2413 lines
83 KiB
Plaintext
2413 lines
83 KiB
Plaintext
# NetHack 3.6.0 tribute to:
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#
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# Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett
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# April 28, 1948 - March 12, 2015
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# ("or until the ripples he caused in the world die away...")
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#
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#
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%section books
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#
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#
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#
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%title The Colour of Magic (2)
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%passage 1
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It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiation in
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the far octarine - the eighth colour, the pigment of the Imagination - can
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see things that others cannot.
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Thus it was that Rincewind, hurrying through the crowded, flare-lit,
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evening bazarrs of Morpork with the Luggage trundling behind him, jostled a
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tall figure, turned to deliver a few suitable curses, and beheld Death.
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It had to be Death. No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of
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course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage 1
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%passage 2
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As he was drawn towards the Eye the terror-struck Rincewind raised the box
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protectively, and at the same time heard the picture imp say, 'They're
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about ripe now, can't hold them any longer. Every-one smile, please.'
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There was a -
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- flash of light so white and so bright -
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- it didn't seem like light at all.
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Bel-Shamharoth screamed, a sound that started in the far ultrasonic and
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finished somewhere in Rincewind's bowels. The tentacles went momentarily
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as stiff as rods, hurling their various cargos around the room, before
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bunching up protectively in front of the abused Eye. The whole mass
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dropped into the pit and a moment later the big slab was snatched up by
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several dozen tentacles and slammed into place, leaving a number of
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thrashing limbs trapped around the edge.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage 2
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title The Light Fantastic (2)
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%passage 1
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'Cohen is my name, boy' Belthan's hands stopped moving.
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'Cohen?' she said, 'Cohen the Barbarian?'
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'The very shame.'
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'Hang on, hang on,' said Rincewind, 'Cohen's a great big chap, neck like a
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bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he's the Disc's
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greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime. I remember my grandad
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telling me he saw him ... my grandad telling me he ... my grandad ...'
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He faltered under the gimlit gaze.
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'Oh,' he said, 'Oh. Of course, Sorry.'
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'Yesh,' said Cohen, and sighed, 'Thatsh right boy, I'm a lifetime in my own
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legend.'
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[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage 1
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%passage 2
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Death sat at one side of a black baize table in the entre of the room,
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arguing with Famine, War and Pestilence. Twoflower was the only one to
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look up and notice Rincewind.
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'Hey, how did you get here?' he said.
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'Well, some say that the creator took a handful - oh, I see, well, it's
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hard to explain but I -'
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'Have you got the Luggage?'
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The wooden box pushed past Rincewind and settled down in front of its
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owner, who opened its lid and rummaged around inside until he came up with
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a small, leatherbound book which he handed to War, who was hammering the
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table with a mailed fist.
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'It's "Nosehinger on the Laws of Contract",' he said. 'It's quite good,
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there's a lot in it about double finessing and how to -'
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Death snatched the book with a bony hand and flipped through the pages,
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quite oblivious to the presence of the two men.
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'RIGHT,' he said, 'PESTILENCE, OPEN ANOTHER PACK OF CARDS. I'M GOING TO GET
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TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME. FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING OF COURSE.'
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[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage 2
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Equal Rites (3)
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%passage 1
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...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that
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what you're attempting can't be done.
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[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten.
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[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 3
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Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time
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dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits
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they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly
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expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from,
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and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives
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it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never
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tries to walk and chew gum at the same time.
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The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things
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around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens
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of biological calendars and timepieces. There's thoughts about to be said,
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and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and
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a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is
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a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once.
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It is a complete FM waveband- and some of those stations aren't reputable,
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they're outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with
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limbic lyrics.
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[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Mort (1)
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%passage 1
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Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and hand ended up
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with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was
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the Man; he had the Vote.
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[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Sourcery (2)
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%passage 1
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And what would humans be without love?
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RARE, said Death.
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[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done.
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They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the
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attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in
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the attempt.
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[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Wyrd Sisters (2)
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%passage 1
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Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls
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them. It's the other way around.
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[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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#submitted by Boudewijn
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Verence tried to avoid walking through walls. A man had his dignity.
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He became aware that he was being watched.
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He turned his head.
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There was a cat sitting in the doorway, subjecting him to a slow blink.
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It was a mottled grey and extremely fat...
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No. It was extremely /big/. It was covered with so much scar tissue
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that it looked like a fist with fur on it. Its ears were a couple of
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perforated stubs, its eyes two yellow slits of easy-going malevolence,
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its tail a twitching series of question marks as it stared at him.
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Greebo had heard that Lady Felmet had a small white female cat and had
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strolled up to pay his respects. Verence had never seen an animal with
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so much built-in villainy. He didn't resist as it waddled across the
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floor and dried to rub itself against his legs, purring like a
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waterfall.
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'Well, well,' said the king, vaguely. He reached down and made an
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effort to scratch it behind the two ragged bits on top of its head.
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It was a relief to find someone else besides another ghost who could
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see him, and Greebo, he couldn't help feeling, was a distinctly unusual
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cat. Most of the castle cats were either pampered pets or flat-eared
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kitchen and stable habitues who generally resembled the very rodents
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they lived on. This cat, on the other hand, was its own animal. All
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cats give that impression, of course, but instead of the mindless
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animal self-absorption that passes for secret wisdom in the creatures,
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Greebo radiated genuime intelligence. He also radiated a smell that
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would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus trouble in a dead fox.
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[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Pyramids (2)
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%passage 1
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The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to practice before
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doing it for real.
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[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
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human being to be really stupid.
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[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Guards! Guards! (2)
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%passage 1
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Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself.
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The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
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[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a
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longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred
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yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.
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[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Eric (2)
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%passage 1
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No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, /technically/ they had, quite
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often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the
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puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn't own their
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own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another
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minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.
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[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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Rincewind looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were
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something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The
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one he was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best.
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The next one was: I Thought You'd Like It.
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Eric was standing on: For The Sake Of The Children.
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'Weird, isn't it?' he said. 'Why do it like this?'
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'I think they're meant to be good intentions,' said Rincewind. This was a
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road to hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists.
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[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Moving Pictures (4)
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%passage 1
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This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
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(Except that of course you can't have a /final/ frontier, because there'd
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be nothing for it to be a frontier /to/, but as frontiers go, it's pretty
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penultimate...)
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[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered
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so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.
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[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 3
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There was a dog sitting by his feet.
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It was small, bow-legged and wiry, and basically grey but with patches of
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brown, white, and black in outlying areas... It looked up slowly, and
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said 'Woof?' Victor poked an exploratory finger in his ear. It must have
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been a trick of an echo, or something. It wasn't that the dog had gone
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'woof!', although that was practically unique in itself; most dogs in the
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universe /never/ went 'woof!', they had complicated barks like 'whuuugh!'
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and 'hwhoouf!'. No, it was that it hadn't in fact /barked/ at all. It had
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/said/ 'woof'. 'Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said "miaow".'
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[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 4
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''Twas beauty killed the beast,' said the Dean, who liked to say things
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like that. 'No it wasn't,' said the Chair. 'It was it splatting into the
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ground like that.'
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[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Reaper Man (4)
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%passage 1
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No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away..
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.
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[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
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[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 3
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Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how
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fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and
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is waiting for it.
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[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 4
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"That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people
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would lead better lives."
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IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN'T
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LIVE AT ALL.
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[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Witches Abroad (1)
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%passage 1
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Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never
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managed it from the cat.
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[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Small Gods (2)
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%passage 1
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He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
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[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%passage 2
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Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation
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too, o'course.
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[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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%e title
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#
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#
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#
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%title Lords and Ladies (12)
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# p. 122 (Harper Torch edition)
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%passage 1
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Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
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Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
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Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
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Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
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Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
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Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
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The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake,
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and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have
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changed their meaning.
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No one ever said elves are nice.
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Elves are bad.
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 32
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%passage 2
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"Hope she does all right as queen," said Nanny.
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"We taught her everything she knows," said Granny Weatherwax.
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"Yeah," said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. "D'you
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think... maybe... ?"
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"What?"
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"D'you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything /we/ know?"
