The Troll’s Head was a cesspit of a different colour. Its customers, if they reformed, tidied themselves up and generally improved their image out of all recognition might, just might, aspire to be considered the utter dregs of humanity. And in the Shades, a dreg is a dreg. (S)
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Down these mean streets a man must go, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run. (S)
He opened his eyes. The girl was wearing a demure white lace dress with fetching puffed sleeves. He opened his mouth. He realised with absolute clarity that up until now the trouble he had been in was simple, modest and nothing he couldn’t talk his way out of given a decent chance or, failing that, a running start. (S
‘You’re safe now.’
‘What, you mean I’m all alone with a female homicidal maniac?’ said Rincewind. ‘Fine.’ (S) The Patrician’s personal guard was not known for its responsive approach to community policing, preferring to cut bits off instead. Among the things they took a dim view of was, well, basically, people being in the same universe. (S)
‘Sorry. I don’t know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands at the claws of exotic monsters isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, and couldn’t get the hang of it. Each to their own, that’s what I say, and I was cut out for boredom.’ (S)
It takes more than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a wizard off his food. (S)
… ‘to call his understanding of magic theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice.’ (S)
YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said.
That’s what being alive is all about. (S) THERE ARE PLACES WHERE EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO. (S)
… senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners. (S)
‘Death doesn’t frighten me. It’s what comes after.’ (M)
‘Obviously we shouldn’t get married if only for the sake of the children.’ (M)
He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower. (M)
‘You’re a lot luckier than most dead people, if you look at it objectively,’ he said. ‘You’re alive to enjoy it.’ (M)
She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t really worth the effort. (M)
He’d never plucked up the courage to try Albert’s porridge, which led a private life of its own in the depths of its saucepan and ate spoons. (M)
… she made it clear that the only difference between Mort and a dead toad was the colour. (M)
… Mort’s innate honesty will never make him a poet; if Mort ever compared a girl to a summer’s day it would have been followed by a thoughtful explanation of what day he had in mind and whether it was raining at the time. (M)
There had been a sound like someone making no noise at all. Forget peas and mattresses – sheer natural selection had established over the years that the royal families that survived the longest were those whose members could distinguish an assassin in the dark by the noise he was clever enough not to make …. (M)
… although it was a complicated recipe one taste had been enough to know that it was made out of fish entrails marinated for several years in a vat of shark bile. (M)
THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THE WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. (M)
Mort had never heard the phrase “Pre-Raphaelite”, which was a pity because it would have been almost the right description. However, such girls tend to be on the translucent, consumptive side, whereas this one had a slight suggestion of too much chocolate. (M)
He had a cold certainty that while of course no one could possibly blame him for all this, everybody would. (ER)
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The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
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