8416 lines
316 KiB
Plaintext
8416 lines
316 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 (14)
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# p. 67 (Signet edition; 'Morpork': initially Ankh and Morpork were twin
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# cities with distinct characteristics on opposite sides of the Ankh
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# river--they were eventually consolidated into Ankh-Morpork without
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# regard to which area was where)
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%passage 1
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It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiations 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 bazaars of Morpork with the Luggage trundling behind him, jostled
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a tall dark figure, turned to deliver a few suitable curses, and beheld
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Death.
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It had to be Death. No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and,
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of 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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# p. 116
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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. Everyone 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 cargoes 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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# p. 8 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
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%passage 3
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[...] In the meantime, they could only speculate about the revealed
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cosmos.
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There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and
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would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all
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time. This theory was popular among academics.
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An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that
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A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were
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all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant
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turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for
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the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be
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born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang
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hypothesis.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 13 (end of a long footnote; the initial obsession with 'eight' ended
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# fairly quickly within the Discworld series)
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%passage 4
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[...]
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There are, of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its
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light spectrum. Eight is a number of some considerable occult
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significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard.
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Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way
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to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 38 (first speaker is Rincewind, second is a pre-Vetinari Patrician)
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%passage 5
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"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
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"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 41 (title of 5th book is "Sourcery" but it's spelled "sorcery" here;
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# 'organising': British spelling)
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%passage 6
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All the heroes of the Circle Sea passed through the gates of Ankh-Morpork
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sooner or later. Most of them were from the barbaric tribes nearer the
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frozen Hub, which had a sort of export trade in heroes. Almost all of
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them had crude magic swords, whose unsuppressed harmonics on the astral
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plane played hell with any delicate experiments in applied sorcery for
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miles around, but Rincewind didn't object to them on that score. He knew
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himself to be a magical dropout, so it didn't bother him that the mere
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appearance of a hero at the city gates was enough to cause retorts to
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explode and demons to materialize all through the Magical Quarter. No,
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what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally
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gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk. There were too many
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of them, too. Some of the most notable questing grounds were a veritable
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hubbub in the season. There was talk of organising a rota.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# pp. 82-83 (passage starts mid-paragraph;
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# pronouns for deities are not capitalized;
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# Bravd and the Weasel, obviously a parody of Fritz Leiber's
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# Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, appear at the beginning of the 1st
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# of 4 stories and then are left behind, never to be seen again;
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# "wenegrade wiffard" is Rincewind and "fome fort of clerk" is
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# Twoflower the tourist; the seemingly abrupt end of the passage
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# is the end of the 2nd of the 4 stories that make up the book;
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# 'centre': British spelling; 'billion': British usage gives it a
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# value of 'million millions', equivalent to American 'trillion';
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# the second paragraph of this passage is the data.base quote
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# for "blind io" and the second half of the passage is the
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# data.base quote for "*lady" and "offler")
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%passage 7
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[...] The disc gods themselves, despite the splendor of the world below
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them, are seldom satisfied. It is embarrassing to know that one is a god
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of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have
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its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds
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whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination. No wonder,
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then, that the disc gods spend more time bickering than in omnicognizance.
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On this particular day Blind Io, by dint of constant vigilance the chief
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of the gods, sat with his chin on his hand and looked at the gaming board
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on the red marble table in front of him. Blind Io had got his name
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because, where his eye sockets should have been, there were nothing but
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two areas of blank skin. His eyes, of which he had an impressively large
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number, led a semi-independent life of their own. Several were currently
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hovering above the table.
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The gaming board was a carefully-carved map of the disc world, overprinted
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with squares. A number of beautifully modelled playing pieces were now
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occupying some of the squares. A human onlooker would, for example, have
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recognized in two of them the likenesses of Bravd and the Weasel. Others
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represented yet more heroes and champions, of which the disc had a more
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than adequate supply.
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Still in the game were Io, Offler the Crocodile God, Zephyrus the god of
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slight breezes, Fate, and the Lady. There was an air of concentration
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around the board now that the lesser players had been removed from the
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Game. Chance had been an early casualty, running her hero into a full
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house of armed gnolls (the result of a lucky throw by Offler) and shortly
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afterwards Night had cashed his chips, pleading an appointment with
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Destiny. Several minor deities had drifted up and were kibitzing over
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the shoulders of the players.
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Side bets were made that the Lady would be the next to leave the board.
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Her last champion of any standing was now a pinch of potash in the ruins
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of still-smoking Ankh-Morpork, and there were hardly any pieces that she
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could promote to first rank.
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Blind Io took up the dice-box, which was a skull whose various orifices
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had been stoppered with rubies, and with several of his eyes on the Lady
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he rolled three fives.
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She smiled. This was the nature of the Lady's eyes: they were bright
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green, lacking iris or pupil, and they glowed from within.
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The room was silent as she scrabbled in her box of pieces and, from the
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very bottom, produced a couple that she set down on the board with two
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decisive clicks. The rest of the players, as one God, craned forward to
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peer at them.
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"A wenegrade wiffard and fome fort of clerk," said Offler the Crocodile
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God, hindered as usual by his tusks. "Well, weally!" With one claw he
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pushed a pile of bone-white tokens into the centre of the table.
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The Lady nodded slightly. She picked up the dice-cup and held it as steady
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as a rock, yet all the gods could hear the three cubes rattling about
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inside. And then she sent them bouncing across the table.
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A six. A three. A five.
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Something was happening to the five, however. Battered by the chance
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collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun
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gently and came down a seven.
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Blind Io picked up the cube and counted the sides.
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"Come /on/," he said wearily. "Play fair."
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 84 (Ankh-Morpork was burned soon after Twoflower introduced the concept
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# of fire insurance; a longer version of this passage is the data.base
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# quote for "tourist")
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%passage 8
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Picturesque. That was a new word to Rincewind the wizard (B. Mgc.,
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Unseen University [failed]). It was one of a number he had picked up
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since leaving the charred ruins of Ankh-Morpork. Quaint was another one.
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Picturesque meant--he decided after careful observation of the scenery
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that inspired Twoflower to use the word--that the landscape was horribly
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precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through
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which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown.
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Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist,
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Rincewind decided, meant "idiot."
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 85 ('memorising': British spelling)
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%passage 9
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Currently Twoflower was showing a great interest in the theory and practice
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of magic.
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"It all seems, well, rather useless to me," he said. "I always thought
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that, you know, a wizard just said the words and that was that. Not all
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this tedious memorising."
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Rincewind agreed moodily. He tried to explain that magic had indeed once
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been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the
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Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of
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Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve
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a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. In practical
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terms, this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was
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relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light
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patterns. On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in
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the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic
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preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of
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leverage flicking his brain out through his ears.
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He went on to add that some of the ancient magic could still be found in
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its raw state, recognizable--to the initiated--by the eightfold shape it
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made in the crystalline structure of space-time. There was the metal
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octiron, for example, and the gas octogen. Both radiated dangerous
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amounts of raw enchantment.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 166 ('Lio!rt' with embedded exclamation point is correct; book's text
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# is missing the opening quote before ["]You arrogant barbarian--")
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%passage 10
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"I challange you," said Hrun, glaring at the brothers, "both at once."
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Lio!rt and Liartes exchanged looks.
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"You'll fight us both together?" said Liartes, a tall, wiry man with long
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black hair.
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"Yah."
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"That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?"
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"Yah. I outnumber you one to two."
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Lio!rt scowled. "You arrogant barbarian--"
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"That just about does it!" growled Hrun. "I'll--"
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The Loremaster put out a blue-veined hand to restrain him.
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"It is forebidden to fight on the Killing Ground," he said, and paused
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while he considered the sense of this. "You know what I mean, anyway," he
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hazarded, giving up, and added, "As the challanged parties my lords Lio!rt
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and Liartes have choice of weapons."
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"Dragons," they said together. Liessa snorted.
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"Dragons can be used offensively, therefore they are weapons," said Lio!rt
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firmly. "If you disagree we can fight over it."
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"Yah," said his brother, nodding at Hrun.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 196
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%passage 11
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Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do.
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Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had
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long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality
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by not dying.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 201 (entire paragraph is enclosed within parentheses)
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%passage 12
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Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as
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/annuals/, which were sown this year to come up later this year,
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/biennials/, sown this year to grow next year, and /perennials/, sown this
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year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare /re-annuals/
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which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could
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be planted this year to come up /last year/. The /vul/ nut vine was
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particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years
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prior to its seed actually being sown. /Vul/ nut wine was reputed to give
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certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut's
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point of view, the past. Strange but true.
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 217 (Rincewind and Twoflower are slated to become ritual sacrifices)
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%passage 13
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"I hope you're not proposing to enslave us," said Twoflower.
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Marchesa looked genuinely shocked. "Certainly not! Whatever could
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have given you that idea? Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and
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comfortable--"
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"Oh, good," said Rincewind.
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"--just not very long."
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[The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# pp. 228-229 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
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%passage 14
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[...] She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her
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never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest
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need. And, then again, sometimes she didn't. She was like that. She
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didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of
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dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times
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when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick
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up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face. Of course,
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sometimes he didn't. Among all the gods she was at one and the same time
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the most courted and the most cursed.
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[The Colour of Magic, 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 The Light Fantastic (12)
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# p. 92 (Signet edition)
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%passage 1
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'Cohen ish my name, boy.' Bethan'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. 'That's right boy. I'm a lifetime in my
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own legend.'
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[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage 1
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# p. 113 (Twoflower is teaching the Riders how to play bridge;
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# in /The Light Fantastic/, Death's dialog uses quotation marks
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# and full uppercase rather than the small capital letters used in
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# the other books)
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%passage 2
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Death sat at one side of a black baize table in the centre 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
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GET 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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# p. 7 (passage starts mid-sentence; the too-long-to-answer question is
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# "Why have Rincewind and Twoflower fallen off the Disc's rim?",
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# alluding to the conclusion of /The Colour of Magic/;
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# in /Sourcery/ and /Interesting Times/ and probably others, the
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# famous philosohper's name is spelled "Ly Tin Wheedle")
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%passage 3
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[...] such questions take time and could be more trouble than they are
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worth. For example, it is said that someone at a party once asked the
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famous philosopher Ly Tin Weedle "Why are you here?" and the reply took
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three years.
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[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# p. 8 ('libraries': plural is accurate)
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%passage 4
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The only furnishing in the room was a lectern of dark wood, carved into the
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shape of a bird--well, to be frank, into the shape of a winged thing it is
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probably best not to examine too closely--and on the lectern, fastened to
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it by a heavy chain covered in padlocks, was a book.
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A large, but not particularly impressive, book. Other books in the
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University's libraries had covers inlaid with rare jewels and fascinating
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wood, or bound with dragon skin. This one was just a rather tatty leather.
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It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as "slightly
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foxed," although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though
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it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.
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[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
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%e passage
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# pp. 41-42
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%passage 5
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The barbarian chieftain said: "What then are the greatest things that a
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man may find in life?" This is the sort of thing you're supposed to say to
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maintain steppecred in barbarian circles.
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The man on his right thoughtfully drank his cocktail of mare's milk and
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snowcat blood, and spoke thus: "The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind
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in your hair, a fresh horse under you."
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The man on his left said: "The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the
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fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow."
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The chieftain nodded and said: "Surely it is the sight of your enemy
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slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women."
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There was a general murmur of whiskery approval at this outrageous display.
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Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, a small figure
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carefully warming his chilblains by the fire, and said: "But our guest,
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whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call
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the greatest things in life?"
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The guest paused in the middle of another unsuccessful attempt to light up.
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"What shay?" he said, toothlessly.
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"I said: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?"
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The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing.
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The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: "Hot
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water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper."
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 48 (Hanzel and Gretel, obviously...)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Have a bit more table," said Rincewind.
|
|
|
|
"No thanks, I don't like marzipan," said Twoflower. "Anyway, I'm sure it's
|
|
not right to eat other people's furniture."
|
|
|
|
"Don't worry," said Swires. "The old witch hasn't been seen for years.
|
|
They say she was done up good and proper by a couple of young tearaways."
|
|
|
|
"Kids of today," said Rincewind.
|
|
|
|
"I blame the parents," said Twoflower.
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 103
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because
|
|
one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots
|
|
who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally
|
|
suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say
|
|
the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those
|
|
studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association?
|
|
To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation coming from a
|
|
bunch of wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it,
|
|
of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards,
|
|
that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. Oh yeah, say
|
|
the heroes, why don't you...
|
|
|
|
And so on. This sort of thing has been going on for centuries, and caused
|
|
a number of major battles which have left large tracts of land uninhabitable
|
|
because of magical harmonics.
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 128
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"He'sh mad?"
|
|
|
|
"Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money."
|
|
|
|
"Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money
|
|
he'sh just ecshentric."
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 182 (Cohen is now wearing dentures with teeth made from diamonds)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably.
|
|
|
|
"What do you want, grandad?" he snarled.
|
|
|
|
Cohen paused until he had the man's full attention, and then he smiled. It
|
|
was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewelry that
|
|
seemed to light up the room.
|
|
|
|
"I will count to three," he said, in a friendly tone of voice. "One, Two."
|
|
His bony knee came up in the man's groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise,
|
|
and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as
|
|
the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain.
|
|
|
|
"Three," to told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of
|
|
fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 193-194 (this passage is the data.base quote for shopkeeper)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
There have been three general theories put forward to explain the
|
|
phenomenon of the wandering shops, or as they are generically known,
|
|
/tabernae vagantes/.
|
|
|
|
The first postulates that many thousands of years ago there evolved
|
|
somewhere in the multiverse a race whose single talent was to buy cheap
|
|
and sell dear. Soon they controlled a vast galactic empire or, as they put
|
|
it, Emporium, and the more advanced members of the species found a way to
|
|
equip their very shops with unique propulsion units that could break the
|
|
dark walls of space itself and open up vast new markets. And long after
|
|
the worlds of the Emporium perished in the heat death of their particular
|
|
universe, after one last defiant fire sale, the wandering starshops still
|
|
ply their trade, eating their way through the pages of space-time like a
|
|
worm through a three-volume novel.
|
|
|
|
The second is that they are the creation of a sympathetic Fate, charged
|
|
with the role of supplying exactly the right thing at the right time.
|
|
|
|
The third is that they are simply a very clever way of getting around the
|
|
various Sunday Closing acts.
|
|
|
|
All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They
|
|
explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 205
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Where to they all come from?" said Twoflower, as they fled yet another mob.
|
|
|
|
"Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the
|
|
shopkeeper, "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than
|
|
a totally sane person."