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 36
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%passage 3
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It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.(1)
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(1) The study of invisible writings was a new discipline made available by
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the discovery of the bi-directional nature of Library-Space. The thaumic
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mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books,
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everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire
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other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past.
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But the General Theory(2) of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the
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contents of books /as yet unwritten/ can be deduced from books now in
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existence.
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(2) There's a Special Theory as well, but no one bothers with it much
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because it's self-evidently a load of marsh gas.
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 51
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%passage 4
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"Don't hold with schools," said Granny Weatherwax. "They get in the way
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of education. All them books. Books? What good are they? There's too
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much reading these days. We never had time to read when we was young, I
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know that."
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# pp. 79-80
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%passage 5
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The highwayman stepped over the groaning body of the driver and marched
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toward the door of the coach, dragging his stepladder behind him.
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He opened the door.
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"Your money or, I'm sorry to say, your--"
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A blast of octarine fire blew his hat off.
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The dwarf's expression did not change.
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"I wonder if I might be allowed to rephrase my demands?"
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Ridcully looked the elegantly dressed stranger up and down, or rather
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down and further down.
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"You don't look like a dwarf," he said, "apart from the height, that is."
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"Don't look like a dwarf apart from the height?"
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I mean, the helmet and iron boots department is among those you are lacking
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in," said Ridcully.
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 95
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%passage 6
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What is magic?
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There is the wizards' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on
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the age of the wizard. Older wizards talk about candles, circles, planets,
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stars, bananas, chants, runes, and the importance of having at least four
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good meals every day. Younger wizards, particularly the pale ones who
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spend most of their time in the High Energy Magic building,(1) chatter at
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length about fluxes in the morphic nature of the universe, the essentially
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impermanent quality of even the most apparently rigid time-space framework,
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the impossibility of reality, and so on: what this means is that they have
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got hold of something hot and are gabbling the physics as they go along.
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(1) It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest
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possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to made up of
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/resons/(2) or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each
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reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five "flavors,"
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known as "up," "down," "sideways," "sex appeal," and "peppermint."
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(2) Lit: "Thing-ies."
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 107
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%passage 7
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What is magic?
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Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending
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on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but
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may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the
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hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities,
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and could become any of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty
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was inserted in the crack and /twisted/; that, if you really had to make
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someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was /twist/ into the universe
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where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce
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off in different directions.
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Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe
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it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers
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on.
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Everyone may to right, all at the same time. That's the thing about
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quantum.
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[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
|
|
# p. 114; 'colorful' & 'humor' are spelled the American way, 'or' not 'our'
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
He knocked on the coach door. The window slid down.
|
|
|
|
"I wouldn't like you to think of this as a robbery," he said. "I'd like
|
|
you to think of it more as a colorful anecdote you might enjoy telling your
|
|
grandchildren about."
|
|
|
|
A voice from within said, "That's him! He stole my horse!"
|
|
|
|
A wizard's staff poked out. The chieftain saw the knob on the end.
|
|
|
|
"Now then," he said pleasantly. "I know the rules. Wizards aren't allowed
|
|
to use magic against civilians except in genuine life-threatening situa--"
|
|
|
|
There was a burst of octarine light.
|
|
|
|
"Actually, it's not a rule," said Ridcully. "It's more a guideline." He
|
|
turned to Ponder Stibbons. "Interestin' use of Stacklady's Morphic
|
|
Resonator here, I hoped you noticed."
|
|
|
|
Ponder lookd down.
|
|
|
|
The chieftain had been turned into a pumpkin, although, in accordance with
|
|
the rules of universal humor, he still had his hat on.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 149 (second half of a paragraph)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Things had to balance. You couldn't set out to be a good witch or a bad
|
|
witch. It never worked for long. All you could try to be was a /witch/,
|
|
as hard as you could.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 162 (mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"I'm the head wizard now. I've only got to give an order and a thousand
|
|
wizards will... uh... disobey, come to think of it, or say 'What?', or
|
|
start to argue. But they have to take notice.
|
|
|
|
"I've been to that University a few times," said Granny. "A bunch of fat
|
|
old men in beards."
|
|
|
|
"That's right! That's /them/!"
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 190
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
The window was no escape this time. There was the bed to hide under, and
|
|
that'd work for all of two seconds, wouldn't it?
|
|
|
|
Her eye was drawn by some kind of horrible magic back to the room's
|
|
garderobe, lurking behind its curtain.
|
|
|
|
Margrat lifted the lid. The shaft was definitely wide enough to admit a
|
|
body. Garderobes were notorious in that respect. Several unpopular kings
|
|
met their end, as it were, in the garderobe, at the hands of an assassin
|
|
with good climbing ability, a spear, and a fundamental approach to politics.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 191 ('a' historian, not 'an'; 'Ynci' is correct)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Some shape, some trick of moonlight, some expression on a painted face
|
|
somehow cut through her terror and caught her eye.
|
|
|
|
That was a portrait she'd never seen before. She'd never walked down this
|
|
far. The idiot vapidity of the assembled queens had depressed her. But
|
|
this one...
|
|
|
|
Ths one, somehow, reached out to her.
|
|
|
|
She stopped.
|
|
|
|
It couldn't have been done from life. In the days of /this/ queen, the
|
|
only paint known locally was a sort of blue, and generally used on the body.
|
|
But a few generations ago King Lully I had been a bit of a historian and a
|
|
romantic. He'd researched what was known of the early days of Lancre, and
|
|
where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions
|
|
of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom(1)
|
|
and extrapolated from associated sources(2). He'd commissioned the
|
|
portrait of Queen Ynci the Short-Tempered, one of the founders of the
|
|
kingdom.
|
|
|
|
(1) Made it up.
|
|
|
|
(2) Had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Men at Arms (14)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 6-7 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Ankh-Morpork had a king again.
|
|
|
|
And this was /right/. And it was /fate/ that let Edward recognize this
|
|
/just/ when he'd got his Plan. And it was /right/ that it was /Fate/,
|
|
and the city would be /Saved/ from its ignoble present by its /glorius/
|
|
past. He had the /Means/, and he had the /end/. And so on ...
|
|
Edward's thoughts often ran like this.
|
|
|
|
He could think in /italics/. Such people need watching.
|
|
|
|
Preferably from a safe distance.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 76-77
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally
|
|
religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without
|
|
warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the
|
|
need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat.
|
|
Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice
|
|
to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded
|
|
kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their
|
|
other armpit and shout, "Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-
|
|
continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!"
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 119 (perhaps a bit subtle; it would be clearer if 'they' was italicized)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"It's an ancient tradition," said Carrot.
|
|
|
|
"I thought dwarfs didn't believe in devils and demons and stuff like
|
|
that."
|
|
|
|
"That's true, but ... we're not sure if they know."
|
|
|
|
"Oh."
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 168-169 (treacle == molasses)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"I'd like a couple of eggs," said Vimes, "with the yolks real hard but
|
|
the whites so runny that they drip like treacle. And I want bacon, that
|
|
special bacon all covered with bony nodules and dangling bits of fat.
|
|
And a slice of fried bread. The kind that makes your arteries go clang
|
|
just by looking at it."
|
|
|
|
"Tough order," said Harga.
|
|
|
|
"You managed it yesterday. And give me some more coffee. Black as
|
|
midnight on a moonless night."
|
|
|
|
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
|
|
|
|
"How black's that, then?" he said.
|
|
|
|
"Oh pretty damn black, I should think."
|
|
|
|
"Not necessarily."
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up
|
|
more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
|
|
|
|
Vimes sighed.
|
|
|
|
"An /overcast/ moonless night?" he said.
|
|
|
|
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
|
|
|
|
"Cumulous or cirro-nimbus?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm sorry. What did you say?"
|
|
|
|
"You gets city lights reflected off cumulous, because it's low lying, see.
|
|
Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in--"
|
|
|
|
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as
|
|
that coffee."
|
|
|
|
"Right!"
|
|
|
|
"And a doughnut." Vimes grabbed Harga's stained vest and pulled him
|
|
until they were nose to nose. "A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut
|
|
made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon
|
|
to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or
|
|
species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way
|
|
metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut."
|
|
|
|
"A doughnut."
