Pyramids by Terry Pratchett
What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: ‘Why is it so dark in here?’ (P)
There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. (P)
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. (P)
...while assassination was probably worse than debate it was better than war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. (P)
“People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.” (P)
Djelibeybi really was a small self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of the Frog*.
*It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks. (P)
Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff. (P)
Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped. (P)
‘No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine, I think.’
‘I thought that was some sort of vegetable.’
‘I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.’
‘How dreadful,’ said Chidder cheerfully.
‘She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.’ (P)
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. (P)
He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day. (P)
“Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice …” (P)
That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did. (P)
The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got around to doing anything about it. (P)
The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into a cruet. (P)
The other legend, not normally recounted by citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so - the story runs - they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork. (P)
When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions. (P)
Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. (P)
‘A case of mortis portalis tackulum with complications.’
‘What’s that mean?’ said Chidder.
‘In laymen’s terms,’ the doctor sniffed, ‘he’s as dead as a doornail.’
‘What are the complications?’
The doctor looked shifty. ‘He’s still breathing,’ he said. (P)
‘He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er…bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight for preference.’
‘But he’s still breathing!’
‘These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,’ said the doctor airily. (P)
Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority. (P)
‘Cats are sacred,’ said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.
‘Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,’ said Teppic nursing his hand, ‘I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.’ (P)
‘You don’t expect real royalty to pay its way. That’s one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.’ (P)
At last IIa said, ‘What does “quantum” mean anyway?’
IIb shrugged. ‘It means add another nought,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said IIa, ‘is that all?’ (P)
So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. (P)
Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very familiar. He’d had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of reja vu*.
*Lit: ‘I am going to be here again.’ (P)
For more than a thousand years the kings along the Djel had, with extreme diplomacy, exquisite manners and the footwork of a centipede on adrenaline, kept the peace along the whole widdershins side of the continent. (P)
Younger assassins, who are usually very poor, have very clear ideas about the morality of wealth until they become older assassins, who are usually very rich, when they begin to take the view that injustice has its good points. (P)
We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human to be really stupid. (P)
‘The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex. I think he was a bit upset at the time.’ (P)
It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. (P)
Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they’re getting it absolutely right. (P)
Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at spotting stealthy movement. (P)
Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinction for rank or creed. (P)
… Teppic realised that the high priest was, indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain. (P)
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. (P)
The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don’t find out about it. (P)
Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something. (P)
Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up. (P)
…Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more. (P)
“He said he liked my singing too. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey.” (P)
The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying. It was much simpler with camels. (P)
Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers. (P)
‘I think he’s dimensionally maladjusted, dad. Time and space has got a bit mixed up for him. That’s why he’s moving sideways all the time.’
Ptaclusp IIb gave his father a brave little smile.
‘He always used to move sideways,’ said Ptaclusp.
His son sighed. ‘Yes, dad, he said. ‘But that was just normal. All accountants move like that.’ (P)
‘You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.’
‘What will you do if it isn’t safe?’
‘Scream.’ (P)
Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it. (P)
No-one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly. (P)
It is said that the hour brings forth the man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant hours… (P)
These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. (P)
The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one. (P)
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. (P)
A favourite trick of Ephebian gods, he recalled, was turning into some animal in order to gain the favours of highly-placed Ephebian women. And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a golden shower in pursuit of his intended. All this raised interesting questions about everyday nightlife in sophisticated Ephebe. (P)
The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practise before doing it for real. (P)
Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. (P)
‘I was being persecuted for my beliefs.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Teppic.
Khuft spat. ‘Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.’ (P)
‘You’re a criminal?’ said Teppic.
‘Well, criminal’s a dirty word, know what I mean?’ said the little ancestor. ‘I’d prefer entrepreneur.’ (P)
Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren’t much good for anything except trampling on their own troops when they inevitably panicked, so the military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants. (P)
It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along. (P)
… any creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle has a serious identity crisis and doesn’t need much to make it angry. (P)
It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to? (P)
‘People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper…’ (P)
That’s how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits. (P)
The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. (P)
…a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. (P)
Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. (P)
Just because fate throws you together doesn’t mean fate’s got it right. (P)
He’d wanted changes. It was just that he’d wanted things to stay the same, as well. (P)
It is a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole. (P)
Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable. (P)
‘But you don’t have to go! I need you!’
