. The fact that he’s pointing a deadly weapon at you is among the top four. (LC)
‘All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards’. (LC)
The architecture was what is known professionally as 'vernacular', a word used in another field to mean 'swearing' and this was quite appropriate. (LC)
Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity. (LC)
And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts. (LC)
‘I’ll have a pint of Chardonnay, please.’
‘You takin’ the piss?’
‘No, I’d like to leave it here-’ (LC)
Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up. (LC)
‘Haven’t you ever noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?’
‘Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that too,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.’
‘Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.’
‘Yes, but it’s the important one.’ (LC)
‘Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!’
‘Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,’ said Ridcully. (LC)
'I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mould.' (LC)
He was aware that he had their full attention, something that wizards did not often give. Usually they defined 'listening' as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. It was disconcerting. (LC)
‘I think maybe I’d better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate.’
‘What’s the cure?’
‘More beer.’ (LC)
... there is something hugely unlovable about sheep, a kind of mad, eye-rolling brainlessness smelling of damp wool and panic. Many religions extol the virtues of the meek, but Rincewind had never trusted them. The meek could turn very nasty at times. (LC)
It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just ... made things better. A shark’s got your leg? No worries. You’ve been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You’re dead? She’ll be all right! No worries! (LC)
A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow’s head. She’d decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way. (LC)
And they acted like savages*.
* Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia. (LC)
When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful democrats-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worries about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'.
It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard. (LC)
The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did. (LC)
Wizards, when faced with danger, would immediately stop and argue amongst themselves about exactly what kind of danger it was. By the time everyone in the party understood, either it had become the sort of danger where your options are so very, very clear that you instantly take of them or die, or it had got bored and gone away. Even danger has its pride. (LC)
Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he’d ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten. (LC)
'Intelligence is like legs - too many and you trip yourself up.' (LC)
‘Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy,’ said the god.
‘Oh, they don’t laugh,’ said Ponder gloomily. ‘They say things like, “you call that dangerous? It’s not a patch on the kind of danger you used to get when we were lads, eh, Senior Wrangler, what what?’ (LC)
In Mrs Whitlow's book, gods were socially very acceptable, at least if they had proper human heads and wore clothes ... (LC)
‘The only thing I think I don’t quite understand,’ he said, " is why any creature would want to spend time on all this...’he peered at his notes, ‘this sex, when they could be enjoying themselves ...’ (LC)
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer. (LC)
Now he remembered, with a shudder, some of the great wheezes he’d had on similar occasions. Spaghetti and custard, that’d been a good one. Deep-fried peas, that’d been another triumph. And then there’d been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he’d run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn’t it? The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always has some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday. (LC)
They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn’t got much that’s crackable. (LC)
Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the term means is that dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. (LC)
‘Got any requests for your last breakfast?’
‘Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?’ said Rincewind. (LC)
‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?’
YES.
‘Ghastly thought, really.’ Rincewind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’. (LC)
There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. (LC)
‘We’ll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.’
‘Among wizards?’ said Ridcully. ‘Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.’
‘People acting out of character, then!’ Ponder shouted. ‘Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps!’ (LC)
…it’s the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr Spock’s ears falling off. (LC)
…the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it offered him another brandy. (LC)
Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'. (LC)
... the traditions of the Dibbler clan would never let a mere disastrous fact get in the way of a spiel. (LC)
There is such thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato sauce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish ‘n’ chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can’t use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don’t apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It’s just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort, and seek it out. It’s as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book.
Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza. (LC)
The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time. (LC)
…one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.*
*This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell’s Angels. (LC)
‘So now we know,’ said Archchancellor Rincewind. ‘We’ve got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler’s pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage.’
‘That’s a very narrow range we’ve got there,’ said the Dean. (LC)
The ability to ask questions like ‘Where am I and who is the “I” that is asking?’ is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.*
*Although of course it’s not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations. (LC)
‘Want to stay on here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference.’