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
"You only had to say."
|
|
|
|
Harge brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into
|
|
the kitchen.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 174 (clumsy wording; 'they' in 2nd sentence != 'they' in 1st sentence)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Why had they chased someone halfway across the city? Because they'd
|
|
run away. /No one/ ran away from the Watch. Thieves just flashed their
|
|
licenses. Unlicensed thieves had nothing to fear from the Watch, since
|
|
they'd saved up all their fear for the Thieves' Guild. Assassins always
|
|
obeyed the letter of the law. And honest men didn't run away from the
|
|
Watch.(1) Running away from the Watch was downright suspicious.
|
|
|
|
(1) The axiom "Honest men have nothing to fear from the police" is
|
|
currently under review by the Axioms Appeal Board.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 176-177 ("this [sic; no 'is'] the pork futures warehouse")
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"Oh, my," said Detritus. "I think this the pork futures warehouse in
|
|
Morpork Road."
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"Used to work here," said the troll. "Used to work everywhere. Go away,
|
|
you stupid troll, you too thick," he added, gloomily.
|
|
|
|
"Is there any way out?"
|
|
|
|
"The main door is in Morpork Street. But no one comes in here for months.
|
|
Till pork exists."(1)
|
|
|
|
Cuddy shivered.
|
|
|
|
(1) Probably no other world in the multiverse has warehouses for things
|
|
which only exist /in potentia/, but the pork futures warehouse in Ankh-
|
|
Morpork is a product of the Patrician's rules about baseless metaphors,
|
|
the literal-mindedness of citizens who assume that everything must
|
|
exist somewhere, and the general thinness of the fabric of reality
|
|
around Ankh, which is so thin that it's as thin as a very thin thing.
|
|
The net result is that trading in pork futures--in pork /that doesn't
|
|
exist yet/--led to the building of the warehouse to store it until it
|
|
does. The extremely low temperatures are caused by the imbalance in
|
|
the temporal energy flow. At least, that's what the wizards in the
|
|
High Energy Magic building say. And they've got proper pointy hats and
|
|
letters after their name, so they know what they're talking about.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 212
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Black mud, more or less dry, made a path at the bottom of the tunnel.
|
|
There was slime on the walls, too, indicating that at some point in the
|
|
recent past the tunnel had been full of water. Here and there huge
|
|
patches of fungi, luminous with decay, cast a faint glow over the
|
|
ancient stonework.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) It didn't need to. Cuddy, belonging to a race that worked underground
|
|
for preference, and Detritus, a member of a race notoriously nocturnal,
|
|
had excellent vision in the dark. But mysterious caves and tunnels
|
|
always have luminous fungi, strangely bright crystals or at a pinch
|
|
merely an eldritch glow in the air, just in case a human hero comes in
|
|
and needs to see in the dark. Strange but true.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 218
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"He's bound to have done /something/," Noddy repeated.
|
|
|
|
In this he was echoing the Patrician's view of crime and punishment. If
|
|
there was a crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal
|
|
should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy
|
|
accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was
|
|
undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, /in general
|
|
terms/, justice was done.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 226
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
The librarian considered matters for a while. So ... a dwarf and a troll.
|
|
He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were
|
|
great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of
|
|
reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There
|
|
was something, well, /sacrilegious/ about the way they kept taking books
|
|
off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked
|
|
people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in
|
|
the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature
|
|
intended them to be.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 253
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 265 (fyi, they're decorated chicken eggs)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"All those little heads ... "
|
|
|
|
They stretched away in the candlelight, shelf on shelf of them, tiny
|
|
little clown faces--as if a tribe of headhunters had suddenly developed
|
|
a sophisicated sense of humor and a desire to make the world a better
|
|
place.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 300-301
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
"You know what I mean!"
|
|
|
|
"Can't say I do. Can't say I do. Clothing has never been what you might
|
|
call a thingy of dog wossname." Gaspode scratched his ear. "Two meta-
|
|
syntactic variables there. Sorry."
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 320
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"Hahaha, a nice day for it!" leered the Bursar.
|
|
|
|
"Oh dear," said Ridcully, "he's off again. Can't understand the man.
|
|
Anyone got the dried frog pills?"
|
|
|
|
It was a complete mystery to Mustrum Ridcully, a man designed by nature to
|
|
live outdoors and happily slaughter anything that coughed in the bushes,
|
|
why the Bursar (a man designed by Nature to sit in a small room somewhere,
|
|
adding up figures) was so nervous. He'd tried all sorts of things to, as
|
|
he put it, buck him up. These included practical jokes, surprise early
|
|
morning runs, and leaping out at him from behind doors while wearing
|
|
Willie the Vampire masks in order, he said, to take him out of himself.
|
|
|
|
[Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Soul Music (11)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
But this didn't feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt
|
|
like music.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"Yes," said the skull. "Quit while you're a head, that's what I say."
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p.2 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
But if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is
|
|
observed,(1) it's even more true that it changes the observer.
|
|
|
|
(1) Because of Quantum.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p.8
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
|
|
In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the
|
|
equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company
|
|
written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 63-64
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Then the skull said: "Kids today, eh?"
|
|
|
|
"I blame education," said the raven.
|
|
|
|
"A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing," said the skull. "A lot more
|
|
dangerous than just a little. I always used to say that, when I was
|
|
alive."
|
|
|
|
"When was that, exactly?"
|
|
|
|
"Can't remember. I think I was pretty knowledgeable. Probably a teacher
|
|
or philosopher, something of that kidney. And now I'm on a bench with a
|
|
bird crapping on my head."
|
|
|
|
"Very allegorical," said the raven.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 87 (Stabbing: "in the" both capitalized; "and" not so)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
The Mended Drum had traditionally gone in for, well, traditional pub games,
|
|
such as dominoes, darts, and Stabbing People In The Back and Taking All
|
|
Their Money. The new owner had decided to go up-market. This was the
|
|
only available direction.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 125-126 ("him"==Librarian;
|
|
# Leonard of Quirm==Discworld analog of Leonardo da Vinci)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
The Library didn't only contain magical books, the ones which are chained
|
|
to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly
|
|
ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be
|
|
a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading
|
|
them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did
|
|
the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the
|
|
reader's brain.
|
|
|
|
For example, the big volume open in front of him contained some of the
|
|
collected drawings of Leonard of Quirm, skilled artist and certified
|
|
genious, with a mind that wandered so much it came back with souvenirs.
|
|
|
|
Leonard's books were full of sketches--of kittens, of the way water flows,
|
|
of the wives of influential Ankh-Morporkian merchants whose portraits had
|
|
provided his means of making a living. But Leonard had been a genius and
|
|
was deeply sensitive to the wonders of the world, so the margins were full
|
|
of detailed doodles of whatever was on this mind at the moment--vast
|
|
water-powered engines for bringing down city walls on the heads of the
|
|
enemy, new types of siege guns for pumping flaming oil over the enemy,
|
|
gunpowder rockets that showered the enemy with burning phosphorous, and
|
|
other manufactures of the Age of Reason.
|
|
|
|
And there had been something else. The Librarian had noticed it in
|
|
passing once before, and had been slightly puzzled by it. It seemed out
|
|
of place.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) And didn't appear to do anything to the enemy /at all/.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 152 (much of the story concerns "Music With Rocks In")
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Some religions say that the universe was started with a word, a song,
|
|
a dance, a piece of music. The Listening Monks of the Ramtops have
|
|
trained their hearing until they can tell the value of a playing card by
|
|
listening to it, and have made it their task to listen intently to the
|
|
subtle sounds of the universe to piece together, from the fossile echoes,
|
|
the very first noises.
|
|
|
|
There was certainly, they say, a very strange noise at the beginning of
|
|
everything.
|
|
|
|
But the keenest ears (the ones who win most at poker), who listen to the
|
|
frozen echoes in the ammonites and amber, swear they can detect some tiny
|
|
sounds before that.
|
|
|
|
It sounded, they say, like someone counting: One, Two, Three, Four.
|
|
|
|
The very best one, who listened to basalt, said he thought he could make
|
|
out, very faintly, some numbers that came even earlier.
|
|
|
|
When they asked him what it was, he said: "It sounds like One, Two."