‘You’ve got advisers,’ said Teppic mildly.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, there’s only Koomi, and he’s no good.’
‘You’re lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers.’ (P)
‘I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.’ Screams, flames, people running for safety... (P)
There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. (P)
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. (P)
...while assassination was probably worse than debate it was better than war, which some people tended to think of as the same thing only louder. (P)
“People never learn anything in this place,” she’d said. “They only remember things.” (P)
Djelibeybi really was a small self-centred kingdom. Even its plagues were half-hearted. All self-respecting river kingdoms have vast supernatural plagues, but the best the Old Kingdom had been able to achieve in the last hundred years was the Plague of the Frog*.
*It was quite a big frog, however, and got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for weeks. (P)
Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff. (P)
Her singing always cheered him up. Life seemed so much brighter when she stopped. (P)
‘No, my father’s a pharaoh. My mother was a concubine, I think.’
‘I thought that was some sort of vegetable.’
‘I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Anyway, she died when I was young.’
‘How dreadful,’ said Chidder cheerfully.
‘She went for a moonlight swim in what turned out to be a crocodile.’ (P)
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. (P)
He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day. (P)
“Truly, the world is the mollusc of your choice …” (P)
That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did. (P)
The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got around to doing anything about it. (P)
The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into a cruet. (P)
The other legend, not normally recounted by citizens, is that at an even earlier time a group of wise men survived a flood sent by the gods by building a huge boat, and on this boat they took two of every type of animal then existing on the Disc. After some weeks the combined manure was beginning to weigh the boat low in the water so - the story runs - they tipped it over the side, and called it Ankh-Morpork. (P)
When you die, the first thing you lose is your life. The next thing is your illusions. (P)
Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. (P)
‘A case of mortis portalis tackulum with complications.’
‘What’s that mean?’ said Chidder.
‘In laymen’s terms,’ the doctor sniffed, ‘he’s as dead as a doornail.’
‘What are the complications?’
The doctor looked shifty. ‘He’s still breathing,’ he said. (P)
‘He’s dead. All the medical tests prove it. So, er…bury him, keep him nice and cool, and tell him to come and see me next week. In daylight for preference.’
‘But he’s still breathing!’
‘These are just reflex actions that might easily confuse the layman,’ said the doctor airily. (P)
Look after the dead, said the priests, and the dead would look after you. After all, they were in the majority. (P)
‘Cats are sacred,’ said Dios, shocked at the words Teppic uttered.
‘Long-legged cats with silver fur and disdainful expressions are, maybe,’ said Teppic nursing his hand, ‘I don’t know about this sort. I’m sure sacred cats don’t leave dead ibises under the bed. And I’m certain that sacred cats that live surrounded by endless sand don’t come indoors and do it in the king’s sandals, Dios.’ (P)
‘You don’t expect real royalty to pay its way. That’s one of the signs of real royalty, not having any money.’ (P)
At last IIa said, ‘What does “quantum” mean anyway?’
IIb shrugged. ‘It means add another nought,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said IIa, ‘is that all?’ (P)
So much for time flowing past, he thought glumly. It might do that everywhere else, but not here. Here it just piles up, like snow. (P)
Ptaclusp hesitated. This all seemed very familiar. He’d had this feeling before. An overwhelming sensation of reja vu*.