‘Did he? What did he say?’
‘He said if I could get you to do any work for me I’d be lucky’, said Bill. (LC)
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of ‘true’. (LC)
We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question ‘Where else should we be?’ It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, ‘Damn, are you lot still here?’ (LC)
Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. (LC)
‘I don’t think I’m related to any apes,’ said the Senior Wrangler thoughtfully. ‘I mean, I’d know, wouldn’t I? I’d get invited to their weddings and so on. My parents would have said something like, “Don’t worry about Uncle Charlie, he’s supposed to smell like that,” wouldn’t they?’ (LC)
Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it. (LC)
Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day? (LC)
The hypothesis behind invisible writings was laughably complicated. All books are tenuously connected through L-space and, therefore, the content of any book ever written or yet to be written may, in the right circumstances, be deduced from a sufficiently close study of books already in existence. Future books exist in potentia, as it were, in the same way that a sufficiently detailed study of a handful of primal ooze will eventually hint at the future existence of prawn crackers. (LC)
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along.
* In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. (LC)
Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herrod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.
His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled ‘Me, who does the telling’ and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled ‘Everyone else.’
Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. (LC)
‘Be what?’
‘Pro-active, I think. It’s a word he’s using a lot.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well…in favour of activity, I suppose.’
‘Really? Dangerous. In my experience, inactivity sees you through.’ (LC)
Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There’s no point in wondering what it was. Don’t go digging things up in case they won’t let you bury them again. (LC)
He was spending more nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (LC)
Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. (LC)
Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening the door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. (LC)
Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre. (LC)
…the Unseen University Library was a magical library, built on a very thin patch of space-time. There were books on distant shelves that hadn’t been written yet, books that never would be written. At least, not here. It had a circumference of a few hundred yards, but there was no known limit to its radius. (LC)
‘But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?’
‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely. (LC)
Ridcully felt there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. (LC)
Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them in Ridcully's head. (LC)
Logic is a wonderful thing but it doesn’t always beat actual thought. (LC)
‘Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘It’s against reason. What’s in it for them?’
‘So how do you explain fossils, then?’ said Ponder.
‘Ah, you see, I don’t,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. ‘It saves so much trouble in the long run.’ (LC)
Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Metres, the Mile, the Marathon – he’d run them all. (LC)
‘One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself,’ said the Dean. ‘Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it just disappeared. So old Chancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it.’
‘Very sensible idea,’ said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful.
‘We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.’ (LC)
‘…when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.’ (LC)
Rincewind woke with a scream, to get it over with. (LC)
Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot. (LC)
It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they’ve always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases, even The Mu Kau Pi Caper). (LC)
A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes. (LC)
The wizards were civilized men of considerable education and culture. When faced with being inadvertently marooned on a desert island they understood immediately that the first thing to do was place the blame. (LC)
He was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all. (LC)
There are many reasons for being friends with someone. The fact that he’s pointing a deadly weapon at you is among the top four. (LC)
‘All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards’. (LC)
The architecture was what is known professionally as 'vernacular', a word used in another field to mean 'swearing' and this was quite appropriate. (LC)
Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity. (LC)
And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts. (LC)
‘I’ll have a pint of Chardonnay, please.’
‘You takin’ the piss?’
‘No, I’d like to leave it here-’ (LC)
Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up. (LC)
‘Haven’t you ever noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?’
‘Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that too,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.’
‘Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.’
‘Yes, but it’s the important one.’ (LC)
‘Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!’
‘Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,’ said Ridcully. (LC)
'I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mould.' (LC)
He was aware that he had their full attention, something that wizards did not often give. Usually they defined 'listening' as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. It was disconcerting. (LC)
‘I think maybe I’d better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate.’
‘What’s the cure?’