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 227
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
The Death of Rats put his nose in his paws. It was a lot easier with
|
|
rats.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly
|
|
before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats.
|
|
The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat
|
|
tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats--and then
|
|
people were suddenly queueing up with tails, the city treasury was being
|
|
drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there /still/
|
|
seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully
|
|
while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one
|
|
memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty
|
|
offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any
|
|
situtation involving money: "Tax the rat farms."
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 313-314 (Drongo and Big Mad Adrian are students)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
The Archchancellor polished this staff as he walked along. It was a
|
|
particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used
|
|
magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn't be disposed of
|
|
with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic
|
|
as well.
|
|
|
|
"Don't you think we should have brought the senior wizards, sir?" said
|
|
Ponder, struggling to keep up.
|
|
|
|
"I'm afraid that taking them along in their present state of mind would
|
|
only make what happens"--Ridcully sought for a useful phrase, and settled
|
|
for--"happen worse. I've insisted they stay in college."
|
|
|
|
"How about Drongo and the others?" said Ponder hopefully.
|
|
|
|
"Would they be any good in the event of a thaumaturgical dimension rip of
|
|
enormous proportions?" said Ridcully. "I remember poor Mr. Hong. One
|
|
minute he was dishing up an order of double cod and mushy peas, the
|
|
next ..."
|
|
|
|
"Kaboom?" said Ponder.
|
|
|
|
"Kaboom?" said Ridcully, forcing his way up the crowded street. "Not
|
|
that I heard tell. More like 'Aaaaerrrr-scream-gristle- gristle-gristle-
|
|
crack' and a shower of fried food. Big Mad Adrian and his friends any
|
|
good when the chips are down?"
|
|
|
|
"Um. Probably not, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
"Correct. People shout and run about. That never did any good. A pocket
|
|
full of decent spells and a well-charged staff will get you out of trouble
|
|
nine times out of ten."
|
|
|
|
"Nine times out of ten?"
|
|
|
|
"Correct."
|
|
|
|
"How many times have you had to rely on them, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Well ... there was Mr. Hong ... that business with the thing in the
|
|
Bursar's wardrobe ... that dragon, you remember ..." Ridcully's lips
|
|
moved silently as he counted on his fingers. "Nine times, so far."
|
|
|
|
"It worked every time, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Absolutely! So there's no need to worry. Gangway! Wizard comin'
|
|
through."
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 339
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
The wizards went rigid as the howl rang through the building. It was
|
|
slightly animal but also mineral, metallic, edged like a saw.
|
|
|
|
Eventually the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, "Of course, just because
|
|
we've heard a spine-chilling blood-curdling scream of the sort to make
|
|
your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn't automatically mean there's
|
|
anything wrong."
|
|
|
|
The wizards looked out into the corridor.
|
|
|
|
"It came from downstairs somewhere," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies,
|
|
heading for the staircase.
|
|
|
|
"So why are you going /upstairs/?"
|
|
|
|
"Because I'm not daft!"
|
|
|
|
"But it might be some terrible emanation!"
|
|
|
|
"You don't say?" said the Chair, still accelerating.
|
|
|
|
"All right, please yourself. That's the students floor up there."
|
|
|
|
"Ah, Er--"
|
|
|
|
The Chair came down slowly, occasionally glancing fearfully up the stairs.
|
|
|
|
[Soul Music, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Interesting Times (10)
|
|
# p.1 (footnote)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are
|
|
always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles.
|
|
When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of
|
|
circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is
|
|
killed by a freak chain of events--the oil spilled just there, the safety
|
|
fence broken just there--that must also be a miracle. Just because it's
|
|
not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 18
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"Oh, no," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. "Not
|
|
that. That's meddling with things you don't understand."
|
|
|
|
"Well, we /are/ wizards," said Ridcully. "We're supposed to meddle with
|
|
things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood
|
|
things we'd never get anything done."
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 4
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest
|
|
abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because
|
|
it is better organized.
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 14
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Many things went on at Unseen University and, regretably, teaching had to
|
|
be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had
|
|
perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all
|
|
right because, to be fair, so had the students.
|
|
|
|
The system worked quite well and, as happens in such cases, had taken on
|
|
the status of a tradition. Lectures clearly took place, because they
|
|
were down there on the timetable in black and white. The fact that no one
|
|
attended was an irrelevant detail. It was occasionally maintained that
|
|
this meant that the lectures did not in fact happen at all, but no one ever
|
|
attended them to find out if this was true. Anyway, it was argued (by the
|
|
Reader in Woolly Thinking(1)) that lectures had taken place /in essence/,
|
|
so that was all right, too.
|
|
|
|
And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old
|
|
method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinty of a lot of books
|
|
and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the
|
|
actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns
|
|
for exactly the same reason.
|
|
|
|
(1) Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so.
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 20 (speaker is Archchancellor Ridcully; sad, hopless person is Rincewind)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Wizzard?" he said. "What kind of sad, hopeless person needs to write
|
|
WIZZARD on their hat?"
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 113
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Self-doubt was something not regularly entertained within the Cohen cranium.
|
|
When you're trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted
|
|
temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the
|
|
other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it
|
|
that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves
|
|
questions like "What is the purpose of life?" very quickly lacked both.
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 113 (same page as previous passage...)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a
|
|
lad, and explained to him the hero's creed and told him that there was no
|
|
greater joy than to die in battle.
|
|
|
|
Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime's experience
|
|
had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the /other/
|
|
bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your
|
|
horse. It was an observation that had served him well.
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 144
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"'Dang'?" he said. "Wassat mean? And what's this 'darn' and 'heck'?"
|
|
|
|
"They are ... /civilised/ swearwords." said Mr. Saveloy.
|
|
|
|
"Well, you can take 'em and--"
|
|
|
|
"Ah?" said Mr. Saveloy, raising a cautionary finger.
|
|
|
|
"You can shove them up--"
|
|
|
|
"Ah?"
|
|
|
|
"You can--"
|
|
|
|
"Ah?"
|
|
|
|
Truckle shut his eyes and clenched his fists.
|
|
|
|
"Darn it all to heck!" he shouted.
|
|
|
|
"Good," said Mr. Saveloy. "That's much better."
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 219 (sic: "Dedd")
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
The taxman was warming to his new job. He'd worked out that although the
|
|
Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as
|
|
barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other
|
|
activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to
|
|
the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate.
|
|
|
|
The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority
|
|
/anywhere/(1) was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that
|
|
counted. And the interest, too, of course.
|
|
|
|
(1) Except on posters with legends like "Wanted--Dedd".
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 297
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"What do we do now?" said Mr. Saveloy. "Do we do a battle chant or
|
|
something?"
|
|
|
|
"We just wait," said Cohen.
|
|
|
|
"There's a lot of waiting in warfare," said Boy Willie.
|
|
|
|
"Ah, yes," said Mr. Saveloy. "I've heard people say that. They say
|
|
there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement."
|
|
|
|
"Not really," said Cohen. "It's more like short periods of waiting
|
|
followed by long periods of being dead."
|
|
|
|
[Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Maskerade (9)
|
|
# pp. 81-82, continued on pp. 87-89 (Harper Torch edition; apparently
|
|
# transcribed from some other edition based on quote marks used;
|
|
# a great number of very short paragraphs--it stretches a long way
|
|
# when using a blank line to separate one paragraph from another;
|
|
# one omitted bit is that after Granny shuffles the deck of cards
|
|
# and deals two poker hands, Death swaps them, suggesting that
|
|
# he suspected her of cheating; initial transcription left off
|
|
# the most interesting bit, Death's wink at the end)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
'Maybe you could ... help us?'
|
|
|
|
'What's wrong?'
|
|
|
|
'It's my boy ...'
|
|
|
|
Granny opened the door farther and saw the woman standing behind Mr. Slot.
|
|
One look at her face was enough. There was a bundle in her arms.
|
|
|
|
Granny stepped back. 'Bring him in and let me have a look at him.'
|
|
|
|
She took the baby from the woman, sat down on the room's one chair, and
|
|
pulled back the blanket. Nanny Ogg peered over her shoulder.
|
|
|
|
'Hmm,' said Granny, after a while. She glanced at Nanny, who gave an
|
|
almost imperceptible shake of her head.
|
|
|
|
'There's a curse on this house, that's what it is,' said Slot. 'My best
|
|
cow's been taken mortally sick, too.'
|
|
|
|
'Oh? You have a cowshed?' said Granny. 'Very good place for a sickroom,
|
|
a cowshed. It's the warmth. You better show me where it is.'
|
|
|
|
'You want to take the boy down there?'
|
|
|
|
'Right now.'
