Rincewind growled. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was people who were fearless in the face of death. It seemed to strike at something absolutely fundamental in him. (E)
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He could shout ‘help!’ in fourteen languages and scream for mercy in a further twelve. He had passed through many countries on the Disc, some of them at high speed, and during the long, lovely, boringhours when he’d worked in the Library he’d whiled away the time by reading up on all the exotic and faraway places he’d never visited. He remembered that at the time he’d sighed with relief that he’d never have to visit them. (E)
Pre-eminent amongst Rincewind’s talents was his skill in running away, which over the years he had elevated to the status of a genuinely pure science; it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was
flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be. (E) Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one’s nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. (GG)
'You stay here. I’ll whistle if it’s safe to follow me.’
‘What will you do if it isn’t safe?’ ‘Scream.' (P) Magrat peered around timidly. Here and there on the moor were huge standing stones, their origins lost in time, which were said to lead mobile and private lives of their own. She shivered.
‘What’s to be afraid of?’ she managed. ‘Us,’ said Granny Weatherwax, smugly. (WS) 'I'm not going to ride on a magic carpet!’ he hissed. ‘I’m afraid of grounds!’
‘You mean heights,’ said Conina. ‘And stop being silly.’ ‘I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you.' (S) It wasn’t blood in general he couldn’t stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting. (S)
'This is a robe,’ said Rincewind quickly. ‘And you’d better watch out, because I’m a wizard.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Lay a finger on me, and you’ll make me wish you hadn’t. I warn you.' (S)
'City people are always worried about the future, it comes from eating unnatural food.' (ER)
'Who’s the fat girl on now? Got a backside on her like a bowling ball on a short seesaw.' (SLF)
Goodbye,’Mort said, and was surprised to find a lump in his throat. ‘It’s such an unpleasant word, isn’t it?’
QUITE SO. Death grinned because, as has so often been remarked, he didn’t have much option. But possibly he meant it, this time. I PREFER AU REVOIR, he said. (M) Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wowhawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons clamped to the pole, doze off peacefully upside down.
Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot. (CJ) Hodgesaargh didn’t much mind who ran the castle. For hundreds of years the falconers had simply got on with the important things, like falconry, which needed a lot of training, and left the kinging to amateurs. (CJ)
... Verence being a king, was allowed a gyrfalcon, whatever the hell that was, any earls in the vicinity could fly a peregrine, and priests were allowed sparrowhawks. Commoners were just about allowed a stick to throw*.
Magrat found herself wondering what Nanny Ogg would be allowed – a small chicken on a spring probably. There was no specific falcon for a witch but, as a queen, the Lancre rules of falconry allowed her to fly the wowhawk or Lappet-faced Worrier. It was small and shortsighted and preferred to walk everywhere. It fainted at the sight of blood. And about twenty wowhawks could kill a pigeon, if it was a sick pigeon. She’d spent an hour with one on her wrist. It had wheezed at her, and eventually it had dozed off upside down. *If it wasn’t a big stick. (LL) Strictly speaking, Hodgesaargh wasn’t his real name. On the other hand, on the basis that someone’s real name is the name they introduce themselves to you by, he was definitely Hodgesaargh.
This was because the hawks and falcons in the castle mews were all Lancre birds and therefore naturally possessed of a certain ‘sod you’ independence of mind. After much patient breeding and training Hodgesaargh had managed to get them to let go of someone’s wrist, and now he was working on stopping them viciously attacking the person who had just been holding them i.e., invariably Hodgesaargh. (LL) 'Never cross a woman with a star on a stick, young lady. They’ve got a mean streak.' (WFM)
'We're her godmothers,’said Granny.
‘That’s right,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘We’ve got a wand too,’ said Magrat. ‘But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax,’ said Mrs Gogol. ‘We’re the other kind,’ said Granny. ‘We’re the kind that give people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want.' (WA) 'When did Columbus discover America anyway?' said Wobbler.
'Fourteen ninety-two,' said Johnny. 'There's a rhyme: In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.' Wobbler and Bigmac looked at him. 'Actually, he could have got there in fourteen ninety-one,' said Yo-les, without looking up, 'but he had to sail around a bit because no-one could think up a rhyme for "one".' (JD) 'If you're going to discover somewhere, you might as well wait until there's proper hotels and stuff.' (JD)
... he was looking for the Fountain of Youth and the odd thing about this sort of business is that it’s never, ever close
to. You’d think, on average, that some of these lost fountains of youth, tree of life and cities of gold would be really close, but they never are. And you never get people from a long way off coming to our part of the world lookin’ for, as it might be, the Cottage of Doom or the Lost Chicken Shed. (NOC) It was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too*.
*At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count. (FE) As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus. (J)
Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves, and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that they often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all. (MP)
... he rather liked people. It was a major failing in a demon.
Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and they devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. (GO) |
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