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 229-230 ('grey': British spelling is accurate)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Trymon was looking at him. /Something/ was looking at him. And still the
|
|
others hadn't noticed. Could he even explain it? Trymon looked the same
|
|
as he had always done, except for the eyes, and a slight sheen to his skin.
|
|
|
|
Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All
|
|
the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely
|
|
because they value souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the
|
|
universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the
|
|
grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even
|
|
according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn't even notice them.
|
|
|
|
[The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Equal Rites (10)
|
|
# p. 118 (Signet edition; passage starts mid-sentence and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
[...] it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing
|
|
that what you're attempting can't be done. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 218 (speaker is Granny Weatherwax)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"Million-to-one chances," she said, "crop up nine times out of ten."
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 96-97 ('Tannoy': public address speaker)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Animal minds are simple, and therefore sharp. Animals never spend time
|
|
dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits
|
|
they've missed. The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly
|
|
expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from,
|
|
and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives
|
|
it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never
|
|
tries to walk and chew gum at the same time.
|
|
|
|
The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things
|
|
around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens
|
|
of biological calendars and timepieces. There's thoughts about to be said,
|
|
and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and
|
|
a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. To a telepath the human head is
|
|
a din. It is a railway terminus with all the Tannoys talking at once.
|
|
It is a complete FM waveband--and some of those stations aren't reputable,
|
|
they're outlawed pirates on forbidden seas who play late-night records with
|
|
limbic lyrics.
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 18-19
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Smith took a spade from beside the back door and hesitated.
|
|
|
|
"Granny."
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes!"
|
|
|
|
"Well, how?"
|
|
|
|
Granny paused at the bottom of the stairs.
|
|
|
|
"Reluctantly."
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 70
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it
|
|
was safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say that a
|
|
little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a
|
|
lot of ignorance."
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 113-114 (Esk is a young girl)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
The barges stopped at some of the towns. By tradition only the men went
|
|
ashore, and only Amschat, wearing his ceremonial Lying hat, spoke to
|
|
non-Zoons. Esk usually went with him. He tried hinting that she should
|
|
obey the unwritten rules of Zoon life and stay afloat, but a hint was to
|
|
Esk what a mosquito bite was to the average rhino because she was already
|
|
learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly
|
|
rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 119-120 (next passage is a direct continuation of this one)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
The town was smaller than Ohulan, and very different because it lay on the
|
|
junction of three trade routes quite apart from the river itself. It was
|
|
built around one enormous square which was a cross between a permanent
|
|
exotic traffic jam and a tent village. Camels kicked mules, mules kicked
|
|
horses, horses kicked camels and they all kicked humans; there was a riot
|
|
of colours, a din of noise, a nasal orchestration of smells and the steady,
|
|
heady sound of hundreds of people working hard at making money.
|
|
|
|
One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other
|
|
people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc
|
|
had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back
|
|
on older, more traditional forms of banditry.
|
|
|
|
Strangely enough these often involved considerable effort. Rolling heavy
|
|
rocks to the top of cliffs for a decent ambush, cutting down trees to
|
|
block the road, and digging a pit lined with spikes while still keeping a
|
|
wicked edge on a dagger probably involved a much greater expenditure of
|
|
thought and muscle than more socially-acceptable professions but,
|
|
nevertheless, there were still people misguided enough to endure all this,
|
|
plus long nights in uncomfortable surroundings, merely to get their hands
|
|
on perfectly ordinary large boxes of jewels.
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 120-121 (this passage is a direct continuation of preceding one;
|
|
# "I said, what is happening here?" actually omits "is"
|
|
# but must be a typo--fixed here to avoid bug reports;
|
|
# 'broomstick' is Esk's disguised wizard's staff)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
So a town like Zemphis was the place where caravans split, mingled and
|
|
came together again, as dozens of merchants and travellers banded together
|
|
for protection against the socially disadvantaged on the trails ahead.
|
|
Esk, wandering unregarded amidst the bustle, learned all this by the simple
|
|
method of finding someone who looked important and tugging on the hem of
|
|
his coat.
|
|
|
|
This particular man was counting bales of tobacco and would have succeeded
|
|
but for the interruption.
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"I said, what is happening here?"
|
|
|
|
The man meant to say: "Push off and bother someone else." He meant to
|
|
give her a light cuff about the head. So he was astonished to find himself
|
|
bending down and talking seriously to a small, grubby-faced child holding
|
|
a large broomstick (which also, it seemed to him later, was in some
|
|
indefinable way /paying attention/).
|
|
|
|
He explained about the caravans. The child nodded.
|
|
|
|
"People all get together to travel?"
|
|
|
|
"Precisely."
|
|
|
|
"Where to?"
|
|
|
|
"All sorts of places. Sto Lat, Pseudopolis... Ankh-Morpork, of course...."
|
|
|
|
"But the river goes there," said Esk, reasonably. "Barges. The Zoons."
|
|
|
|
"Ah, yes," said the merchant, "but they charge high prices and they can't
|
|
carry everything and, anyway, no one trusts them much."
|
|
|
|
"But they're very honest!"
|
|
|
|
"Huh, yes," he said. "But you know what they say: never trust an honest
|
|
man." He smiled knowingly.
|
|
|
|
"Who says that?"
|
|
|
|
"They do. You know. People," he said, a certain uneasiness entering his
|
|
voice.
|
|
|
|
"Oh," said Esk. She thought about it. "They must be very silly," she said
|
|
primly. "Thank you, anyway."
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 127-128 (this time broomstick is Granny's defective witch's broomstick)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock
|
|
outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass of
|
|
pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.
|
|
|
|
Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort
|
|
of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsman across the
|
|
universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.
|
|
|
|
"Weellll," he said. "I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I
|
|
could. It's an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to
|
|
get airborne?"
|
|
|
|
"It flew like a bird," said Granny.
|
|
|
|
The dwarf lit a pipe. "I should very much like to see that bird," he said
|
|
reflectively. "I should imagine it's quite something to watch, a bird like
|
|
that."
|
|
|
|
"Yes, but can you repair it?" said Granny. "I'm in a hurry."
|
|
|
|
The dwarf sat down, slowly and deliberately.
|
|
|
|
"As for /repair/," he said, "well, I don't know about /repair/. Rebuild,
|
|
maybe. Of course, it's hard to get the bristles these days even if you can
|
|
find people to do the proper binding, and the spells need--"
|
|
|
|
"I don't want it rebuilt, I just want it to work properly," said Granny.
|
|
|
|
"It's an early model, you see," the dwarf plugged on. "Very tricky, those
|
|
early models. You can't get the wood--"
|
|
|
|
He was picked up bodily until his eyes were level with Granny's. Dwarves,
|
|
being magical in themselves as it were, are quite resistant to magic but
|
|
her expression looked as though she was trying to weld his eyeballs to the
|
|
back of his skull.
|
|
|
|
"Just repair it," she hissed. "Please?"
|
|
|
|
"What, make a bodge job?" said the dwarf, his pipe clattering to the floor.
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
"Patch it up, you mean? Betray my training by doing half a job?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes," said Granny. Her pupils were two little black holes.
|
|
|
|
"Oh," said the dwarf. "Right, then."
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 185 (actually uses four periods to mark a sentence ending in a elipsis)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
There may be universes where librarianship is considered a peaceful sort of
|
|
occupation, and where the risks are limited to large volumes falling off
|
|
the shelves on to one's head, but the keeper of a /magic/ library is no job
|
|
for the unwary. Spells have power, and merely writing them down and
|
|
shoving them between covers doesn't do anything to reduce it. The stuff
|
|
leaks. Books tend to react with one another, creating randomized magic
|
|
with a mind of its own. Books of magic are usually chained to their
|
|
shelves, but not to prevent them being stolen....
|
|
|
|
[Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Mort (11)
|
|
# p. 136 (Signet edition; passage is a footnote;
|
|
# Vetinari doesn't show up as recurring Patrician until /Sourcery/)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up
|
|
with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was
|
|
the Man; he had the Vote.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 11
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Mort was getting interested in the rock. It had curly shells in it, relics
|
|
of the early days of the world when the Creator had made creatures out of
|
|
stone, no-one knew why.
|
|
|
|
Mort was interested in lots of things. Why people's teeth fitted together
|
|
so neatly, for example. He'd given that one a lot of thought. Then there
|
|
was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night
|
|
when the light would come in useful. He knew the standard explanation,
|
|
which somehow didn't seem satisfying.
|
|
|
|
In short, Mort is one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag
|
|
full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic
|
|
behind the universe.
|
|
|
|
Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one. The Creator had a
|
|
lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it
|
|
understandable hadn't been one of them.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 18
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"But you're Death," said Mort. "You go around killing people!"
|
|
|
|
I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE /GET/
|
|
KILLED, BUT THAT'S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER
|
|
ALL, IT'D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING,
|
|
WOULDN'T IT?
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 25
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Is it magic?" said Mort.
|
|
|
|
WHAT DO YOU THINK? said Death. AM I REALLY HERE, BOY?
|
|
|
|
"Yes," said Mort slowly. "I... I've watched people. They look at you but
|
|
the don't see you, I think. You do something to their minds."
|
|
|
|
Death shook his head.
|
|
|
|
THEY DO IT ALL THEMSELVES, he said. THERE'S NO MAGIC. PEOPLE CAN'T SEE ME,
|
|
THEY SIMPLY WON'T ALLOW THEMSELVES TO DO IT. UNTIL IT'S TIME, OF COURSE.
|
|
WIZARDS CAN SEE ME, AND CATS. BUT YOUR AVERAGE HUMAN... NO, NEVER. He blew
|
|
a smoke ring at the sky, and added, STRANGE BUT TRUE.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 48-49 (Binky is Death's white horse, who was left 'parked' on a
|
|
# castle's roof; Mort is Death's novice apprentice)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
They were on the roof before he spoke again.
|
|
|
|
YOU TRIED TO WARN HIM, he said, removing Binky's nosebag.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, sir. Sorry."
|
|
|
|
YOU CANNOT INTERFERE WITH FATE. WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE WHO SHOULD LIVE AND
|
|
WHO SHOULD DIE?
|
|
|
|
Death watched Mort's expression carefully.
|
|
|
|
ONLY THE GODS ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT, he added. TO TINKER WITH THE FATE OF
|
|
EVEN ONE INDIVIDUAL COULD DESTROY THE WHOLE WORLD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
|
|
|
|
Mort nodded miserably.
|
|
|
|
"Are you going to send me home?" he said.
|
|
|
|
Death reached down and swung him up behind the saddle.
|
|
|
|
BECAUSE YOU SHOWED COMPASSION? NO. I MIGHT HAVE DONE IF YOU HAD SHOWN
|
|
PLEASURE. BUT YOU MUST LEARN THE COMPASSION PROPER TO YOUR TRADE.
|
|
|
|
"What's that?"
|
|
|
|
A /SHARP/ EDGE.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 59-61 (in Ankh-Morpork, Mort has accidentally walked through a wall
|
|
# into an immigrant Klatchian family's dining room; 'the creature
|
|
# who was not there' refers to Death during an earlier event)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"I'm no demon! I'm a human!" he said, and stopped in shock as his words
|
|
emerged in perfect Klatch.
|
|
|
|
"You're a thief?" said the father. "A murderer? To creep in thus, are you
|
|
a /tax-gatherer/?" His hand slipped under the table and came up holding a
|
|
meat cleaver honed to paper thinness. His wife screamed and dropped the
|
|
plate and clutched the youngest children to her.
|
|
|
|
Mort watched the blade weave through the air, and gave in.
|
|
|
|
"I bring you greetings from the uttermost circles of hell," he hazarded.
|
|
|
|
The change was remarkable. The cleaver was lowered and the family broke
|
|
into broad smiles.
|
|
|
|
"There is much luck to us if a demon visits," beamed the father. "What is
|
|
your wish, O foul spawn of Offler's loins?"
|
|
|
|
"Sorry?" said Mort.
|
|
|
|
"A demon brings blessing and good fortune on the man that helps it," said
|
|
the man. "How may we be of assistance, O evil dogsbreath of the nether
|
|
pit?"
|
|
|
|
"Well, I'm not very hungry," said Mort, "but if you know where I can get a
|
|
fast horse, I could be in Sto Lat before sunset."
|
|
|
|
The man beamed and bowed. "I know the very place, noxious extrusion of the
|
|
bowels, if you would be so good as to follow me."
|
|
|
|
Mort hurried out after him. The ancient ancestor watched them go with a
|
|
critical expression, its jowls rhymically chewing.
|
|
|
|
"That was what they call a demon around here?" it said. "Offler rot this
|
|
country of dampness, even their demons are third-rate, not a patch on the
|
|
demons we had in the Old Country."
|
|
|
|
The wife placed a small bowl of rice in the folded middle pair of hands of
|
|
the Offler statue (it would be gone in the morning) and stood back.
|
|
|
|
"Husband did say that last month at the /Curry Gardens/ he served a creature
|
|
who was not there," she said. "He was impressed."
|
|
|
|
Ten minutes later the man returned and, in solemn silence, placed a small
|
|
heap of gold coins on the table. They represented enough wealth to
|
|
purchase quite a large part of the city.
|
|
|
|
"He had a bag of them," he said.
|
|
|
|
The family stared at the money for some time. The wife sighed.
|
|
|
|
"Riches bring many problems," she said. "What are we to do?"
|
|
|
|
"We return to Klatch," said the husband firmly, "where our children can grow
|
|
up in a proper country, true to the glorious traditions of our ancient race
|
|
and men do not need to work as waiters for wicked masters but can stand tall
|
|
and proud. And we must leave right now, fragrant blossom of the date palm."
|
|
|
|
"Why so soon, O hard-working son of the desert?"
|
|
|
|
"Because," said the man, "I have just sold the Patrician's champion
|
|
racehorse."
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 139-140 (passage ends mid-sentence)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"You don't know much about monarchy, do you?" said Keli.
|
|
|
|
"Um, no?"
|
|
|
|
"She means better to be a dead queen in your own castle than a live
|
|
commoner somewhere else," said Cutwell, [...]