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
'How many have you come for?'
|
|
|
|
ONE.
|
|
|
|
'The cow?'
|
|
|
|
Death shook his head.
|
|
|
|
'It could /be/ the cow.'
|
|
|
|
NO. THAT WOULD BE CHANGING HISTORY.
|
|
|
|
'History is about things changing.'
|
|
|
|
NO.
|
|
|
|
Granny sat back.
|
|
|
|
'Then I challenge you to a game. That's traditional. That's /allowed/.'
|
|
|
|
Death was silent for a moment.
|
|
|
|
THIS IS TRUE.
|
|
|
|
'Good.'
|
|
|
|
CHALLENGING ME BY MEANS OF A GAME IS ALLOWABLE.
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
HOWEVER ... YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TO WIN ALL YOU MUST GAMBLE ALL?
|
|
|
|
'Double or quits? Yes, I know.'
|
|
|
|
BUT NOT CHESS.
|
|
|
|
'Can't abide chess.'
|
|
|
|
OR CRIPPLE MR. ONION. I'VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES.
|
|
|
|
'Very well. How about one hand of poker? Five cards each, no draws?
|
|
Sudden death, as they say.'
|
|
|
|
Death thought about this, too.
|
|
|
|
YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY?
|
|
|
|
'No.'
|
|
|
|
THEN WHY?
|
|
|
|
'Are we talking or are we playing?'
|
|
|
|
OH, VERY WELL.
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
Granny looked at her cards, and threw them down.
|
|
|
|
FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT /IS/ VERY HIGH.
|
|
|
|
Death looked down at his cards, and then up into Granny's steady, blue-eyed
|
|
gaze.
|
|
|
|
Neither moved for some time.
|
|
|
|
Then Death laid the hand on the table.
|
|
|
|
I LOSE, he said. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES.
|
|
|
|
He looked back into Granny's eyes for a moment. There was a blue glow in
|
|
the depth of his eye-sockets. Maybe, for the merest fraction of a second,
|
|
barely noticeable even to the closest observation, one winked off.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 67 (Harper Torch edition; as above, transcribed from some other edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
The letter inside was on a sheet of the Opera House's own note paper.
|
|
In neat, copperplate writing, it said:
|
|
|
|
Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha!
|
|
BEWARE!!!!!
|
|
|
|
Yrs sincerely
|
|
The Opera Ghost
|
|
|
|
'What sort of person,' said Salzella patiently, 'sits down and /writes/ a
|
|
maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A
|
|
sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do
|
|
that to a man.'
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 30-31 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Agnes had woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd
|
|
been saddled with a lovely personality. It was as simple as that. Oh,
|
|
and very good hair.
|
|
|
|
It wasn't so much the personality, it was the "but" people always added
|
|
when they talked about it. /But she's got a lovely personality/, they
|
|
said. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her,
|
|
before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether
|
|
she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take
|
|
size nine in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that
|
|
beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair
|
|
of kidneys.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 258
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
'And what can I get you, officers?' she said.
|
|
|
|
'Officers? Us?' said the Count de Nobbes. 'What makes you think we're
|
|
watchmen?'
|
|
|
|
'He's got a helmet on,' Nanny pointed out. 'Also, he's got his badge
|
|
pinned to his coat.'
|
|
|
|
'I /told/ you to put it away!' Nobby hissed. He looked at Nanny and
|
|
smiled uneasily. 'Milit'ry chic,' he said. 'It's just a fashion
|
|
accessory. Actually, we are gentlemen of means and have nothing to do
|
|
with the city Watch whatsoever.'
|
|
|
|
'Well, /gentlemen/, would you like some wine?'
|
|
|
|
'Not while we on duty, t'anks,' said the troll.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 27 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a
|
|
wife who'd think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when
|
|
she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to
|
|
have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride
|
|
would bear in mind his father's advice that kisses eventually lost their
|
|
fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his
|
|
courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying
|
|
their food.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 28
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Music and magic had a lot in common. They were only two letters apart,
|
|
for one thing. And you couldn't do both.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 31
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
She'd caught herself saying "poot!" and "dang!" when she wanted to swear,
|
|
and using pink writing paper.
|
|
|
|
She'd got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis.
|
|
|
|
Next thing she knew she'd be making shortbread and apple pies as good as
|
|
her mother's, and then there'd be no hope for her.
|
|
|
|
So she'd introduced Perdita. She'd heard somewhere that inside every fat
|
|
woman was a thin woman trying to get out,(1) so she'd named her Perdita.
|
|
She was a good repository for all those thoughts that Agnes couldn't think
|
|
on account of her wonderful personality. Perdita would use black writing
|
|
paper if she could get away with it, and would be beautifully pale instead
|
|
of embarassingly flushed. Perdita wanted to be an interestingly lost soul
|
|
in plum-colored lipstick. Just occasionally, though, Agnes thought
|
|
Perdita was as dumb as she was.
|
|
|
|
(1) Or, at least, dying for chocolate.
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 197 (dress shop proprietor has just sold an expensive dress to Granny)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
She looked down at the money in her hand.
|
|
|
|
She knew about old money, which was somehow hallowed by the fact that
|
|
people had hung on to it for years, and she knew about new money, which
|
|
seemed to be being made by all these upstarts that were flooding into the
|
|
city these days. But under her powdered bosom she was an Ankh-Morpork
|
|
shopkeeper, and knew that the best kind of money was the sort that was in
|
|
her hand rather than someone else's. The best kind of money was mine,
|
|
not yours.
|
|
|
|
Besides, she was also enough of a snob to confuse rudeness with good
|
|
breeding. In the same way that the really rich can never be mad (they're
|
|
eccentric), so they can also never be rude (they're outspoken and
|
|
forthright).
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 288-289
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Detritus reached down and picked up an eye patch.
|
|
|
|
"What d'you think, then?" said Nobby scornfully. "You think he turned into
|
|
a bat and flew away?"
|
|
|
|
"Ha! I do not t'ink that 'cos it is in ... consist ... ent with modern
|
|
policing," said Detritus.
|
|
|
|
"Well, /I/ think," said Nobby, "that when you have ruled out the impossible,
|
|
what is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around on a cold night
|
|
wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink.
|
|
Come on. I want to try a leg of the elephant that bit me."
|
|
|
|
"Was dat irony?"
|
|
|
|
"That was metaphor."
|
|
|
|
[Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Feet of Clay (14)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through
|
|
anything. It does not need doors and windows -- sometimes it does not need
|
|
people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever
|
|
touching lips.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 337 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
It was hard enough to kill a vampire. You could stake them down and turn
|
|
them into dust and ten years later someone drops a drop of blood in the
|
|
wrong place and /guess who's back/? They returned more times than raw
|
|
broccoli.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 4
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only
|
|
because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't
|
|
look quite like real science.(1) But geography is only physics slowed
|
|
down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of
|
|
excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time.
|
|
It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south
|
|
for the winter.
|
|
|
|
(1) That is to say, the sort you can use to give something three extra
|
|
legs and then blow it up.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 19
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Upstairs, Vimes pushed open his office door carefully. The Assassins'
|
|
Guild played to rules. You could say that about the bastards. It was
|
|
terribly bad form to kill a bystander. Apart from antyhing else, you
|
|
wouldn't get paid. So traps in his office were out of the question,
|
|
because too many people were in and out of it every day. Even so, it
|
|
paid to be careful. Vimes /was/ good at making the kind of rich enemies
|
|
who could afford to employ assassins. The assassins had to be lucky
|
|
only once, but Vimes had to be lucky all the time.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 86 (passage continues, actually finding an image in dead man's eyes)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Er ... have you ever heard the story about dead men's eyes, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Assume I haven't had a literary education, Littlebottom."
|
|
|
|
"Well ... they say ..."
|
|
|
|
"/Who/ say?"
|
|
|
|
"/They/, sir. You know, /they/."
|
|
|
|
"The same people who're the 'everyone' in 'everyone knows'? The people
|
|
who live in 'the community'?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir."
|
|
|
|
Vimes waved a hand. "Oh, /them/. Well, go on."
|
|
|
|
"They say that the last thing a man sees stays imprinted in his eyes, sir."
|
|
|
|
"Oh, /that/. That's just an old story."