*Lit: ‘I am going to be here again.’ (P)
For more than a thousand years the kings along the Djel had, with extreme diplomacy, exquisite manners and the footwork of a centipede on adrenaline, kept the peace along the whole widdershins side of the continent. (P)
Younger assassins, who are usually very poor, have very clear ideas about the morality of wealth until they become older assassins, who are usually very rich, when they begin to take the view that injustice has its good points. (P)
We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human to be really stupid. (P)
‘The old king told me once that the gods gave people a sense of humour to make up for giving them sex. I think he was a bit upset at the time.’ (P)
It’s a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such thing as a good Grand Vizier. (P)
Throughout the history of the Disc most high priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they’re getting it absolutely right. (P)
Teppic had learned how not to move stealthily. Millions of years of being eaten by creatures that know how to move stealthily has made humanity very good at spotting stealthy movement. (P)
Camels have a very democratic approach to the human race. They hate every member of it, without making any distinction for rank or creed. (P)
… Teppic realised that the high priest was, indeed, truly mad. It was the rare kind of madness caused by being yourself for so long that habits of sanity have etched themselves into the brain. (P)
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. (P)
The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronised rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don’t find out about it. (P)
Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something. (P)
Camels gallop by throwing their feet as far away from them as possible and then running to keep up. (P)
…Dil was realising that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more. (P)
“He said he liked my singing too. Everyone else said it sounded like a flock of vultures who’ve just found a dead donkey.” (P)
The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying. It was much simpler with camels. (P)
Lack of fingers was another big spur to the development of camel intellect. Human mathematical development had always been held back by everyone’s instinctive tendency, when faced with something really complex in the way of triform polynomials or parametric differentials, to count fingers. Camels started from the word go by counting numbers. (P)
‘I think he’s dimensionally maladjusted, dad. Time and space has got a bit mixed up for him. That’s why he’s moving sideways all the time.’
Ptaclusp IIb gave his father a brave little smile.
‘He always used to move sideways,’ said Ptaclusp.
His son sighed. ‘Yes, dad, he said. ‘But that was just normal. All accountants move like that.’ (P)
‘You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.’
‘What will you do if it isn’t safe?’
‘Scream.’ (P)
Fast was a word particularly associated with tortoises because they were not it. (P)
No-one is more worried by the actual physical manifestation of a god than his priests; it’s like having the auditors in unexpectedly. (P)
It is said that the hour brings forth the man. He was the kind of man that is brought forth by devious and unpleasant hours… (P)
These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. (P)
The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn’t climb out of one. (P)
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. (P)
A favourite trick of Ephebian gods, he recalled, was turning into some animal in order to gain the favours of highly-placed Ephebian women. And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a golden shower in pursuit of his intended. All this raised interesting questions about everyday nightlife in sophisticated Ephebe. (P)
The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practise before doing it for real. (P)
Ptraci didn’t just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap. (P)
‘I was being persecuted for my beliefs.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Teppic.
Khuft spat. ‘Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.’ (P)
‘You’re a criminal?’ said Teppic.
‘Well, criminal’s a dirty word, know what I mean?’ said the little ancestor. ‘I’d prefer entrepreneur.’ (P)
Battle elephants were the fashion lately. They weren’t much good for anything except trampling on their own troops when they inevitably panicked, so the military minds on both sides had responded by breeding bigger elephants. (P)
It is now known to science that there are many more dimensions than the classical four. Scientists say that these don’t normally impinge on the world because the extra dimensions are very small and curve in on themselves, and that since reality is fractal most of it is tucked inside itself. This means either that the universe is more full of wonders than we can hope to understand or, more probably, that scientists make things up as they go along. (P)
… any creature created with the body of a lion, bosom of a woman and wings of an eagle has a serious identity crisis and doesn’t need much to make it angry. (P)
It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to? (P)
‘People always come back from the dead in such a bad temper…’ (P)
That’s how we survive infinity - we kill it by breaking it up into small bits. (P)
The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. (P)
…a flame that might have turned any watchers not just into a pillar of salt but into a complete condiment set of their choice. (P)
Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with. (P)
Just because fate throws you together doesn’t mean fate’s got it right. (P)
He’d wanted changes. It was just that he’d wanted things to stay the same, as well. (P)
It is a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You may as well drop meringues into a black hole. (P)
Dimensions were probably more complicated than people thought. Probably so was time. Probably so were people, although people could be more predictable. (P)
‘But you don’t have to go! I need you!’
‘You’ve got advisers,’ said Teppic mildly.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, there’s only Koomi, and he’s no good.’
‘You’re lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers.’ (P)
‘I knew the two of you would get along like a house on fire.’ Screams, flames, people running for safety... (P)