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 158
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"You mean you won't help?" said Mort. "Not even if you can?"
|
|
|
|
"Give the boy a prize," growled Albert. "And it's no good thinking you can
|
|
appeal to my better nature under this here crusty exterior," he added,
|
|
"'cos my interior's pretty damn crusty too."
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 159-160 (Death has come to an employment agency--a new concept in
|
|
# Ankh-Morpork--looking for a job)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"And what was your previous position?"
|
|
|
|
I BEG YOUR PARDON?
|
|
|
|
"What did you do for a living?" said the thin young man behind the desk.
|
|
|
|
I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS
|
|
THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"
|
|
|
|
I SUPPOSE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF EXPERTISE WITH AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS? he
|
|
ventured after a while.
|
|
|
|
The young man shook his head firmly.
|
|
|
|
NO?
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 205
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Death raised his skull and sniffed the air.
|
|
|
|
The sound cut through all the other noises in the hall and forced them
|
|
into silence.
|
|
|
|
It is the kind of noise that is heard on the twilight edges of dreams,
|
|
the sort that you wake from in the cold sweat of mortal horror. It was
|
|
the snuffling under the door of dread. It was like the snuffling of a
|
|
hedgehog, but if so then it was the kind of hedgehog that crashes out of
|
|
the verges and flattens lorries. It was the kind of noise you wouldn't
|
|
want to hear twice; you wouldn't want to hear it /once/.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 207
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Well, that was a lesson to all of us," the bursar continued, brushing dust
|
|
and candle wax off his robe. He looked up, expecting to see the statue of
|
|
Alberto Malich back on its pedestal.
|
|
|
|
"Clearly even statues have feelings," he said. "I myself recall, when I
|
|
was but a first-year student, writing my name on his... well, never mind.
|
|
The point is, I propose here and now we replace the statue."
|
|
|
|
Dead silence greeted this suggestion.
|
|
|
|
"With, say, an exact likeness cast in gold. Suitably embellished with
|
|
jewels, as befits our great founder," he went on brightly.
|
|
|
|
"And to make sure no students deface it in any way I suggest we then erect
|
|
it in the deepest cellar," he continued.
|
|
|
|
"And then lock the door," he added. Several wizards began to cheer up.
|
|
|
|
"And throw away the key?" said Rincewind.
|
|
|
|
"And /weld/ the door," the bursar said. He had just remembered about The
|
|
Mended Drum. He thought for a while and remembered about the physical
|
|
fitness regime as well.
|
|
|
|
"And then brick up the doorway," he said. There was a round of applause.
|
|
|
|
"And throw away the brick layer!" chortled Rincewind, who felt he was
|
|
getting the hang of this.
|
|
|
|
The bursar scowled at him. "No need to get carried away," he said.
|
|
|
|
[Mort, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Sourcery (10)
|
|
# p. 9 (Signet edition; passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"[...] And what would humans be without love?"
|
|
|
|
RARE, said Death. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done.
|
|
They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the
|
|
attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in
|
|
the attempt.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 11 ('worth while': two words is accurate, although strange)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"I meant," said Ipslore, bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes
|
|
living worth while?"
|
|
|
|
CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.
|
|
|
|
"Curse you!"
|
|
|
|
MANY HAVE, said Death evenly.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 40-41 (text has 'the moment and the words' which is obviously a typo;
|
|
# it might have intended 'that' for 'and'; we just drop 'and')
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This
|
|
thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that
|
|
was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well. This thief
|
|
had scandalised Ankh by taking a particular interest in stealing, with
|
|
astonishing success, things that were in fact not only nailed down but
|
|
also guarded by keen-eyed guards in inaccessible strongrooms. There are
|
|
artists that will paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of
|
|
thief that could steal it.
|
|
|
|
This particular thief was credited with stealing the jeweled disemboweling
|
|
knife from the temple of Offler the Crocodile God during the middle of
|
|
Evensong, and the silver shoes from the Patrician's finest racehorse
|
|
while it was in the process of winning a race. When Gritoller Mimpsey,
|
|
vice-president of the Thieves' Guild, was jostled in the marketplace and
|
|
then found on returning home that a freshly-stolen handful of diamonds
|
|
had vanished from their place of concealment, he knew who to blame.(1)
|
|
This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment the
|
|
words were out of your mouth.
|
|
|
|
(1) This was because Gritoller had swallowed the jewels for safe keeping.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 63-64 ('Compleet', 'Majik', 'enterr', 'physycal', 'hys', 'bodie',
|
|
# 'Destinie', 'Deathe', 'werre', 'nowe', 'menne', 'Ende',
|
|
# 'Worlde', 'hadd', 'bee', 'goddes', 'ould', 'Apocralypse',
|
|
# 'legende', 'thee': all accurate; 'ould' may be a typo...)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
It was deathly quiet in the Library. The books were no longer frantic.
|
|
They'd passed through their fear and out into the calm waters of abject
|
|
terror, and they crouched on their shelves like so many mesmerised rabbits.
|
|
|
|
A long hairy arm reached up and grabbed /Casplock's Compleet Lexicon of
|
|
Majik and Precepts for the Wise/ before it could back away, soothed its
|
|
terror with a long-fingered hand, and opened it under 'S'. The Librarian
|
|
smoothed the trembling page gently and ran a horny nail down the entries
|
|
until he came to:
|
|
|
|
*Sourceror*, /n. (mythical). A proto-wizard, a doorway through/
|
|
/which new majik may enterr the world, a wizard not limited by/
|
|
/the physycal capabilities of hys own bodie, not by Destinie,/
|
|
/nor by Deathe. It is written that there once werre sourcerors/
|
|
/in the youth of the world but not may there by nowe and blessed/
|
|
/be, for sourcery is not for menne and the return of sourcery/
|
|
/would mean the Ende of the Worlde... If the Creator hadd meant/
|
|
/menne to bee as goddes, he ould have given them wings./
|
|
/SEE ALSO: thee Apocralypse, the legende of thee Ice Giants,/
|
|
/and thee Teatime of the Goddes./
|
|
|
|
The Librarian read the cross-references, turned back to the first entry,
|
|
and stared at it through deep dark eyes for a long time. Then he put the
|
|
book back carefully, crept under his desk, and pulled the blanket over
|
|
his head.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 71-72
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
The current Patrician, head of the extremely rich and powerful Vetinari
|
|
family, was thin, tall and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin.
|
|
Just by looking at him you could tell he was the sort of man you'd expect
|
|
to keep a white cat, and caress it idly while sentencing people to death
|
|
in a piranha tank; and you'd hazard for good measure that he probably
|
|
collected rare, thin porcelain, turning it over and over in his blue-white
|
|
fingers while distant screams echoed from the depths of the dungeons. You
|
|
wouldn't put it past him to use the word "exquisite" and have thin lips.
|
|
He looked the kind of person who, when they blinked, you mark it off on
|
|
the calendar.
|
|
|
|
Practically none of this was in fact the case, although he did have a small
|
|
and exceedingly elderly wire-haired terrior called Wuffles that smelled
|
|
badly and wheezed at people. It was said to be the only thing in the
|
|
entire world he truly cared about. He did of course sometimes have people
|
|
horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly
|
|
acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the
|
|
overwhelming majority of citizens.(1) The people of Ankh are of a
|
|
practical persuasion, and felt that the Patrician's edict forebidding all
|
|
street theatre and mime artists made up for a lot of things. He didn't
|
|
administer a reign of terror, just the occasional light shower.
|
|
|
|
(1) The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as
|
|
everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 75
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"What exactly /is/ the Aprocralypse?"
|
|
|
|
Rincewind hesitated. "Well," he said, "it's the end of the world. Sort
|
|
of."
|
|
|
|
"Sort of? /Sort of/ the end of the world? You mean we won't be certain?
|
|
We'll all look around and say 'Pardon me, did you hear something?'?"
|
|
|
|
"It's just that no two seers have ever agreed about it. There have been
|
|
all kinds of vague predictions. Quite mad, some of them. So it was
|
|
called the Apocralypse." He looked embarrassed. "It's a sort of
|
|
apocryphal Apocalypse. A kin of pun, you see."
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 110
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"You're very quiet, Spelter. Do you not agree?"
|
|
|
|
No. The world had sourcery once, and gave it up for wizardry. Wizardry is
|
|
magic for men, not gods. It's not for us. There was something wrong with
|
|
it, and we have forgotten what it was. I liked wizardry. It didn't upset
|
|
the world. It fitted. It was right. A wizard was all I wanted to be.
|
|
|
|
He looked down at his feet.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," he whispered.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 141-142 (Rincewind and Nijel have just entered a harem)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Rincewind had eyes for none of this. [...] they were swamped by the
|
|
considerably bigger flood of panic at the sight of four guards turning
|
|
towards him with scimitars in their hands and the light of murder in their
|
|
eyes.
|
|
|
|
Without hesitation, Rincewind took a step backwards.
|
|
|
|
"Over to you, friend," he said.
|
|
|
|
"Right!"
|
|
|
|
Nijel drew his sword and held it out in front of him, his arms trembling at
|
|
the effort.
|
|
|
|
There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what
|
|
would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind
|
|
would never quite forget to the end of this life.
|
|
|
|
"Erm," he said, "excuse me...."
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 198-199
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively
|
|
that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an
|
|
illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers
|
|
because it did not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of
|
|
wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Ly Tin Wheedle, arguably
|
|
the Disc's greatest philosopher,(1) who after some thought proclaimed that
|
|
although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was
|
|
/very large/.
|
|
|
|
And so psychic order was restored. Distance is, however, an entirely
|
|
subjective phenomenon and creatures of magic can adjust it to suit
|
|
themselves.
|
|
|
|
They are not necessarily very good at it.
|
|
|
|
(1) He always argued that he was.
|
|
|
|
[Sourcery, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Wyrd Sisters (15)
|
|
# p. 318 (ROC edition; passage starts mid-paragraph;
|
|
# speaker is Granny Weatherwax)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"[...] Destiny /is/ important, see, but people go wrong when they think it
|
|
controls them. It's the other way around."
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 105-106
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Verence tried to avoid walking through walls. A man had his dignity.
|
|
|
|
He became aware that he was being watched.
|
|
|
|
He turned his head.
|
|
|
|
There was a cat sitting in the doorway, subjecting him to a slow blink. It
|
|
was a mottled grey and extremely fat...
|
|
|
|
No. It was extremely /big/. It was covered with so much scar tissue that
|
|
it looked like a fist with fur on it. Its ears were a couple of perforated
|
|
stubs, its eyes two yellow slits of easy-going malevolence, its tail a
|
|
twitching series of question marks as it stared at him.
|
|
|
|
Greebo had heard that Lady Felmet had a small white female cat and had
|
|
strolled up to pay his respects.
|
|
|
|
Verence had never seen an animal with so much built-in villainy. He didn't
|
|
resist as it waddled across the floor and dried to rub itself against his
|
|
legs, purring like a waterfall.
|
|
|
|
"Well, well," said the king, vaguely. He reached down and made an effort
|
|
to scratch it behind the two ragged bits on top of its head. It was a
|
|
relief to find someone else besides another ghost who could see him, and
|
|
Greebo, he couldn't help feeling, was a distinctly unusual cat. Most of
|
|
the castle cats were either pampered pets or flat-eared kitchen and stable
|
|
habitues who generally resembled the very rodents they lived on. This cat,
|
|
on the other hand, was its own animal. All cats give that impression, of
|
|
course, but instead of the mindless animal self-absorption that passes for
|
|
secret wisdom in the creatures, Greebo radiated genuime intelligence. He
|
|
also radiated a smell that would have knocked over a wall and caused sinus
|
|
trouble in a dead fox.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 14-15
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
He wondered if ghosts hunted. Almost certainly not, he imagined. Or ate,
|
|
or drank either for that matter, and that was really depressing. He liked
|
|
a big noisy banquet and had quaffed(1) many a pint of good ale. And bad
|
|
ale, come to that. He'd never been able to tell the difference till the
|
|
following morning, usually.
|
|
|
|
(1) Quaffing is like drinking, but you spill more.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 60-61 (dwarfish mechanics: see /Equal Rites/)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked the fire, and put a
|
|
cloth over the mirror and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door.
|
|
She went out, locked the door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in
|
|
the privy.
|
|
|
|
This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery
|
|
in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch
|
|
concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.(1)
|
|
|
|
Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much
|
|
conviction. After a further couple of tries, she got off, fiddled with
|
|
the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from
|
|
one end of the stick, which quickly died away.
|
|
|
|
"Drat," she said, under her breath.
|
|
|
|
She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was
|
|
only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its
|
|
head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the
|
|
broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she
|
|
managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky
|
|
as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.
|
|
|
|
From above the trees came a muffled cursd against all dwarfish mechanics.
|
|
|
|
(1) She did nothing, although sometimes when she saw him in the village
|
|
she'd smile in a faint, puzzled way. After three weeks of this the
|
|
suspense was too much for him and he took his own life; in fact he took it
|
|
all the way across the continent, where he became a reformed character and
|
|
never went home again.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 76 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
And, with alarming suddenness, nothing happened.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 82 ('/Good/ fool': lowercase 'fool' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Is this a dagger I see before me?" he mumbled.
|
|
|
|
"Um. No, my lord. It's my hankerchief, you see. You can sort of tell the
|
|
difference if you look closely. It doesn't have as many sharp edges."
|
|
|
|
"/Good/ fool," said the duke, vaguely.
|
|
|
|
Totally mad, the Fool thought. Several bricks short of a bundle. So far
|
|
round the twist you could use him to open wine bottles.
|
|
|
|
"Kneel beside me," my Fool.
|
|
|
|
The Fool did so. The duke laid a soiled bandage on his shoulder.
|
|
|
|
"Are you loyal, Fool?" he said. "Are you trustworthy?"
|
|
|
|
"I swore to follow my lord until death," said the Fool hoarsely.
|
|
|
|
The duke pressed his mad face close to the Fool, who looked up into a pair
|
|
of bloodshot eyes.
|
|
|
|
"I didn't want to," he hissed conspiratorially. "They made me do it. I
|
|
didn't want--"
|
|
|
|
The door swung open. The dutchess filled the doorway. In fact, she was
|
|
nearly the same shape.
|
|
|
|
"Leonal!" she barked.