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 127-128
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Everyone in the city looked after themselves. That's what the guilds were
|
|
for. People banded together against other people. The guild looked after
|
|
you from the cradle to the grave or, in the case of the Assassins, to
|
|
other people's graves. They even maintained the law, or at least they had
|
|
done, after a fashion. Thieving without a license was punishable by death
|
|
for the first offense.(1) The Thieves' Guild saw to that. The arrangement
|
|
sounded unreal, but it worked.
|
|
|
|
It worked like a machine. That was fine except for the occasional people
|
|
who got caught in the wheels.
|
|
|
|
(1) The Ankh-Morpork view of crime and punishment was that the penalty for
|
|
the first offence should prevent the possibility of a second offense.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 129, continued pp. 132-133
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head, and set off after it. No
|
|
thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and
|
|
policemen to chase anything that runs away.
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
Vimes pounded through the fog after the fleeing figure. It wasn't quite
|
|
so fast as him, despite the twinges in his legs and one or two warning
|
|
stabs from his left knee, but whenever he came close to it some muffled
|
|
pedestrian got in the way, or a cart pulled out from a cross street.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) This always happens in any police chase /anywhere/. A heavily laden
|
|
lorry will /always/ pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit. If
|
|
vehicles aren't involved, then it'll be a man with a rack of garments.
|
|
Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There's probably some kind of
|
|
secret society behind all this.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 165
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Ron had a small grayish-brown, torn-eared terrier on the end of a string,
|
|
although in truth it would be hard for an observer to know exactly who
|
|
was leading whom and who, when push came to shove, would be the one to
|
|
fold at the knees if the other shouted "Sit!" Because, although trained
|
|
canines as aids for those bereft of sight, and even of hearing, have
|
|
frequently been used throughout the universe, Foul Ole Ron was the first
|
|
person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 173-174
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues.
|
|
|
|
He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They
|
|
got in the way.
|
|
|
|
And he distrusted the kind of person who'd take one look at another man
|
|
and say in a lordly voice to his companion, "Ah, my dear sir. I can tell
|
|
you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some
|
|
years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times," and
|
|
then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance
|
|
and the state of a man's boots, when /exactly the same/ comments could
|
|
apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he'd been doing a
|
|
spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tatooed
|
|
once when he was drunk and seventeen(1) and in fact got seasick on a wet
|
|
pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety
|
|
of the human experience.
|
|
|
|
It was the same with more static evidence. The footprints in the
|
|
flowerbed were probably /in the real world/ left by the window-cleaner.
|
|
The scream in the night was quite likely a man getting out of bed and
|
|
stepping sharply on an upturned hairbrush.
|
|
|
|
The real world was far too /real/ to leave neat little hints. It was full
|
|
of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got
|
|
at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of
|
|
eliminating the possibilities. You worked away, patiently asking questions
|
|
and looking hard at things. You walked and talked, and in your heart you
|
|
just hoped like hell that some bugger's nerve'd crack and he'd give himself
|
|
up.
|
|
|
|
(1) These terms are often synonymous.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 188
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari," said Mr. Potts of
|
|
the Bakers' Guild.
|
|
|
|
"He does have all the street-theater players and mime artists thrown into
|
|
the scorpion pit," said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves' Guild.
|
|
|
|
"True. But let's not forget that he has his bad points too. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 198
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told
|
|
him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve
|
|
/that/?
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 295
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Rogers the bulls were angry and bewildered, which counts as the basic state
|
|
of mind for full grown bulls.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Because of the huge obtrusive mass of his forehead, Rogers the bulls'
|
|
view of the universe was from two eyes each with their own non-overlapping
|
|
hemispherical view of the world. Since there were two separate visions,
|
|
Rogers had reasoned, that meant there must be two bulls (bulls not having
|
|
been bred for much deductive reasoning). Most bulls believe this, which is
|
|
why they always keep turning their head this way and that when they look at
|
|
you. They do this because both of them want to see.
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 312 ('meaning' line capitalizes every word, including 'A','For','To')
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
"It's the most menacing dwarf battle-cry there is! Once it's been shouted
|
|
/someone/ has to be killed!"
|
|
|
|
"What's it mean?"
|
|
|
|
"Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!"
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 347 (Colon is addressing Dorfl, a golem who is joining the Watch)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"Y'know," said Colon, "if it doesn't work out, you could always get a job
|
|
making fortune cookies."
|
|
|
|
"Funny thing, that," said Nobby. "You never get bad fortunes in cookies,
|
|
ever noticed that? They never say stuff like: 'Oh dear, things are going
|
|
to be /really/ bad.' I mean, they're never /misfortune/ cookies."
|
|
|
|
Vimes lit a cigar and shook the match to put it out. "That, Corporal, is
|
|
because of one the fundamental driving forces of the universe."
|
|
|
|
"What? Like, people who read fortune cookies are the lucky ones?" said
|
|
Nobby.
|
|
|
|
"No. Because people who /sell/ fortune cookies want to go on selling
|
|
them. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Hogfather (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
#addition text contributed by Boudewijn
|
|
Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree.
|
|
But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of
|
|
things. They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the
|
|
makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words. Yet there is the
|
|
constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, ravelling
|
|
nets of space-time on which a metaphorical finger can be put to indicate
|
|
that here, /here/, is the point where it all began . . .
|
|
|
|
/Something/ began when the Guild of Assassins enrolled Mister Teatime,
|
|
who saw things differently from other people, and one of the ways that
|
|
he saw things differently from other people was in seeing other people
|
|
as things (later, Lord Downey of the Guild said, 'We took pity on him
|
|
because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on
|
|
reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.')
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Jingo (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to
|
|
think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault.
|
|
If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be.
|
|
I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks
|
|
of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do
|
|
the bad things.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
#contributed by Boudewijn
|
|
There was a general shifting of position and a group clearing of throats.
|
|
'What about mercenaries?' said Boggis.
|
|
'The problem with mercenaries', said the Patrician, 'is that they need
|
|
to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end
|
|
up paying them even more to stop--'
|
|
Selachii thumped the table.
|
|
'Very well, then, by jingo!' he snarled. 'Alone!'
|
|
'We could certainly do with one,' said Lord Vetinari. 'We need the
|
|
money. I was about to say that we cannot /afford/ mercenaries.'
|
|
'How can this be?' said Lord Downey. Don't we pay our taxes?'
|
|
'Ah, I thought we might come to that,' said Lord Vetinari. He raised
|
|
his hand and, on cue again, his clerk placed a piece of paper in it.
|
|
'Let me see now . . . ah yes. Guild of Assassins . . . Gross earnings
|
|
in the last year: AM$13,207,048. Taxes paid in the last year:
|
|
forty-seven dollars, twenty-two pence and what on examination turned
|
|
out to be a Hershebian half-/dong/, worth one eighth of a penny.'
|
|
'That's all perfectly legal! The Guild of Accountants--'
|
|
'Ah yes. Guild of Accountants: gross earnings AM$7,999,011.
|
|
Taxes paid: nil. But, ah yes, I see they applied for a rebate of
|
|
AM$200,000.'
|
|
'And what we received, I may say, included a Hershebian half-/dong/,'
|
|
said Mr Frostrip of the Guild of Accountants.
