Discworld Quotes (by book) - Part 2 Downloaded from the Internet Sourcery -------- "I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE. He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens*. *The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life. "Erm," he said, "excuse me..." Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed. The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already been indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like. The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it. "It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse." It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting. "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!" It became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants. The other was that they were made of ice. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Wyrd Sisters ------------ The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo. "There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much." "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her. "Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more." In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs. On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pyramids -------- The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one. 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. There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification. "Therefore I will have dinner sent in," said the priest. "It will be roast chicken." "I hate chicken." Dios smiled. "No sire. On Wednesdays the King always enjoys chicken, sire." What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?" 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Guards! Guards! --------------- Thunder rolled. ... It rolled a six. "Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography." "... a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting." "'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm. "All by himself?" said the captain. "No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other. A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional. All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else." He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter*. *Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force. It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of. It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing. The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it. @~More gems next issue - o -