|
|
|
|
The fool was fascinated by what happened to the duke's eyes. The mad red
|
|
flame vanished, was sucked backwards, and replaced by the hard blue stare
|
|
he had come to recognize. It didn't mean, he realized, that the duke was
|
|
any less mad. Even the coldness of his sanity was madness in a way. The
|
|
duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly
|
|
went cuckoo.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 85
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
On the crest of the moor, where in the summer partridges lurked among the
|
|
bushes like small, whirring idiots, was a standing stone. It stood roughly
|
|
where the witches' territories met, although the boundaries were never
|
|
formally marked out.
|
|
|
|
The stone was about the same height as a tall man, and made of a bluish
|
|
tinted rock. It was considered intensely magical because, although there
|
|
was only one of it, /no-one had ever been able to count it/; if it saw
|
|
anyone looking at it speculatively, it shuffled behind them. It was the
|
|
most self-effacing monolith ever discovered.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 92 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Demons were like genies or philosophy professors--if you didn't word things
|
|
/exactly/ right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and
|
|
completely misleading answers.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 121
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Nanny Ogg was also out early. She hadn't been able to get any sleep
|
|
anyway, and besides, she was worried about Greebo. Greebo was one of her
|
|
few blind spots. While intellectually she would concede that he was
|
|
indeed a fat, cunning, evil-smelling multiple rapist, she nevertheless
|
|
instinctively pictured him as the small fluffy kitten he had been decades
|
|
before. The fact that he had once chased a female wolf up a tree and
|
|
seriously surprised a she-bear who had been innocently digging for roots
|
|
didn't stop her worrying that something bad might happen to him. It was
|
|
generally considered by everyone else in the kingdom that the only thing
|
|
that might slow Greebo down was a direct meteorite strike.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 133 (the duke has locked Nanny Ogg in the castle dungeon)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"I really advise you all to return home," said Granny Weatherwax. "There
|
|
has probably been a misunderstanding. Everyone knows a witch cannot be
|
|
held against her will."
|
|
|
|
"It's gone too far this time," said a peasant. "All this burning and
|
|
taxing and now this. I blame you witches. It's got to stop. I know my
|
|
rights."
|
|
|
|
"What rights are they?" said Granny.
|
|
|
|
"Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and
|
|
spunt." said the peasant promptly. "And acornage, every other year, and
|
|
the right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common. Until he set fire to
|
|
it. It was a bloody good goat, too."
|
|
|
|
"A man could go far, knowing his rights like you do," said Granny. "But
|
|
right now he should go home."
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 164
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Whatever happened to the rule about not meddling in politics?" said Magrat,
|
|
watching her retreating back.
|
|
|
|
Nanny Ogg massaged some like back into her fingers.
|
|
|
|
"By Hoki, that woman's got a jaw like an anvil," she said. "What was that?"
|
|
|
|
"I said, what about this rule about not meddling?" said Magrat.
|
|
|
|
"Ah," said Nanny. She took the girl's arm. "The thing is," she explained,
|
|
"as you advance in the Craft, you'll learn there is another rule. Esme's
|
|
obeyed it all her life."
|
|
|
|
"And what's that?"
|
|
|
|
"When you break rules, break 'em good and hard," said Nanny, and grinned a
|
|
set of gums that were more menacing than teeth.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 238
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"I mean it. Look at me. I wasn't supposed to be writing plays. Dwarfs
|
|
aren't even supposed to be able to /read/. I shouldn't worry too much
|
|
about destiny, if I was you. I was destined to be a miner. Destiny gets
|
|
it wrong half the time."
|
|
|
|
"But you said he looks like the Fool person. I can't see it myself, mark
|
|
you."
|
|
|
|
"The light's got to be right."
|
|
|
|
"Could be some destiny at work there."
|
|
|
|
Hwel shrugged. Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it.
|
|
Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it
|
|
turned out to be something else--coincidence, maybe, or providence. You
|
|
barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when
|
|
you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.
|
|
|
|
He used destiny a lot. As a tool for his plays it was even better than a
|
|
ghost. There was nothing like a bit of destiny to get the old plot rolling.
|
|
But it was a mistake to think you could spot the shape of it. And as for
|
|
thinking it could be controlled...
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 242 (passage starts mid-paragraph; Lancre has recently come out of a
|
|
# magic-induced 15-year stasis; 'things ... is': 'things' plural is
|
|
# accurate, though probably a typo)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
On top of the general suspicion of witches, it was dawning on the few people
|
|
in Lancre who had any dealings with the outside world that a) either more
|
|
things had been happening than they had heard about before or b) time was
|
|
out of joint. It wasn't easy to prove(1) but the few traders who came along
|
|
the mountain tracks after the winter seemed to be rather older than they
|
|
should have been. Unexplained happenings were always more or less expected
|
|
in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but several years
|
|
disappearing overnight was a bit of a first.
|
|
|
|
(1) Because of the way time was recorded among the various states, kingdoms
|
|
and cities. After all, when over an area of a hundred square miles the same
|
|
year is variously the Year of the Small Bat, the Anticipated Monkey, the
|
|
Hunting Cloud, Fat Cows, Three Bright Stallions and at least nine numbers
|
|
recording the time since(2) assorted kings, prohets, and strange events were
|
|
either crowned, born or happened, and each year was a different number of
|
|
months, and some of them don't have weeks, and one of them refuses to accept
|
|
the day as a measure of time, the only things it is possible to be sure of
|
|
is that good sex doesn't last long enough.(3)
|
|
|
|
(2) The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts /down/, not up. No-one
|
|
knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
|
|
|
|
(3) Except for the Zapingo tribe of the Great Nef, of course.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 250 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
It was a land of describable beauty.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 265 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
The past used to be a lot better than it is now.
|
|
|
|
[Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Pyramids (11)
|
|
# p. 218 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 1 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
What a chap needed at a time like this was a sign, some sort of book of
|
|
instructions. The trouble with life was that you didn't get a chance to
|
|
practice before doing it for real.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 128 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a
|
|
human being to be really stupid.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 9-10 ('tlingas' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
It was a full-length mirror. All assassins had a full-length mirror in
|
|
their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them
|
|
when you were badly dressed.
|
|
|
|
Teppic examined himself critically. The outfit had cost him his last
|
|
penny, and was heavy on the black silk. It whispered as he moved. It was
|
|
pretty good.
|
|
|
|
At least the headache was going. It had nearly crippled him all day; he'd
|
|
been in dread of having to start the run with purple spots in front of his
|
|
eyes.
|
|
|
|
He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them
|
|
on. Another box held a set of knives of Klatchian steel, their blades
|
|
darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken
|
|
from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed
|
|
throwing /tlingas/ were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A
|
|
thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the
|
|
chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped
|
|
down his back under his cloak; Teppic pocketed a slim tin container with an
|
|
assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for
|
|
ease of selection in the dark.
|
|
|
|
He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his
|
|
right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an
|
|
afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask
|
|
of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger,
|
|
a bag of assorted caltraps and a set of brass knuckles.
|
|
|
|
Teppic picked up his hat and checked its lining for the coil of cheesewire.
|
|
He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at
|
|
himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 30
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
He'd always remember the first night in the dormitory. It was long enough
|
|
to accommodate all eighteen boys in Viper House, and draughty enough to
|
|
accommodate the great outdoors. Its designer may have had comfort in mind,
|
|
but only so that he could avoid it whenever possible: he had contrived a
|
|
room that could actually be colder than the weather outside.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 92
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he
|
|
thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it's true
|
|
that there are billions of universes stacked along side one another, the
|
|
thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere.
|
|
|
|
But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how
|
|
magnificent the effort, they surely can't manage to be as godawfully stupid
|
|
as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with,
|
|
but over hundreds of thousands of years we've really improved on it.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 96 (Ptaclusp the pyramid builder, sons Ptaclusp IIa and Ptaclusp IIb)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Descendants! The gods had seen fit to give him one son who charged you for
|
|
the amount of breath expended in saying "Good morning", and another one who
|
|
worshipped geometry and stayed up all night designing aqueducts. You
|
|
scrimped and saved to send them to the best schools, and then they went and
|
|
paid you back by getting educated.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 136
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
It's a fact as immutable as the Third Law of Sod that there is no such
|
|
thing as a good Grand Vizier. A predilection to cackle and plot is
|
|
apparently part of the job spec.
|
|
|
|
High priests tend to get put in the same category. They have to face the
|
|
implied assumption that no sooner do they get the funny hat than they're
|
|
issuing strange orders, e.g., princesses tied to rocks for itinerant sea
|
|
monsters and throwing little babies in the sea.
|
|
|
|
This is a gross slander. Throughout the history of the Disc most high
|
|
priests have been serious, pious and conscientious men who have done their
|
|
best to interpret the wishes of the gods, sometimes disembowelling or
|
|
flaying alive hundreds of people in a day in order to make sure they're
|
|
getting it absolutely right.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 206-208 (text has 'that's now it happened'; 'now' changed to 'how' here)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Copolymer, the greatest storyteller in the history of the world, sat back
|
|
and beamed at the greatest minds in the world, assembled at the dining
|
|
table.
|
|
|
|
Teppic had added another iota to his store of new knowledge. 'Symposium'
|
|
meant a knife-and-fork tea.
|
|
|
|
"Well," said Copolymer, and launched into the story of the Tsortean Wars.
|
|
|
|
"You see, what happened was, /he'd/ taken /her/ back home, and her
|
|
father--this wasn't the old king, this was the one before, the one with the
|
|
wossname, he married some girl from over Elharib way, she had a squint,
|
|
what was her name now, began with a P. Or an L. One of them letters,
|
|
anyway. Her father owned an island out on the bay there, Papylos I think
|
|
it was. No, I tell a lie, it was Crinix. /Anyway/ the king, the other
|
|
king, he raised an army and they.... Elenor, that was her name. She had
|
|
a squint, you know. But quite attractive, they say. When I say married,
|
|
I trust I do not have to spell it out for you. I mean, it was a bit
|
|
unofficial. Er. Anyway, there was this wooden horse and after they'd got
|
|
in... Did I tell you about this horse? It was a horse. I'm pretty sure
|
|
it was a horse. Or maybe it was a chicken. Forget my own name next! It
|
|
was wossname's idea, the one with the limp. Yes. The limp in his leg, I
|
|
mean. Did I mention him? There'd been this fight. No, that was the other
|
|
one, I think. Yes. Anyway, this wooden pig, damn clever idea, they made
|
|
it out of thing. Tip of my tongue. Wood. But that was later, you know.
|
|
The fight! Nearly forgot the fight. Yes. Damn good fight. Everyone
|
|
banging on their shields and yelling. Wossname's armour shone like shining
|
|
armour. Fight and a half, that fight. Between thingy, not the one with
|
|
the limp, the other one, wossname, had red hair. /You/ know. Tall fellow,
|
|
talked with a lisp. Hold on, just remembered, he was from some other
|
|
island. Not him. The other one, with the limp. Didn't want to go, he
|
|
said he was mad. Of course, he /was/ bloody mad, definitely. I mean, a
|
|
wooden cow! Like wossname said, the king, no not that king, the other one,
|
|
he saw the goat, he said 'I fear the Ephibeans, especially when they're mad
|
|
enough to leave bloody great wooden livestock on the doorstep, talk about
|
|
nerve, they must think we was born yesterday, set fire to it,' and, of
|
|
course, wossname had nipped in round the back and put everyone to the
|
|
sword, talk about laugh. Did I say she had a squint? They said she was
|
|
pretty, but it takes all sorts. Yes. Anyway, that's how it happened.
|
|
/Now/, of course, wossname--I think he was called Melycanus, had a limp--he
|
|
wanted to go home, well, you would, they'd been there for /years/, he
|
|
wasn't getting any younger. That's why he dreamt up the thing about the
|
|
wooden wossname. Yes. I tell a lie, Lavaelous was the one with the knee.
|
|
Pretty good fight, that fight, take it from me."
|
|
|
|
He lapsed into self-satisfied silence.
|
|
|
|
"Pretty good fight," he mumbled and, smiling faintly, dropped off to sleep.
|
|
|
|
Teppic was aware that his own mouth was hanging open. He shut it. Along
|
|
the table several of the diners were wiping their eyes.
|
|
|
|
"Magic," said Xeno. "Sheer magic. Every word a tassle on the canopy of
|
|
Time."
|
|
|
|
"It's the way he remembers every tiny detail. Pin sharp," murmured Ibid.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 211
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"I'd love to stay and listen to you listening to me all day," he said.
|
|
"But there's a man over there I'd like to see."
|
|
|
|
"That's amazing," said Endos, making a short note and turning his attention
|
|
to a conversation further along the table. A philosopher had averred that
|
|
although truth was beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was
|
|
breaking out. Endos listened carefully.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is
|
|
well known that most people don't listen. They use the time when someone
|
|
else is speaking to think of what they're going to say next. True Listeners
|
|
have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity
|
|
value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find,
|
|
or at least hard to find twice.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 278 (perhaps ought to end this one with the first paragraph...)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
In the middle of the firestorm the Great Pyramid appeared to lift up a few
|
|
inches, on a beam of incandescence, and turn through ninety degrees. This
|
|
was almost certainly the special type of optical illusion which can take
|
|
place /even though no-one is actually looking at it/.
|
|
|
|
And then, with deceptive slowness and considerable dignity, it exploded.
|
|
|
|
It was almost too crass a word. What it did was this: it came apart
|
|
ponderously into building-sized chunks which drifted gently away from one
|
|
another, flying serenely out and over the necropolis. Several of them
|
|
struck other pyramids, badly damaging them in a lazy, unselfconscious way,
|
|
and then bounded on in silence until they ploughed to a halt behind a small
|
|
mountain of rubble.
|
|
|
|
Only then did the boom come. It went on for quite a long time.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 280 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Man was never intended to understand things he meddled with.
|
|
|
|
[Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Guards! Guards! (14)
|
|
# p. 283 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"I see you're very comfortable here," said Vimes weakly.
|
|
|
|
"Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in
|
|
yourself," said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. "The
|
|
world would be a happier place if more people remembered that."