|
|
'What goes around comes around,' said Vetinari calmly.
|
|
He tossed the paper aside. 'Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like
|
|
dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with
|
|
the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is
|
|
moo.'
|
|
'Are you telling us that Ankh-Morpork is /bankrupt/?' said Downey.
|
|
'Of course. While, at the same time, full of rich people. I trust they
|
|
have been spending their good fortume on swords.'
|
|
'And you have /allowed/ this wholesale tax avoidance?' said Lord
|
|
Selachii. 'Oh, the taxes haven't been avoided,' said Lord Vetinari.
|
|
'Or even evaded. They just haven't been paid.'
|
|
'That is a disgusting state of affairs!'
|
|
The Patrician raised his eyebrows. 'Commander Vines?'
|
|
'Yes, sir?'
|
|
'Would you be so good as to assemble a squad of your most experienced
|
|
men, liaise with the tax gatherers and obtain the accumulated back
|
|
taxes, please? My clerk here will give you a list of the prime
|
|
defaulters.'
|
|
'Right, sir. And if they resist, sir?' said Vimes, smiling nastily.
|
|
'Oh, how can they resist, commander? This is the will of our civic
|
|
leaders.' He took the paper his clerk proferred. 'Let me see, now.
|
|
Top of the list--' Lord Selachii coughed hurriedly. 'Far too late for
|
|
that sort of nonsense now,' he said.
|
|
'Water under the bridge,' said Lord Downey.
|
|
'Deat and buried,' said Mr Slant.
|
|
'I paid mine,' said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Last Continent (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE
|
|
PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the
|
|
Rest of Your Life."
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Carpe Jugulum (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool.
|
|
Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes"
|
|
were there for a purpose.
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Fifth Elephant (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
You did something because it had always been done,
|
|
and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way."
|
|
A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: It facinated
|
|
people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and
|
|
interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they
|
|
created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day
|
|
they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips, if it was well done and
|
|
maybe had a slice of tomato.
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Truth (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are
|
|
those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this
|
|
glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half
|
|
empty.
|
|
|
|
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say:
|
|
What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I
|
|
don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been
|
|
pinching my beer?
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage 1
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
|
|
This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong.
|
|
There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage 2
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Thief of Time (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"No running with scythes!"
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
# The Last Hero has never been released in the U.S. (or anywhere?) as a
|
|
# conventional mass market paperback. The large (roughly 10" by 12")
|
|
# trade paperback contains many full page color illustrations and most
|
|
# text pages include decorations of varying degrees of elaborateness.
|
|
# The actual text is probably only novella length.
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Last Hero (7)
|
|
# p. 41 (EOS edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search
|
|
for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of
|
|
the list 'the man who arrived just before you'.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 5
|
|
# second paragraph is a bit "on the nose" but is too good to leave out
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
The reason for the story was a mix of many things. There was humanity's
|
|
desire to do forebidden deeds merely because they were forbidden.
|
|
There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live
|
|
beyond them. There were the mysterious scrolls. There was the cucumber.
|
|
But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, it would all be over.
|
|
|
|
'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies. But from the
|
|
point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the
|
|
universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of
|
|
everything it's all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one
|
|
case, a cucumber. Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of
|
|
life, in the face of which people either start to pray...
|
|
or become really, really angry.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 19
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
'And they're /heroes/,' said Mr Betteridge of the Guild of Historians.
|
|
|
|
'And that means, exactly?' said the Patrician, sighing.
|
|
|
|
'They're good at doing what they want to do.'
|
|
|
|
'But they are also, as I understand it, very old men.'
|
|
|
|
'Very old /heroes/,' the historian corrected him. 'That just means
|
|
they've had a lot of /experience/ in doing what they want to do.
|
|
|
|
Lord Vetinari sighed again. He did not like to live in a world of
|
|
heroes. You had civilisation, such as it was, and you had heroes.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 25
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
They were, all of them, old men. Their background conversation was
|
|
a litany of complaints about feet, stomachs and backs. They moved
|
|
slowly. But they had a /look/ about them. It was in their eyes.
|
|
|
|
Their eyes said that wherever it was, they had been there. Whatever
|
|
it was, they had done it, sometimes more than once. But they would
|
|
never, ever, /buy/ the T-shirt. And they /did/ know the meaning of
|
|
the word 'fear'. It was something that happened to other people.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 97
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Captain Carrot saluted. 'Force is always the last resort, sir,' he said.
|
|
|
|
'I believe for Cohen it's the first choice,' said Lord Vetinari.
|
|
|
|
'He's not too bad if you don't come up behind him suddenly,' said Rincewind.
|
|
|
|
'Ah, there is the voice of our mission specialist,' said the Patrician.
|
|
'I just hope-- What is that on your badge, Captain Carrot?'
|
|
|
|
'Mission motto, sir,' said Carrot cheerfully. '/Morituri Nolumus Mori/.
|
|
Rincewind suggested it.'
|
|
|
|
'I imagine he did,' said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly.
|
|
'And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?'
|
|
|
|
'Er...' Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. 'Er...
|
|
roughly speaking, it means, "We who are about to die don't want to", sir.'
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 125 (near top, then continued half way down)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
'A good wizard, Rincewind,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Not
|
|
particularly bright, but, frankly, I've never been quite happy with
|
|
intelligence. An overrated talent, in my humble opinion.'
|
|
|
|
Ponder's ears went red.
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
'Mr Stibbons was right, was he?' said Ridcully, staring at Ponder. 'How
|
|
did you work that out so /exactly/, Mr Stibbons?'
|
|
|
|
'I, er...' Ponder felt the eyes of the wizards on him. 'I--' He stopped.
|
|
'It was a lucky guess, sir.'
|
|
|
|
The wizards relaxed. They were extremely uneasy with cleverness, but
|
|
lucky guessing was what being a wizard was all about.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 146
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Evil Harry looked down and shuffled his feet, his face a battle between
|
|
pride and relief.
|
|
|
|
'Good of you to say that, lads,' he mumbled. 'I mean, you know, if it
|
|
was up to me I wouldn't do this to yer, but I got a reputation to--'
|
|
|
|
'I said we /understand/,' said Cohen. 'It's just like with us. You see
|
|
a big hairy thing galloping towards you, you don't stop to think: Is
|
|
this a rare species on the point of extinction? No, you hack its head
|
|
off. 'Cos that's heroing, am I right? An' /you/ see someone, you
|
|
betray 'em, quick as a wink. 'Cos that's villaining.'
|
|
|
|
[The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they
|
|
shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.
|
|
|
|
[The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Night Watch (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Wee Free Men (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! We willna
|
|
be fooled again!"
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Monstrous Regiment (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
'How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if
|
|
you don't know how to use it?'
|
|
|
|
'Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and
|
|
don't attack me,' said Maladict patiently.
|
|
|
|
'Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn't be any good with it,' said the
|
|
sergeant.
|
|
|
|
'No, sir. I'd probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir.
|
|
That's what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine.
|
|
And I'd get hell from the League if I did that, sir'
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title A Hat Full of Sky (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
|
|
Why do you go away?
|
|
|
|
So that you can come back. So that you can see the place
|
|
you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people
|
|
there see you differently, too.
|
|
|
|
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Going Postal (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
|
|
What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the
|
|
snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled
|
|
words and weird drawings in old books and in the wrong hands it
|
|
was dangerous as hell, but not one half as dangerous as it could
|
|
be in the right hands.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Thud! (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
#submitted by Boudewijn
|
|
He wanted to sleep. He'd never felt this tired before.
|
|
Vimes slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways on to the sand.
|
|
When he forced open his eyes he saw pale stars above him, and had once
|
|
again the sensation that there was someone else present.
|
|
He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but
|
|
brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining
|
|
in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it.
|
|
A white skeletal hand turned a page.
|
|
'You'll be Death, then?' said Vimes, after a while.
|
|
|
|
AH. MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting
|
|
the book on his finger to keep the place.
|
|
|
|
'I've seen you before.'
|
|
|
|
I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.
|
|
|
|
'And this is /it/, is it?'
|
|
|
|
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS
|
|
SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.
|
|
|
|
Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really
|
|
didn't want to say, and it was happening here.
|
|
'Is it?' he insisted. 'Is this it? This time I die?'
|
|
|
|
COULD BE.
|
|
|
|
'Could be? What sort of answer is that?' said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE,
|
|
WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE.
|
|
DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
|
|
|
|
Vimes rolled over on to his stomach, gritted his teeth and pushed
|
|
himself on to his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before
|
|
slumping back down. He heard the sound of a chair being moved.
|
|
'Shouldn't you be somewhere else?' he said.
|
|
|
|
I AM, said Death, sitting down again.
|
|
|
|
'But you're here!'
|
|
|
|
AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed
|
|
a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT.
|
|
|
|
'Did what?'
|
|
|
|
IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEEDS TO DO IS TURN TO THE
|
|
LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF
|
|
DELIBERATEDLY NOT KNOWING?
|
|
|
|
It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches
|
|
had gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling,
|
|
everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Wintersmith (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
That's Third Thoughts for you.
|
|
When a huge rock is going to land on your head,
|
|
they're the thoughts that think:
|
|
Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
They say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but
|
|
has anyone checked lately?