‘More beer.’ (LC)
... there is something hugely unlovable about sheep, a kind of mad, eye-rolling brainlessness smelling of damp wool and panic. Many religions extol the virtues of the meek, but Rincewind had never trusted them. The meek could turn very nasty at times. (LC)
It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just ... made things better. A shark’s got your leg? No worries. You’ve been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You’re dead? She’ll be all right! No worries! (LC)
A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow’s head. She’d decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way. (LC)
And they acted like savages*.
* Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia. (LC)
When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful democrats-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worries about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'.
It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard. (LC)
The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did. (LC)
Wizards, when faced with danger, would immediately stop and argue amongst themselves about exactly what kind of danger it was. By the time everyone in the party understood, either it had become the sort of danger where your options are so very, very clear that you instantly take of them or die, or it had got bored and gone away. Even danger has its pride. (LC)
Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he’d ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten. (LC)
'Intelligence is like legs - too many and you trip yourself up.' (LC)
‘Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy,’ said the god.
‘Oh, they don’t laugh,’ said Ponder gloomily. ‘They say things like, “you call that dangerous? It’s not a patch on the kind of danger you used to get when we were lads, eh, Senior Wrangler, what what?’ (LC)
In Mrs Whitlow's book, gods were socially very acceptable, at least if they had proper human heads and wore clothes ... (LC)
‘The only thing I think I don’t quite understand,’ he said, " is why any creature would want to spend time on all this...’he peered at his notes, ‘this sex, when they could be enjoying themselves ...’ (LC)
A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re travelling through beer. (LC)
Now he remembered, with a shudder, some of the great wheezes he’d had on similar occasions. Spaghetti and custard, that’d been a good one. Deep-fried peas, that’d been another triumph. And then there’d been the time when it had seemed a really good idea to eat some flour and yeast and then drink some warm water, because he’d run out of bread and after all that was what the stomach saw, wasn’t it? The thing about late-night cookery was that it made sense at the time. It always has some logic behind it. It just wasn’t the kind of logic you’d use around midday. (LC)
They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn’t got much that’s crackable. (LC)
Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the term means is that dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than eat it. (LC)
‘Got any requests for your last breakfast?’
‘Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?’ said Rincewind. (LC)
‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?’
YES.
‘Ghastly thought, really.’ Rincewind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’. (LC)
There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. (LC)
‘We’ll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.’
‘Among wizards?’ said Ridcully. ‘Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.’
‘People acting out of character, then!’ Ponder shouted. ‘Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps!’ (LC)
…it’s the view of the more thoughtful historians, particularly those who have spent time in the same bar as the theoretical physicists, that the entirety of human history can be considered as a sort of blooper reel. All those wars, all those famines caused by malign stupidity, all that determined, mindless repetition of the same old errors, are in the great cosmic scheme of things only equivalent to Mr Spock’s ears falling off. (LC)
…the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it offered him another brandy. (LC)
Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'. (LC)
... the traditions of the Dibbler clan would never let a mere disastrous fact get in the way of a spiel. (LC)
There is such thing as an edible, nay delicious, meat pie floater, its mushy peas of just the right consistency, its tomato sauce piquant in its cheekiness, its pie filling tending even towards named parts of the animal. There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish ‘n’ chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can’t use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don’t apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It’s just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort, and seek it out. It’s as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book.
Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza. (LC)
The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time. (LC)
…one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.*
*This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell’s Angels. (LC)
‘So now we know,’ said Archchancellor Rincewind. ‘We’ve got to keep you just drunk enough so that Dibbler’s pies sound tasty, but not so drunk that it causes lasting brain damage.’
‘That’s a very narrow range we’ve got there,’ said the Dean. (LC)
The ability to ask questions like ‘Where am I and who is the “I” that is asking?’ is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.*
*Although of course it’s not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations. (LC)
‘Want to stay on here? I had a word with your Dean. He gave you a bloody good reference.’
‘Did he? What did he say?’
‘He said if I could get you to do any work for me I’d be lucky’, said Bill. (LC)