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 133
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a
|
|
longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred
|
|
yards away rather than the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 26 (first and second paragraphs are actually end of one section,
|
|
# start of next one; first 'Thunder rolled...' had three dot
|
|
# elipsis, second hand has four, elipsis plus final period--
|
|
# first changed to four here so that they match)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Thunder rolled....
|
|
|
|
It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games,
|
|
and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and
|
|
what the rules are--who knows?
|
|
|
|
Best not to speculate.
|
|
|
|
Thunder rolled....
|
|
|
|
It rolled a six.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 48 (passage is a footnote)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make
|
|
the Thieves' Guilde /responsible/ for theft, with annual budgets, forward
|
|
planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an
|
|
agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it
|
|
that unauthorized crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was
|
|
generally a stick with nails in it.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 87 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Well, sir," he said, "I know that dragons have been extinct for thousands
|
|
of years, sir--"
|
|
|
|
"Yes?" The Patrician's eyes narrowed.
|
|
|
|
Vimes plunged on. "But sir, the thing is, do /they/ know?" [...]
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 114 (passage is a footnote)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
The Guild of Fire Fighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous
|
|
year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract
|
|
from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately,
|
|
the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters
|
|
would tend to go to prospective clients' houses in groups, making loud
|
|
comments like "Very inflammable looking place, this" and "Probably go up
|
|
like a firework with just one carelessly dropped match, know what I mean?"
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 131 (Sherlock Holmes)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however
|
|
improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was
|
|
impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right.
|
|
|
|
There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time....
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 150 (Dirty Harry with a small swamp dragon rather than a .45 Magnum...)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
A streak of green fire blasted out of the back of the shed, passed a foot
|
|
over the heads of the mob, and burned a charred rosette in the woodwork
|
|
over the door.
|
|
|
|
Then came a voice that was a honeyed purr of shear deadly menace.
|
|
|
|
"/This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the
|
|
city. It could burn your head clean off./"
|
|
|
|
Captain Vimes limped forward from the shadows.
|
|
|
|
A small and extremely frightened golden dragon was clamped firmly under one
|
|
arm. His other hand held it by the tail.
|
|
|
|
The rioters watched it, hypnotised.
|
|
|
|
"Now I know what you're thinking," Vimes went on, softly. "You're
|
|
wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And,
|
|
y'know, I ain't so sure myself..."
|
|
|
|
He leaned forward, sighting between the dragon's ears, and his voice
|
|
buzzed like a knife blade:
|
|
|
|
"What you've got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky?"
|
|
|
|
They swayed backwards as he advanced.
|
|
|
|
"Well?" he said. "/Are/ you feeling lucky?"
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 154 (passage is a footnote; ten pages later, Sergeant Colon uses the
|
|
# old version of the proverb)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
The phrase "Set a thief to catch a thief" had by this time (after strong
|
|
representations from the Thieves' Guilde) replaced a much older and
|
|
quintessentially Ankh-Morpork proverb, which was "Set a deep hole with
|
|
spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power,
|
|
broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief."
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 174 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
[...] There was no difference at all between the richest man and the
|
|
poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money,
|
|
food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn't
|
|
any /better/. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and
|
|
healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 205
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Might have been just an innocent bystander, sir," said Carrot.
|
|
|
|
"What, in Ankh-Morpork?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, sir."
|
|
|
|
"We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value," said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 262-263 (passage is a footnote; 'practise', 'practised' are accurate)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practised human sacrifice,
|
|
except that they really didn't need to practise any more because they had
|
|
got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be
|
|
used, but that was all right because in most of the religions refusing to
|
|
volunteer for sacrifice was an offense punishable by death.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 292
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
There were times when an ape had to do what a man had to do...
|
|
|
|
The orangutan threw a complex salute and swung away into the darkness.
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 299-300 + 325 (final part comes quite a bit later; Carrot is trying to
|
|
# alert oblivious Sergeant Colon that the dragon is coming)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"This is what it comes to!" muttered Colon. "Decent women can't walk down
|
|
the street without being eaten! Right, you bastards, you're... you're
|
|
/geography/--"
|
|
|
|
"Sergeant!" Carrot repeated urgently.
|
|
|
|
"It's history, not geography," said Nobby. "That's what you're supposed to
|
|
say. History. 'You're history!' you say."
|
|
|
|
"Well, whatever," snapped Colon. "Let's see now--"
|
|
|
|
[...(quite a while later)...]
|
|
|
|
"You heard the Man," he rasped. "One false move and you're... you're--" he
|
|
took a desparate stab at it--"you're Home Economics!"
|
|
|
|
[Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
# The original publication of /Eric/ featured extensive illustrations by
|
|
# Josh Kirby but the mass-market paperback edition contains none of them
|
|
# and omits his name. In the Harper Torch edition, the list of other
|
|
# books by the same auther has "Eric (with Josh Kirby)" even though the
|
|
# copyright and title pages of that very book do not mention him.
|
|
#
|
|
%title Eric (9)
|
|
# pp. 3-4 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, /technically/ they had,
|
|
quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but
|
|
somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they
|
|
didn't own their own horses anymore, and within a couple of months they
|
|
were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 195
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"I can see blue sky!" said Eric. "Where do you think we'll come out?" he
|
|
added. "And when?"
|
|
|
|
"Anywhere," said Rincewind. "Anytime."
|
|
|
|
He looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something
|
|
of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he
|
|
was just stepping on to, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best.
|
|
|
|
The next one was: I Thought You'd Like It.
|
|
|
|
Eric was standing on: For The Sake Of The Children.
|
|
|
|
'Weird, isn't it?' he said. 'Why do it like this?'
|
|
|
|
'I think they're meant to be good intentions,' said Rincewind. This was a
|
|
road to Hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 9-10 (passage has an interesting start but not much of a finish...)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"It's a haunting," he ventured. "Some short of ghost, maybe. A bell, book
|
|
and candle job."
|
|
|
|
The Bursar sighed. "We tried that, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
The Archchancellor leaned toward him.
|
|
|
|
"Eh?" he said.
|
|
|
|
"I /said/, we tried that, Archchancellor," said the Bursar loudly,
|
|
directing his voice at the old man's ear. "After dinner, you remember?
|
|
We used Humptemper's /Names of the Ants/ and rang Old Tom."(1)
|
|
|
|
"Did we, indeed. Worked, did it?"
|
|
|
|
"/No/, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
"Eh?"
|
|
|
|
(1) Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell
|
|
tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell
|
|
still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 14-15 (the top wizards have performed the Rite of AshkEnte)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Death pointedly picked invisible particles off the edge of his scythe.
|
|
|
|
The Archchancellor cupped a gnarled hand over his ear.
|
|
|
|
"What'd he say? Who's the fella with the stick?"
|
|
|
|
"It's Death, Archchancellor," said the Bursar patiently.
|
|
|
|
"Eh?"
|
|
|
|
"It's Death, sir. /You/ know."
|
|
|
|
"Tell him we don't want any," said the old wizard, waving his stick.
|
|
|
|
The Bursar sighed. "We summoned him, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
"Is it? What'd we go and do that for? Bloody silly thing to do."
|
|
|
|
The Bursar gave Death an embarrassed grin. He was on the point of asking
|
|
him to excuse the Archchancellor on account of age, but realized that this
|
|
would in the circumstances be a complete waste of breath.
|
|
|
|
"Are we talking about the wizard Rincewind? The one with the--" the Bursar
|
|
gave a shudder-- "horrible Luggage on legs? But he got blown up when there
|
|
was all that business with the sourcerer, didn't he?"(1)
|
|
|
|
INTO THE DUNGEON DIMENSIONS. AND NOW HE IS TRYING TO GET BACK HOME.
|
|
|
|
(1) The Bursar was referring obliquely to the difficult occasion when the
|
|
University very nearly caused the end of the world, and would in fact have
|
|
done so had it not been for a chain of events involving Rincewind, a magic
|
|
carpet and a half-brick in a sock. (See /Sourcery/.) The whole affair
|
|
was very embarrassing to wizards, as it always is to people who find out
|
|
afterward that they were on the wrong side all along,(2) and it is
|
|
remarkable how many of the University's senior staff were now adamant that
|
|
at the time they had been off sick, visiting their aunt, or doing research
|
|
with the door locked while humming loudly and had had no idea of what was
|
|
going on outside. There had been some desultory talk about putting up a
|
|
statue to Rincewind but, by the curious alchemy that tends to apply in
|
|
these sensitive issues, this quickly became a plaque, then a note on the
|
|
Role of Honor, and finally a motion of censure for being improperly dressed.
|
|
|
|
(2) ie, the one that lost.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 34
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Not that he was particularly successful. It was all a bit trial and
|
|
wossname."
|
|
|
|
"I thought you said great big scaly--"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, /yes/. But that wasn't what he was after. He was trying to conjure
|
|
up a succubus." It should be impossible to leer when all you've got is a
|
|
beak, but the parrot managed it. "That's a female demon what comes in the
|
|
night and makes mad passionate wossn--"
|
|
|
|
"I've heard of them," said Rincewind. "Bloody dangerous things."
|
|
|
|
The parrot put its head on one side. "It never worked. All he ever got
|
|
was a neuralger."
|
|
|
|
"What's that?"
|
|
|
|
"It's a demon that comes and has a headache at you."
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 35 (passage is a footnote)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Demons and their Hell are quite different from the Dungeon Dimensions,
|
|
those endlass parallel wastelands outside space and time. The sad, mad
|
|
Things in the Dungeon Dimensions have no understanding of the world but
|
|
simply crave light and shape and try to warm themselves by the fires of
|
|
reality, clustering around it with about the same effect--if they ever
|
|
broke through--as an ocean trying to warm itself around a candle. Whereas
|
|
demons belong to the same space-time wossname, more or less, as humans,
|
|
and have a deep and abiding interest in humanity's day-to-day affairs.
|
|
Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about
|
|
judging the souls of the dead, so people can only go to hell if that's
|
|
where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go.
|
|
Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is
|
|
important to shoot missionaries on sight.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 153
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure
|
|
sign of a diseased mind."
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 178-179 (Ponce da Quirm, encoutered in hell)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"So you didn't find the Fountain of Youth, then," he said, feeling that he
|
|
should make some conversation.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, but I did," said da Quirm earnestly. "A clear spring, deep in the
|
|
jungle. It was very impressive. I had a good long drink, too. Or draft,
|
|
which I think is the more appropriate word.
|
|
|
|
"And--?" said Rincewind.
|
|
|
|
"It definitely worked. Yes. For a while there I could definitely feel
|
|
myself getting younger.
|
|
|
|
"But--" Rincewind waved a vague hand to take in da Quirm, the treadmill,
|
|
the towering circles of the Pit.
|
|
|
|
"Ah," said the old man. "Of course, that's the really annoying bit. I'd
|
|
read so much about the Fountain, and you'd have thought someone in all
|
|
those books would have mentioned the really vital thing about the water,
|
|
wouldn't you?"
|
|
|
|
"Which was--?"
|
|
|
|
"/Boil it first./ Says it all, doesn't it? Terrible shame, really."
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 179
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
The Luggage trotted down the great spiral road that linked the circles of
|
|
the Pit. Even if conditions had been normal it probably would not have
|
|
attracted much attention. If anything, it was rather less astonishing
|
|
than most of the denizens.
|
|
|
|
[Eric, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Moving Pictures (16)
|
|
# p. 7 (ROC Edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier.
|
|
|
|
(Except that of course you can't have a /final/ frontier, because there'd
|
|
be nothing for it to be a frontier /to/, but as frontiers go, it's pretty
|
|
penultimate...)
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 22-23 (very short but happens to span a page boundary...)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
By and large, the only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered
|
|
so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 44, 45, 46 (multiple paragraphs skipped in the first two gaps)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
He looked down. There was a dog sitting by his feet.
|
|
|
|
It was small, bow-legged and wiry, and basically grey but with patches of
|
|
brown, white, and black in outlying areas, and it was staring.
|
|
|
|
It was certainly the most penetrating stare Victor had ever seen. It
|
|
wasn't menacing, or fawning. It was just very slow and very thorough, as
|
|
though the dog was memorising details so that it could give a full
|
|
description to the authorities later.
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
Victor let his gaze slide downwards. There was nothing there but the little
|
|
dog, industriously scratching itself. It looked up slowly, and said "Woof?"
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
Victor poked an exploratory finger in his ear. It must have been a trick
|
|
of an echo, or something. It wasn't that the dog had gone "woof!?, although
|
|
that was practically unique in itself; most dogs in the universe /never/
|
|
went "woof!", they had complicated barks like "whuuugh!" and "hwhoouf!".
|
|
No, it was that it hadn't in fact /barked/ at all. It had /said/ "woof".
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
One of the last things Victor remembered was a voice beside his knee saying,
|
|
"Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said 'miaow'."
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 322
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"'Twas beauty killed the beast," said the Dean, who liked to say things
|
|
like that.
|
|
|
|
"No it wasn't," said the Chair. "It was it splatting into the ground like
|
|
that."