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Making Money (3)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Making Money, by Terry Pratchett
|
|
'I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth.'
|
|
'Really? Why not?'
|
|
'I don't know, thur. I didn't athk.'
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e pasasge
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
The Watch armour fitted like a glove. He'd have preferred it to fit like a
|
|
helmet and breastplate. It was common knowledge that the Watch's approach
|
|
to uniforms was one-size-doesn't-exactly-fit-anybody, and that Commander
|
|
Vimes disapproved of armour that didn't have that kicked-by-trolls look.
|
|
|
|
He liked it to make it clear that it had been doing its job.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
'The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn
|
|
stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where's the sense in that?
|
|
What are we, magpies? Good heavens, /potatoes/ are worth more than gold!'
|
|
'Surely not!' 'If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you
|
|
prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?' 'Yes, but a desert island
|
|
isn't Ankh-Morpork!' 'And that proves gold is only valuable because we
|
|
agree it is, right? It's just a dream. But a potato is always worth a
|
|
potato, anywhere. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you've got a
|
|
meal, /anywhere/. Bury gold in the ground and you'll be worrying about
|
|
thieves for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at
|
|
a dividend of a thousand per cent.'
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Unseen Academicals (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for,
|
|
and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it,
|
|
but even sitting down, you had to stand out.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title I Shall Wear Midnight (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
It is important that we know where we come from,
|
|
because if you do not know where you come from,
|
|
then you don't know where you are,
|
|
and if you don't know where you are,
|
|
you don't know where you're going.
|
|
|
|
And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I
|
|
could change the past. Well, I can't, but I can change the
|
|
present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out
|
|
to be a past worth having.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Snuff (2)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
They were crude weapons, to be sure, but a flint axe hitting your head does
|
|
not need a degree in physics.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
It is a strange thing to find yourself doing something you
|
|
have apparently always wanted to do, when in fact up until
|
|
that moment you had never known that you always wanted to do it...
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Raising Steam (8)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Yesterday you never thought about it and after today you
|
|
don't know what you would do without it.
|
|
|
|
That was what the technology was doing.
|
|
It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
If you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 57 (Anchor Books edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Rhys Rhysson, Low King of the dwarfs, was a dwarf of keen intelligence,
|
|
but he sometimes wondered why someone with that intelligence would go into
|
|
dwarfish politics, let alone be King of the Dwarfs. Lord Vetinari had it
|
|
so easy he must hardly know he was born! The King thought that humans
|
|
were, well, reasonably sensible, whereas there was an old dwarf proverb
|
|
which, translated, said, "Any three dwarfs having a sensible conversation
|
|
will always end up having four points of view."
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 64
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Curious, the Patrician thought, as Drumknott hurried away to dispatch a
|
|
clacks to the editor of the /Times/, that people in Ankh-Morpork professed
|
|
not to like change while at the same time fixating on every new
|
|
entertainment and diversion that came their way. There was nothing the
|
|
mob liked better than novelty. Lord Vetinari sighed again. Did they
|
|
actually think? These days /everybody/ used the clacks, even little old
|
|
ladies who used it to send him clacks messages complaining about all
|
|
these newfangled ideas, totally missing the irony. And in this doleful
|
|
mood he ventured to wonder if they ever thought back to when things were
|
|
just old-fangled or not fangled at all as against the modern day when
|
|
fangled had reached its apogee. Fangling was indeed, he thought, here
|
|
to stay. Then he wondered: had anyone ever thought of themselves as a
|
|
fangler?
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 175 (third paragraph has a final sentence, but it's about 'grags'
|
|
# which wouldn't make any sense here where's no context about them)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Mister Lipwig, you know what they say about dwarfs?"
|
|
|
|
Moist looked blank. "Very small people?"
|
|
|
|
"'Two dwarfs is an argument, three dwarfs is a war,' Mister Lipwig. It's
|
|
squabble, squabble, squabble. It's built into their culture. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 233 (second paragraph of a footnote)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
There clearly has been magic at work in the Netherglades and its future as
|
|
the pharmacopoeia of the world is being tested by Professor Rincewind of
|
|
Unseen University. A dispatch from him reveals that the juice pressed from
|
|
a certain little yellow flower induces certainty in the patient for up to
|
|
fifteen minutes. About what they are certain they cannot specify, but the
|
|
patient is, in that short time, completely certain about /everything/. And
|
|
further research has found that a floating water hyacinth yields in its
|
|
juices total /un/certainty about anything for half a hour. Philosophers
|
|
are excited about the uses for these potions, and the search continues for
|
|
a plant that combines the qualities of both, thereby being of great use to
|
|
theologians.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 288
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
The town of Big Cabbage, theoretically the last place any sensible person
|
|
would want to visit, was nevertheless popular throughout the summer because
|
|
of the attractions of Brassica World and the Cabbage Research Institute,
|
|
whose students were the first to get a cabbage to a height of five hundred
|
|
yards propelled entirely by its own juices. Nobody asked why they felt it
|
|
was necessary to do this, but that was science for you, and, of course,
|
|
students.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 363-364 ("Of the Wheel the Spoke" is the goblin's formal name; perhaps
|
|
# a new name chosen or given after inventing the bicycle?)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
A few weeks later, Drumknott persuaded Lord Vetinari to accompany him to
|
|
the area behind the palace where a jungle of drain pipes emptied and
|
|
several mismatched sheds, washhouses, and lean-tos housed some of the
|
|
necessary functions without which a modern palace could not operate.(1)
|
|
|
|
There was a young goblin waiting there, rather nervous, clasping what
|
|
looked like two wheels held together by not very much. The wheels were
|
|
spinning.
|
|
|
|
Durmknott cleared his throat. "Show his lordship your new invention,
|
|
Mister Of the Wheel the Spoke."
|
|
|
|
(1) Frankly most palaces are just like this. Their backsides do not bear
|
|
looking at.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
%e section
|
|
#-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
# Used for interaction with Death.
|
|
#
|
|
%section Death
|
|
%title Death Quotes (6)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
WHERE THE FIRST PRIMAL CELL WAS, THERE WAS I ALSO. WHERE MAN IS, THERE AM I. WHEN THE LAST LIFE CRAWLS UNDER FREEZING STARS, THERE WILL I BE.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# Feet of Clay, p. 17 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. /I/ TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# Men at Arms, p. 27 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
THINK OF IT MORE AS BEING ... DIMESIONALLY DISADVANTAGED.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# Soul Music, p. 146 (Harper Torch edition; we omit "said Death," after comma)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
I MAY HAVE ALLOWED MYSELF SOME FLICKER OF EMOTION IN THE RECENT PAST, BUT I CAN GIVE IT UP ANY TIME I LIKE.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
# Not a direct quote, but a reference to Thief of Time and the fact that
|
|
# the player is War
|
|
HAVE YOU SPOKEN TO RONNIE LATELY?
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# Raising Steam, p. 180 (Anchor Books edition)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE MERELY DEAD.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
%e section
|