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 12
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld
|
|
cities.
|
|
|
|
At least, there's a /saying/ that there's a saying that all roads lead to
|
|
Ankh-Morpork.
|
|
|
|
And it's wrong. All roads lead /away/ from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes
|
|
people just walk along them the wrong way.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 34 (Victor Tugelbend and Ponder Stibbons are students at Unseen Uni.)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Rain's stopped. Let's go over the wall," he said. "We deserve a drink."
|
|
|
|
Victor waggled a finger. "Just one drink, then. Got to keep sober," he
|
|
said. "It's Finals tomorrow. Got to keep a clear head!"
|
|
|
|
"Huh!", said Ponder.
|
|
|
|
Of course, it's very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many
|
|
worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-
|
|
playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this
|
|
simple fact.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 37
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
In a sense which his tutors couldn't quite define, much to their annoyance,
|
|
Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of the world.
|
|
|
|
Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of
|
|
effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight
|
|
through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more effort
|
|
into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 60
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler was one of those rare people with the ability to
|
|
think in straight lines.
|
|
|
|
Most people think in curves and zig-zags. For example, they start with a
|
|
thought like: I wonder how I can become very rich, and then proceed along
|
|
an uncertain course which includes thoughts like: I wonder what's for
|
|
supper, and: I wonder who I know that can lend me five dollars?
|
|
|
|
Whereas Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought at the
|
|
other end of the process, in this case /I am now very rich/, draw a line
|
|
between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently,
|
|
until he got to the other end.
|
|
|
|
Not that it worked. There was always, he found, some small but vital flaw
|
|
in the process. It generally involved a strange reluctance on the part of
|
|
people to buy what he had to sell.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 71-72
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Tell me, Mr Dibbler." said Silverfish, "what exactly is your profession?"
|
|
|
|
"I sell merchandise," said Dibbler.
|
|
|
|
"Mostly sausages," Victor volunteered.
|
|
|
|
"/And/ merchandise," said Dibbler, sharply. "I only sell sausages when the
|
|
merchandising trade is a bit slow."
|
|
|
|
"And the sale of sausages leads you to believe you can make better moving
|
|
pictures?" said Silverfish. "Anyone can sell sausages! Isn't that so,
|
|
Victor?"
|
|
|
|
"Well..." said Victor, reluctantly. No-one except Dibbler could possibly
|
|
sell Dibbler's sausages.
|
|
|
|
"There you are then," said Silverfish.
|
|
|
|
"The thing is," said Victor, "that Mr Dibbler can even sell sausages to
|
|
people who have bought them off him /before/."
|
|
|
|
"That's right!" said Dibbler. He beamed at Victor.
|
|
|
|
"And a man who could sell Mr Dibbler's sausages twice could sell anything,"
|
|
said Victor.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 111-112 ('dis', 'ort', 'yore', 'finking', 'mayonnaisey', 'specialitay',
|
|
# 'de lar mayson' all accurate)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Borgle's commissary had decided to experiment with salads tonight. The
|
|
nearest salad growing district was thirty slow miles away.
|
|
|
|
"What dis?" demanded a troll, holding up something limp and brown.
|
|
|
|
Fruntkin the short-order chef hazarded a guess.
|
|
|
|
'Celery?" he said. He peered closer. "Yeah, celery."
|
|
|
|
"It /brown/."
|
|
|
|
"'S'right. 'S'right! Ripe celery ort to be brown," said Fruntkin, quickly.
|
|
"Shows it's ripe," he added.
|
|
|
|
"It should be /green/."
|
|
|
|
"Nah. Yore finking about the tomatoes," said Fruntkin.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, and what's this runny stuff?" said a man in the queue.
|
|
|
|
Fruntkin drew himself up to his full height.
|
|
|
|
"That," he said, "is the mayonnaisey. Made it myself. Out of a /book/, he
|
|
added proudly.
|
|
|
|
"Yead, I expect you did," said the man, prodding it. "Clearly oil, eggs
|
|
and vinegar were not involved, right?"
|
|
|
|
"Specialitay de lar mayson," said Fruntkin.
|
|
|
|
"Right, right," said the man. "Only it's attacking my lettuce."
|
|
|
|
Fruntkin grasped his ladle angrily.
|
|
|
|
"Look--" he began.
|
|
|
|
"No, it's all right," said the prospective diner. "The slugs have formed a
|
|
defensive ring."
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 137 (CMOT Dibbler has become a director, Rock is a troll actor)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Er, I was just wondering, Mr Dibbler... what is my motivation for this
|
|
scene?"
|
|
|
|
"Motivation?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes. Er. I got to know, see," said Rock.
|
|
|
|
"How about: I'll fire you if you don't do it properly?"
|
|
|
|
Rock grinned. "Right you are, Mr Dibbler," he said.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 189
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Magic wasn't difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque
|
|
edifice or wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of
|
|
intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the
|
|
wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointy-hat business.
|
|
|
|
The trick was to do magic and /get away with it/.
|
|
|
|
Because it was as if the human race was a field of corn and magic helped
|
|
the users grow just that bit taller, so that they stood out. That
|
|
attracted the attention of gods and--Victor hesitated--other Things outside
|
|
this world. People who used magic without knowing what they were doing
|
|
usually came to a sticky end.
|
|
|
|
All over the entire room, sometimes.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 204 (passage ends mid-paragraph; musings are by Gaspode the dog)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
Sunnink dreadful in there, he thought. Prob'ly tentacled fings that rips
|
|
your face off. I mean, when you finds mysterious doors in old hills, it
|
|
stands to reason wot comes out ain't going to be pleased to see you. Evil
|
|
creatures wot Man shouldn't wot of, and here's one dog wot don't want to
|
|
wot of them either.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 206-207 (passage starts mid-paragraph; Dibbler now controls Silverfish's
|
|
# moving pictures studio; Detritus isn't part of the Watch yet)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"[...] Detritus, throw this bum out!"
|
|
|
|
"Right you are, Mr Dibbler," rumbled the troll, gripping Silverfish's
|
|
collar.
|
|
|
|
"You haven't heard the last of this, you--you scheming, devious
|
|
megalomaniac!"
|
|
|
|
Dibbler removed his cigar.
|
|
|
|
"That's /Mister/ Megalomanic to you," he said.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 274 (passage starts mid-sentence; senior wizards of the University are
|
|
# attending a 'click' and have decided to take their hats off...)
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
[...] inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 295 (passage starts mid-sentence; the movie theater owner's daughter
|
|
# is playing a pipe organ to accompany the silent movie)
|
|
%passage 16
|
|
[...] whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.
|
|
|
|
[Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Reaper Man (15)
|
|
# pp. 301-302 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
It was later that the story of Windle Poons really came to an end, if
|
|
"story" means all that he did and caused and set in motion. In the Ramtop
|
|
villages where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe
|
|
that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die
|
|
away--until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has
|
|
finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span
|
|
of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existance.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 251 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 305 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter
|
|
how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first,
|
|
and is waiting for it.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 245
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"That's not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people
|
|
would lead better lives."
|
|
|
|
IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN'T
|
|
LIVE AT ALL.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 19
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
YOU FEAR TO DIE?
|
|
|
|
"It's not that I don't want... I mean, I've always... it's just that life
|
|
is a habit that's hard to break..."
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 30-31
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it
|
|
necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know
|
|
they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in
|
|
a well-organized universe, but they wouldn't see the point of /believing/,
|
|
of going around saying, "O great table, without whom we are as naught".
|
|
Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only
|
|
as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the
|
|
whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.
|
|
|
|
Nevertheless, there is a small chaple off the University's Great Hall,
|
|
because while the wizards stand right behind the philosophy as outlined
|
|
above, you don't become a successful wizard by getting up gods' noses even
|
|
if those noses only exist in an ethereal or metaphorical sense. Because
|
|
while wizards don't belive in gods they know for a fact that /gods/ believe
|
|
in gods.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 50 (Dibbler is so low because he's on steps leading down to a cellar)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"Sergeant!"
|
|
|
|
Colon froze. Then he looked down. A face was staring up at him from ground
|
|
level. When he'd got a grip on himself, he made out the sharp features of
|
|
his old friend Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the Discworld's walking, talking
|
|
argument in favour of the theory that mankind had descended from a species
|
|
of rodent. C. M. O. T. Dibbler like to describe himself as a merchant
|
|
adventurer; everyone else liked to describe him as itinerant pedlar whose
|
|
moneymaking schemes were always let down by some small but vital flaw, such
|
|
as trying to sell things he didn't own or which didn't work or, sometimes,
|
|
didn't even exist. Fairy gold is well known to evaporate by morning, but
|
|
it was a reinforced concrete slab by comparison to some of Dibbler's
|
|
merchandise.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 58-59
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Over the fireplace was an ornamental candlestick, fixed to a bracket on the
|
|
wall. It was such a familiar piece of furniture that Windle hadn't really
|
|
seen it for fifty years.
|
|
|
|
It was coming unscrewed. It spun around slowly, squeaking once a turn.
|
|
After half a dozen turns it fell off and clattered to the floor.
|
|
|
|
Inexplicable phenomena were not in themselves unusual on the Discworld.(1)
|
|
It was just that they normally had more point, or at least were a bit more
|
|
interesting.
|
|
|
|
(1) Rains of fish, for example, were so common in the little land-locked
|
|
village of Pine Dressers that it had a flourishing smoking, canning and
|
|
kipper filleting industry. And in the mountain regions of Syrrit many
|
|
sheep, left out in the fields all night, would be found in the morning to
|
|
/be facing the other way/, without the apparent intervention of any human
|
|
agency.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 68-69 (130 year old wizard Windle Poon has become a zombie after dying)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"And now let's put the lid on and go and have some lunch," said Ridcully.
|
|
"Don't worry, Windle. It's bound to work. Today is the last day of the
|
|
rest of your life."
|
|
|
|
Windle lay in the darkness, listening to the hammering. There was a thump
|
|
and a muffled imprecation against the Dean for not holding the end properly.
|
|
And then the patter of soil on the lid, getting fainter and more distant.
|
|
|
|
After a while a distant rumbling suggested that the commerce of the city
|
|
was being resumed. He could even hear muffled voices.
|
|
|
|
He banged on the coffin lid.
|
|
|
|
"Can you keep it down?" he demanded. "There's people down here trying to
|
|
be dead!"
|
|
|
|
He heard the voices stop. There was the sound of feet hurrying away.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 81-82 (things have stopped dying because Death is no longer on the job)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Everything that exists, yearns to live. That's what the cycle of life is
|
|
all about. That's the engine that drives the great biological pumps of
|
|
evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or
|
|
tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the
|
|
very top--which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all the
|
|
effort.
|
|
|
|
Everything that exists, yearns to live. Even things that are not alive.
|
|
Things that have a kind of sub-life, a metaphorical life, an /almost/ life.
|
|
And now, in the same way that a sudden hot spell brings forth unnatural and
|
|
exotic blooms...
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 101
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Dead. That was the point. All the religions had very strong views about
|
|
talking to the dead. And so did Mrs Cake. They held that it was sinful.
|
|
Mrs Cake held that it was only common courtesy.
|
|
|
|
This usually led to a fierce ecclesiastical debate which resulted in Mrs
|
|
Cake giving the chief priest what she called "a piece of her mind". There
|
|
were so many pieces of Mrs Cake's mind left around the city now that it
|
|
was quite surprising that there was enough left to power Mrs Cake but,
|
|
strangely enough, the more pieces of her mind she gave away the more there
|
|
seemed to be left.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 222
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"No--" Ridcully began, and realised that it was hopeless. And he was losing
|
|
the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the
|
|
history of bowdlerism,
|
|
|
|
"Darn them to Heck!" he yelled, and ran after the Dean.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 226
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
Miss Flitworth disappeared into the scullery. There was the creaking of a
|
|
pump. She returned with a damp flannel and a glass of water.
|
|
|
|
THERE'S A NEWT IN IT!
|
|
|
|
"Shows it's fresh," said Miss Flitworth,(1) fishing the amphibian out and
|
|
releasing it on the flagstones, where it scuttled away into a crack.
|
|
|
|
(1) People have believed for hundreds of years that newts in a well mean
|
|
that the water's fresh and drinkable, and /in all that time/ never asked
|
|
themselves whether the newts got out to go to the lavatory.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 247
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"Have you got any last words?"
|
|
|
|
YES. I DON'T WANT TO GO.
|
|
|
|
"Well. Succinct, anyway."
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 249-250
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
"Where's everyone gone, Librarian?"
|
|
|
|
"Oook oook."
|
|
|
|
"Just like them. I'd have done that. Rush off without thinking. May the
|
|
gods bless them and help them, if they can find the time from their family
|
|
squabbles."
|
|
|
|
And then he thought: well, what now? I've thought, and what am I going to
|
|
do?
|
|
|
|
Rush off, or course, But slowly.
|
|
|
|
[Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Witches Abroad (14)
|
|
# p. 92 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave and the crypt, but have never
|
|
managed it from the cat.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 12-13
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Desiderata Hollow was making her will.
|
|
|
|
When Desiderata Hollow was a girl, her grandmother had given her four
|
|
important pieces of advice to guide her young footsteps on the unexpectedly
|
|
twisting pathway of life.
|
|
|
|
They were:
|
|
|
|
Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows,
|
|
|
|
Always get the young man's name and address,
|
|
|
|
Never get between two mirrors,
|
|
|
|
And always wear completely clean underwear every day because you never knew
|
|
when you were going to be knocked down and killed by a runaway horse and if
|
|
people found you had unsatisfactory underwear on, you'd die of shame.
|
|
|
|
And then Desiderata grew up to become a witch. And one of the minor
|
|
benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you're going to die
|
|
and can wear what underwear you like.(1)
|
|
|
|
That had been eighty years earlier, when the idea of knowing exactly when
|
|
you were going to die had seemed quite attractive because secretly, of
|
|
course, you knew you were going to live forever.
|
|
|
|
That was then.
|
|
|
|
And this was now.
|
|
|
|
Forever didn't seem to last as long these days as once it did.
|
|
|
|
(1) Which explains a lot about witches.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 64 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"You know," said Nanny, investigating the recesses of the basket, "whenever
|
|
I deals with dwarfs, the phrase 'Duck's arse' swims across my mind."
|
|
|
|
"Mean little devils. You should see the prices they tries to charge me
|
|
when I takes my broom to be repaired," said Granny.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, but you never pay," said Magrat.
|
|
|
|
"That's not the point," said Granny Weatherwax. "They shouldn't be allowed
|
|
to charge that sort of money. That's thievin', that is."
|
|
|
|
"I don't see how it can be thieving if you don't pay anyway," said Magrat.
|
|
|
|
"I never pay for anything," said Granny. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 93 (passage is a footnote)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Nanny Ogg sent a number of cards home to her family, not a single one of
|
|
which got back before she did. This is traditional, and happens everywhere
|
|
in the universe.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 118-119 (Magrat has been teaching herself martial arts via books)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Lobsang Dibbler says sometimes you have to lose in order to win," said
|
|
Magrat.
|
|
|
|
"Sounds daft to me," said Nanny. "That's Yen Buddhism, is it?"
|
|
|
|
"No. They're the ones who say you have to have lots of money to win," said
|
|
Magrat.(1) "In the Path of the Scorpion, the way to win is to lose every
|
|
fight except the last one. You use the enemy's strength against himself."
|
|
|
|
"What, you get him to hit himself, sort of thing?" said Nanny. "Sounds
|
|
daft."
|
|
|
|
(1) The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They
|
|
hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the soul.
|
|
They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant
|
|
duty to acquire as much as possible to reduce the risk to innocent people.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 131
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
They had breakfast in a forest clearing. It was grilled pumpkin. The dwarf
|
|
bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf
|
|
bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid.
|
|
You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of
|
|
dozens of things you'd rather eat. Your boots for example. Mountains. Raw
|
|
sheep. Your own foot.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 194-195 ("he just" is accurate; cockerel == adolescent rooster)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"This is Legba, a dark and dangerous spirit," said Mrs. Gogol. She leaned
|
|
closer and spoke out of the corner of her mouth. "Between you and me, he
|
|
just a big black cockerel. But you know how it is."
|
|
|
|
"It pays to advertise," Nanny agreed. "This is Greebo. Between you and me,
|
|
he's a fiend from hell."
|
|
|
|
"Well, he's a cat," said Mrs. Gogol, generously. "It's only to be expected."
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 218
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"/And/ still a bit of the wedding cake," said the first coachman. "Ain't
|
|
you et that up yet?"
|
|
|
|
"We have it every night," said the undercoachman.
|
|
|
|
The shed shook with the ensuing laughter. It is a universal fact that any
|
|
innocent comment made by any recently married young member of any workforce
|
|
is an instant trigger for coarse merriment among his or her older and more
|
|
cynical colleagues. This happens even if everyone concerned has nine legs
|
|
and lives at the bottom of an ocean of ammonia on a huge cold planet. It's
|
|
just one of those things.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 228
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"You ought to be more adventurous, Granny," said Magrat.
|
|
|
|
"I ain't against adventure, in moderation," said Granny, "but not when I'm
|
|
eatin'."
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 263-264 (Nanny is trying to stop an elaborate clock; despite damage
|
|
# inflicted on it, it goes on to announce midnight [early])
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Let's see thought Nanny. This bit is connected to that bit, this one turns,
|
|
that one turns /faster/, this spiky bit wobbles backwards and forwards...
|
|
|
|
Oh, well. Just twist the first thing you can grab, as the High Priest said
|
|
to the vestal virgin.(1)
|
|
|
|
Nanny Ogg spat on her hands, gripped the largest cog-wheel, and twisted.
|
|
|
|
It carried on turning, pulling her with it.
|
|
|
|
Blimey. Oh, well...
|
|
|
|
Then she did was neither Granny Weatherwax nor Magrat would have dreamed of
|
|
doing in the circumstances. But Nanny Ogg's voyages on the sea of
|
|
intersexual dalliance had gone rather further than twice around the
|
|
lighthouse, and she saw nothing demeaning in getting a man to help her.
|
|
|
|
She simpered at Casanunda.
|
|
|
|
"Things would be a lot more comfortable in our little /pie-de-terre/ if you
|
|
could just push this little wheel around a bit," she said. "I'm sure /you/
|
|
could manage it," she added.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, no problem, good lady," said Casanunda. He reached up with one hand.
|
|
Dwarfs are immensely strong for their size. The wheel seemed to offer him
|
|
no resistance at all.
|
|
|
|
Somewhere in the mechanism something resisted for a moment and then went
|
|
/clonk/. Big wheels turned reluctantly. Little wheels screamed on their
|
|
axles. A small important piece flew out and pinged off of Casanunda's
|
|
small bullet head.
|
|
|
|
And, much faster than nature had ever intended, the hands sped around the
|
|
face.
|
|
|
|
(1) This is the last line to a Discworld joke lost, alas, to posterity.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 265 ('pate' has a couple of accent marks which can't be rendered in ascii)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
There are various forms of voodoo in the multiverse, because it's a
|
|
religion that can be put together from any ingredients that happen to be
|
|
lying around. And all of them try, in some way, to call a god into the body
|
|
of a human being.
|
|
|
|
That was stupid, Mrs. Gogol thought. That was dangerous.
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Gogol's voodoo worked the other way about. What was a god? A focus of
|
|
belief. If people believed, a god began to grow. Feebly at first, but if
|
|
the swamp taught anything, it taught patience. Anything could be the focus
|
|
of a god. A handful of feathers with a red ribbon around them, a hat and
|
|
coat on a couple of sticks... anything. Because when all people had was
|
|
practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. And then you
|
|
fed it, and lulled it, like a goose heading for pate, and let the power grow
|
|
very slowly, and when the time was ripe you opened the path... backwards.
|
|
A human could ride the god, rather than the other way around. There would
|
|
be a price to pay later, but there always was. In Mrs. Gogol's experience,
|
|
everyone ended up dying.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 270 (Greebo has been temporarily transformed--polymorphed?--into a human)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Greebo wasn't a happy cat. [...]
|
|
|
|
Then he'd smelled the kitchen. Cats gravitate to kitchens like rocks
|
|
gravitate to gravity.
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 282 (Casanunda the dwarf is Discworld's Casanova; he appears again in
|
|
# /Lords and Ladies/)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
"How come you're in the palace guard, Casanunda?"
|
|
|
|
"Soldier of fortune takes whatever jobs are going, Mrs. Ogg," said Casanunda
|
|
earestly.
|
|
|
|
"But all the rest of 'em are six foot tall and you're--of the shorter
|
|
persuasion."
|
|
|
|
"I lied about my height, Mrs. Ogg. I'm a world-famous liar."
|
|
|
|
"Is that true?"
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
"What about you being the world's greatest lover?"
|
|
|
|
There was silence for a while.
|
|
|
|
"Well, maybe I'm only No. 2," said Casanunda. "But I try harder."
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 285-286 (Greebo is still in human form)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
Greebo leapt.
|
|
|
|
Cats are like witches. They don't fight to kill, but to win. There is a
|
|
difference. There's no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won't
|
|
know they've lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who
|
|
is beaten and knows it. There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten
|
|
opponent, who will remain beaten every day for the remainder of their sad
|
|
and wretched life, is something to treasure.
|
|
|
|
Cats do not, of course, rationise this far. They just like to send someone
|
|
limping off minus a tail and a few square inches of fur.
|
|
|
|
Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against
|
|
any decent swordsmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost
|
|
impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a
|
|
food mixer that is biting your ear off.
|
|
|
|
The witches watched with interest.
|
|
|
|
"I think we can leave him now," said Nanny. "I think he's having fun."
|
|
|
|
[Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Small Gods (12)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation
|
|
too, o'course.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 3 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
So history has its caretakers.
|
|
|
|
They live ... well, in the nature of things they live wherever they are
|
|
sent, but their /spiritual/ home is in a hidden valley in the high Ramtops
|
|
of the Discworld, where the books of history are kept.
|
|
|
|
These aren't books in which the events of the past are pinned like so many
|
|
butterflies to a cork. These are the books from which history in derived.
|
|
There are more than twenty thousand of them, each one is ten feet high,
|
|
bound in lead, and the letters are so small that they have to be read with
|
|
a magnifying glass.
|
|
|
|
When people say "It is written ..." it is written /here/.
|
|
|
|
There are fewer metaphors than people think.
|
|
|
|
Every month the abbot and two senior monks go into the cave where the
|
|
books are kept. It used to be the duty of the abbot alone, but two other
|
|
reliable monks were included after the unfortunate case of the 59th Abbot,
|
|
who made a million dollars in small bets before his fellow monks caught up
|
|
with him.
|
|
|
|
Besides, it's dangerous to go in alone. The sheer concentratedness of
|
|
History, sleeting past soundlessly out into the world, can be overwhelming.
|
|
Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 4-5
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
It was the Year of the Notional Serpent, or two hundred years after the
|
|
Declaration of the Prophet Abbys.
|
|
|
|
Which meant that the time of the 8th Prophet was imminent.
|
|
|
|
That was the reliable thing about the Church of the Great God Om. It had
|
|
very punctual prophets. You could set your calendar by them, if you had
|
|
one big enough.
|
|
|
|
And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the
|
|
Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the
|
|
bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but
|
|
tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them
|
|
to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable
|
|
barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular
|
|
religions. There's a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding
|
|
around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be
|
|
torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and
|
|
that it's time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered
|
|
very efficient for this purpose.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 60 ("he" is a tortoise, unnoticed among a large crowd of people)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
He walked off slowly, keeping close to the wall to avoid the feet. He had
|
|
no alternative to walking slowly in any case, but now he was walking slowly
|
|
because he was thinking. Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the
|
|
same time.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 60 (same page as preceding passage)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended
|
|
largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and
|
|
exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success
|
|
in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God,
|
|
because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His
|
|
/disapproval/. In the same way, the Quisition could act without
|
|
possibility of flaw. Suspicion was proof. How could it be anything else?
|
|
The Great God would not have seen fit to put the suspicion in the minds
|
|
of His exquisitors unless it was /right/ that it should be there. Life
|
|
could be very simple, if you believed in the Great God Om. And sometimes
|
|
quite short, too.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 92 ([sic] first paragraph ought to have fourth '.' to end sentence)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now,
|
|
you can think clearly ...
|
|
|
|
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in
|
|
all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
|
|
|
|
What have I always believed?
|
|
|
|
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not
|
|
according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent
|
|
and honest /inside/, then it would, in the end, more or less, turn out
|
|
all right.
|
|
|
|
You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 114
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Vorbis had a cabin somewhere near the bilges, where the air was as thick
|
|
as thin soup. Brutha knocked.
|
|
|
|
"Enter."(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the
|
|
power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go
|
|
somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter," don't stop to pack.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 141 (at the end, Xeno is almost certainly agreeing with Ibid, but
|
|
# he /might/ be answering Brutha's last question)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Are you all philosophers?" said Brutha.
|
|
|
|
The one called Xeno stepped forward, adjusting the hang of his toga.
|
|
|
|
"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."
|
|
|
|
"Are," said the luckless paradox manufacturer automatically.
|
|
|
|
Xeno spun around. "I've just about had it up to /here/ with you, Ibid!" he
|
|
roared. He turned back to Brutha. "We /are/, therefore we am," he said
|
|
confidently. "That's it."
|
|
|
|
Several of the philosophers looked at one another with interest.
|
|
|
|
"That's actually quite interesting," one said. "The evidence of our
|
|
existence is the /fact/ of our existence, is that what you're saying?"
|
|
|
|
"Shut up," said Xeno, without looking around.
|
|
|
|
"Have you been fighting?" said Brutha.
|
|
|
|
The assembled philosophers assumed various expressions of shock and horror.
|
|
|
|
"Fighting? Us? We're /philosophers/," said Ibid, shocked.
|
|
|
|
"My word, yes," said Xeno.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 151
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
All over the world there were rulers with titles like the Exalted, the
|
|
Supreme, and Lord High Something or Other. Only in one small country was
|
|
the ruler elected by the people, who could remove him whenever they
|
|
wanted--and they called him the Tyrant.
|
|
|
|
The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote.(1) Every five
|
|
years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he
|
|
was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he
|
|
was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal
|
|
madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher
|
|
in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected
|
|
another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent
|
|
people kept on making the same mistakes.
|
|
|
|
(1) Provided that we wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of
|
|
being mad, frivolous, or a woman.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 239
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"I still don't see how one god can be a hundred different thunder gods.
|
|
They all look different ..."
|
|
|
|
"False noses."
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"And different voices. I happen to know Io's got seventy different hammers.
|
|
Not common knowledge, that. And it's just the same with mother goddesses.
|
|
There's only one of 'em. She just got a lot of wigs and of course it's
|
|
amazing what you can do with a padded bra."
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 265
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the
|
|
grave. It had lived in the desert for sixteen years, and the reason it had
|
|
lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because it
|
|
never wasted handy protein. It dug.
|
|
|
|
Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering
|
|
who had lived in it.
|
|
|
|
But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.
|
|
|
|
[Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Lords and Ladies (12)
|
|
# p. 122 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
|
|
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
|
|
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
|
|
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
|
|
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
|
|
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
|
|
|
|
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake,
|
|
and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have
|
|
changed their meaning.
|
|
|
|
No one ever said elves are nice.
|
|
|
|
Elves are bad.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 32
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"Hope she does all right as queen," said Nanny.
|
|
|
|
"We taught her everything she knows," said Granny Weatherwax.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. "D'you
|
|
think... maybe... ?"
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"D'you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything /we/ know?"
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 36
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) The study of invisible writings was a new discipline made available by
|
|
the discovery of the bi-directional nature of Library-Space. The thaumic
|
|
mathematics are complex, but boil down to the fact that all books,
|
|
everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire
|
|
other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past.
|
|
But the General Theory(2) of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the
|
|
contents of books /as yet unwritten/ can be deduced from books now in
|
|
existence.
|
|
|
|
(2) There's a Special Theory as well, but no one bothers with it much
|
|
because it's self-evidently a load of marsh gas.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 51
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Don't hold with schools," said Granny Weatherwax. "They get in the way
|
|
of education. All them books. Books? What good are they? There's too
|
|
much reading these days. We never had time to read when we was young, I
|
|
know that."
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 79-80
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
The highwayman stepped over the groaning body of the driver and marched
|
|
toward the door of the coach, dragging his stepladder behind him.
|
|
|
|
He opened the door.
|
|
|
|
"Your money or, I'm sorry to say, your--"
|
|
|
|
A blast of octarine fire blew his hat off.
|
|
|
|
The dwarf's expression did not change.
|
|
|
|
"I wonder if I might be allowed to rephrase my demands?"
|
|
|
|
Ridcully looked the elegantly dressed stranger up and down, or rather
|
|
down and further down.
|
|
|
|
"You don't look like a dwarf," he said, "apart from the height, that is."
|
|
|
|
"Don't look like a dwarf apart from the height?"
|
|
|
|
I mean, the helmet and iron boots department is among those you are lacking
|
|
in," said Ridcully.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 95
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
What is magic?
|
|
|
|
There is the wizards' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on
|
|
the age of the wizard. Older wizards talk about candles, circles, planets,
|
|
stars, bananas, chants, runes, and the importance of having at least four
|
|
good meals every day. Younger wizards, particularly the pale ones who
|
|
spend most of their time in the High Energy Magic building,(1) chatter at
|
|
length about fluxes in the morphic nature of the universe, the essentially
|
|
impermanent quality of even the most apparently rigid time-space framework,
|
|
the impossibility of reality, and so on: what this means is that they have
|
|
got hold of something hot and are gabbling the physics as they go along.
|
|
|
|
(1) It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest
|
|
possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to made up of
|
|
/resons/(2) or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each
|
|
reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five "flavors,"
|
|
known as "up," "down," "sideways," "sex appeal," and "peppermint."
|
|
|
|
(2) Lit: "Thing-ies."
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 107
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
What is magic?
|
|
|
|
Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending
|
|
on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but
|
|
may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the
|
|
hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities,
|
|
and could become any of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty
|
|
was inserted in the crack and /twisted/; that, if you really had to make
|
|
someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was /twist/ into the universe
|
|
where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce
|
|
off in different directions.
|
|
|
|
Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe
|
|
it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers
|
|
on.
|
|
|
|
Everyone may to right, all at the same time. That's the thing about
|
|
quantum.
|
|
|
|
[Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%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 anything 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 of 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 (10)
|
|
# p. 1 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
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 snowplow 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, raveling
|
|
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
|
|
# pp. 28-29
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
If asked to describe what they did for a living, the five men around the
|
|
table would have said something like "This and that" or "The best I can,"
|
|
although in Banjo's case he'd probably have said "Dur?" They were, by the
|
|
standards of an uncaring society, criminals, although they wouldn't have
|
|
thought of themselves as such and couldn't even /spell/ words like
|
|
"nefarious." What they generally did was move things around. Sometimes
|
|
the things were on the wrong side of a steel door, or in the wrong house.
|
|
Sometimes the things were in fact people who were far too unimportant to
|
|
trouble the Assassins' Guild with, but who were nevertheless inconveniently
|
|
positioned where they were and would be much better located on, for
|
|
example, a sea bed somewhere.(1) None of the five belonged to any formal
|
|
guild and they generally found their clients among those people who, for
|
|
their own dark reasons, didn't want to put the guilds to any trouble,
|
|
sometimes because they were guild members themselves. They had plenty of
|
|
work. There was always something that needed transferring from A to B or,
|
|
of course, to the bottom of the C.
|
|
|
|
(1) Chickenwire had got his name from his own individual contribution to
|
|
the science of this very specialized "concrete overshoe" form of waste
|
|
disposal. An unfortunate drawback of the process was the tendency for
|
|
bits of the client to eventually detach and float to the surface, causing
|
|
much comment among the general poplation. Enough chicken wire, he pointed
|
|
out, would solve that, while also allowing the ingress of crabs and fish
|
|
going about their vital recycling activities.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 109-110
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Although it was Hogswatch the University buildings were bustling. Wizards
|
|
didn't go to bed early in any case,(1) and of course there was the
|
|
Hogswatchnight Feast to look forward to at midnight.
|
|
|
|
It would give some idea of the scale of the Hogswatchnight Feast that a
|
|
light snack at UU consisted of three or four courses, not counting the
|
|
cheese and nuts.
|
|
|
|
Some of the wizards had been practicing for weeks. The Dean in particular
|
|
could now lift a twenty-pound turkey on one fork. Having to wait until
|
|
midnight merely put a healthy edge on appetites already professionally
|
|
honed.
|
|
|
|
(1) Often they lived to a time scale to suit themselves. Many of the
|
|
senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like
|
|
the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system
|
|
based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion.
|
|
|
|
Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The
|
|
Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be
|
|
constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they
|
|
could make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One
|
|
says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that
|
|
humans should not only work in universities, but also write for huge sums
|
|
books with words like "Cosmic" and "Chaos" in the titles.(2)
|
|
|
|
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable
|
|
Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of
|
|
the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics.
|
|
But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely
|
|
everyone, with only some minor details of a "Fill in name here" nature,
|
|
secretly believes to be true.
|
|
|
|
(2) And they are correct. The universe clearly operates for the benefit
|
|
of humanity. This can be readily seen by the convenient way the sun comes
|
|
up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 112-113 (we end this passage mid-paragraph...)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Watch this, sir," said Ponder. "All right, Adrian, initialize the GBL."
|
|
|
|
"How do you do that, then?" said Ridcully, behind him.
|
|
|
|
"It ... it means pull the great big lever," Ponder said, reluctantly.
|
|
|
|
"Ah. Takes less time to say."
|
|
|
|
Ponder sighed. "Yes, that's right, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
He nodded to one of the students, who pulled a large red lever marked "Do
|
|
Not Pull." Gears spun, somewhere inside Hex. Little trapdoors opened in
|
|
the ant farms and millions of ants began to scurry along the networks of
|
|
glass tubing. Ponder tapped at the huge wooden keyboard.
|
|
|
|
"Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff," said Ridcully,
|
|
still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, it's largely intuitive, Archchancellor," said Ponder. "Obviously you
|
|
have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 139-140
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Tell me, Senior Wrangler, we never invited any /women/ to the
|
|
Hogswatchnight Feast, did we?"
|
|
|
|
"Of course not, Archchancellor," said the Senior Wrangler. He looked up
|
|
in the dust-covered rafters, wondering what had caught the Archchancellor's
|
|
eye. "Good heavens, no. They'd spoil everything. I've always said so."
|
|
|
|
"And all the maids have got the evening off until midnight?."
|
|
|
|
"A very generous custom, I've always said," said the Senior Wrangler,
|
|
feeling his neck crick.
|
|
|
|
"So why, every year, do we hang a damn great bunch of mistletoe up there?"
|
|
|
|
The Senior Wrangler turned in a circle, still looking upward.
|
|
|
|
"Well, er ... it's well, it's ... it's symbolic, Archchancellor."
|
|
|
|
"Ah?"
|
|
|
|
The Senior Wrangler felt that something more was expected. He groped
|
|
around in the dusty attics of his education.
|
|
|
|
"Of ... the leaves, d'y'see ... they're symbolic of ... of green, d'y'see,
|
|
whereas the berries, in fact, yes, the berries symbolize ... symbolize
|
|
white. Yes. White and green. Very ... symbolic."
|
|
|
|
He waited. He was not, unfortunately, disappointed.
|
|
|
|
"What of?"
|
|
|
|
The Senior Wrangler coughed.
|
|
|
|
"I'm not sure there /has/ to be an /of/," he said.
|
|
|
|
"Ah? So," said the Archchancellor thoughtfully, "it could be said that
|
|
the white and green symbolize a small parasitic plant?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, indeed," said the Senior Wrangler.
|
|
|
|
"So mistletoe, in fact, symbolizes mistletoe?"
|
|
|
|
"Exactly, Archchancellor," said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just
|
|
hanging on.
|
|
|
|
"Funny thing, that," said Ridcully, in the same thoughful tone of voice.
|
|
"That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully
|
|
comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute
|
|
tosh. Which is it, I wonder?"
|
|
|
|
"It could be both," said the Senior Wrangler desperately.
|
|
|
|
"And /that/ comment," said Ridcully, "is either very perceptive or very
|
|
trite."
|
|
|
|
"It could be bo--"
|
|
|
|
"Don't push it, Senior Wrangler."
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 170 ([sic], sentence at end of paragraph should have fourth period)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
What Ponder was worried about was the fear that he was simply engaged in a
|
|
cargo cult. He'd read about them. Ignorant(1) and credulous(2) people,
|
|
whose island might once have been visited by some itinerant merchant
|
|
vessel that traded pearls and coconuts for such fruits of civilization as
|
|
glass beads, mirrors, axes, and sexual diseases, would later make big model
|
|
ships out of bamboo in the hope of once again attracting this magical
|
|
cargo. Of course, they were far too ignorant and credulous to know that
|
|
just because you built the shape you didn't get the substance ...
|
|
|
|
(1) Ignorant: the state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find
|
|
the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things
|
|
like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple
|
|
sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the
|
|
Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by
|
|
the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across
|
|
a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a
|
|
small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from
|
|
the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's
|
|
a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about
|
|
the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago.
|
|
|
|
(2) Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity's
|
|
place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the
|
|
most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 244 (mantelpiece: it's dark and Ponder is checking whether the Hogfather
|
|
# [Discworld analog of Santa Claus/Father Christmas] has been there
|
|
# and left presents in the stocking the Librarian has hung)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
There was silence again, and then a clang. The Librarian grunted in his
|
|
sleep.
|
|
|
|
"What are you doing?"
|
|
|
|
"I just knocked over the coal shovel."
|
|
|
|
"Why are feeling around on the mantelpiece?"
|
|
|
|
Oh, just ... you know, just ... just looking. A little ... experiment.
|
|
After all, you never know."
|
|
|
|
"You never know what?"
|
|
|
|
"Just ... never know, you know."
|
|
|
|
"/Sometimes/ you know," said Ridcully. "I think I know quite a lot that
|
|
I didn't used to know. It's amazing what you /do/ end up knowing, I
|
|
sometimes think. I often wonder what new stuff I'll know."
|
|
|
|
"Well, you never know."
|
|
|
|
"That's a fact."
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 330
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING
|
|
METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT'S A HABIT THAT'S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF
|
|
OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU'LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 336
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL
|
|
MEETS THE RISING APE.
|
|
|
|
"Tooth Fairies? Hogfathers? Little--"
|
|
|
|
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE /LITTLE/
|
|
LIES.
|
|
|
|
"So we can believe the big ones?"
|
|
|
|
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 343 (Mr. Teatime [pronounced Teh-ah-tim-eh] has just been thwarted in
|
|
# his elabrate plot to lure and then kill Death)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"What did he do it all for?" said Susan. "I mean, why? Money? Power?"
|
|
|
|
SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THE SHEER FASCINATION OF DOING IT, said
|
|
Death. OR THE FAME. OR BECAUSE THEY SHOULDN'T.
|
|
|
|
[Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Jingo (12)
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 23-25 (Harper Torch edition) [transcribed from some other edition]
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
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 fortune 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.
|
|
|
|
'Dead and buried,' said Mr Slant.
|
|
|
|
'I paid mine,' said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 7 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer
|
|
who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot
|
|
home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 34
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My
|
|
Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a post-
|
|
graduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 43-44
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"Hey, that's Reg Shoe! He's a zombie. He falls to bits all the time!"
|
|
|
|
"Very big man in undead community, sir," said Carrott.
|
|
|
|
"How come /he/ joined?"
|
|
|
|
"He came round last week to complain about the Watch harassing some
|
|
bogeymen, sir. He was very, er, vehement, sir. So I persuaded him that
|
|
what the Watch needed was some expertise, so he joined up, sir."
|
|
|
|
"No more complaints?"
|
|
|
|
"Twice as many, sir. All from undead, sir, and all against Mr. Shoe.
|
|
Funny That."
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 78-79
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Perhaps it was because he was tired, or just because he was trying to shut
|
|
out the world, but Vimes found himself slowing down into the traditional
|
|
Watchman's walk and the traditional idling thought process.
|
|
|
|
It was an almost Pavlovian response.(1) The legs swung, the feet moved,
|
|
the mind began to work in a certain way. It wasn't a dream state, exactly.
|
|
It was just that the ears, nose and eyeballs wired themselves straight into
|
|
the ancient "suspicious bastard" node of his brain, leaving his higher
|
|
brain center free to freewheel.
|
|
|
|
(1) A term invented by the wizard Denephew Boot,(2) who had found that by
|
|
a system of rewards and punishments he could train a dog, at the ringing
|
|
of a bell, to immediately eat a strawberry meringue.
|
|
|
|
(2) His parents, who were uncomplicated country people, had wanted a girl.
|
|
They were expecting to call her Denise.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 92-93
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"What was it, Leonard?"
|
|
|
|
"An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion,"
|
|
said Leonard. "The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of
|
|
black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and
|
|
one at a time. If two ignite together, well, what he have is the
|
|
/external/ combustion engine."
|
|
|
|
"And, er, what would be the purpose of it?" said the Patrician.
|
|
|
|
"I believe it could replace the horse," Leonard said proudly.
|
|
|
|
They looked at the stricken thing.
|
|
|
|
"One of the advantages of horses that people often point out," said
|
|
Vetinari, after some thought, "is that they very seldom explode. Almost
|
|
never, in my experience, apart from that unfortunate occurrence in the hot
|
|
summer a few years ago." With fastidious fingers he pulled something out
|
|
of the mess. It was a pair of cubes, made out of some soft white fur and
|
|
linked together by a piece of string. There were dots on them.
|
|
|
|
"Dice?" he said.
|
|
|
|
Leonard smiled in an embarrassed fashion. "Yes. I can't think why I
|
|
thought they'd help it go better. It was just, well, an idea. You know
|
|
how it is."
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 98 (1st "He": Leonard; 2nd "He": Vetinari; last "He": Leonard again)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
He was as easily distracted as a kitten. All that business with the
|
|
flying machine, for example. Giant bat wings hung from the ceiling even
|
|
now. The Patrician had been more than happy to let him waste his time on
|
|
that idea, because it was obvious to anyone that no human being would ever
|
|
be able to flap the wings hard enough.
|
|
|
|
He needn't have worried. Leonard was his own distraction. He had ended
|
|
up spending ages designing a special tray so that people could eat their
|
|
meals in the air.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 155
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
She held the lamp higher.
|
|
|
|
Ramkins looked down their noses at her from their frames, through the brown
|
|
varnish of the centuries. Portraits were another thing that had been
|
|
collected out of unregarded habit.
|
|
|
|
Most of them were men. They were invariably in armor and always on
|
|
horseback. And every single one of them had fought the sworn enemies of
|
|
Ankh-Morpork.
|
|
|
|
In recent times this had been quite difficult and her grandfather, for
|
|
example, had to lead an expedition all the way to Howondaland in order to
|
|
find some sworn enemies, although there was an adequate supply and a lot
|
|
of swearing by the time he left. Earlier, of course, it had been a lot
|
|
easier. Ramkin regiments had fought the city's enemies all over the Sto
|
|
Plains and had inflicted heroic casualties, quite often on people in the
|
|
opposing armies.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military
|
|
thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other
|
|
side then this is a valuable bonus.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 180-181 (the same gag was used in the 1968 movie "Support Your Local
|
|
# Sheriff", with a dented badge rather than a book)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
He rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up
|
|
for inspection.
|
|
|
|
"This belonged to my great-grandad," he said. "He was in the scrap we had
|
|
against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for
|
|
soldiers, 'cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and
|
|
he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, 'cause he couldn't afford
|
|
armor, and next day in battle--whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham,
|
|
straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page
|
|
before stopping, look. You can see the hole."
|
|
|
|
"Pretty miraculous," Carrot agreed.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, it was, I s'pose," said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the
|
|
battered volume. "Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really."
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 218
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Er ... what is this thing called?" said Colon, as he followed the
|
|
Patrician up the ladder.
|
|
|
|
"Well, because it is /submersed/ in a /marine/ environment, I've always
|
|
called it the Going-Under-the-Water-Safely Device," said Leonard, behind
|
|
him.(1) "But usually I just think of it as the boat."
|
|
|
|
(1) Thinking up good names was, oddly enough, was one area where Leonard
|
|
of Quirm's genious tended to give up.
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 274 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"[...] I mean, what're our long-term objectives?"
|
|
|
|
"Cooking meals and keeping warm?" said Les hopefully.
|
|
|
|
"Well, /initially/," said Jackson. "That's obvious. But you know what
|
|
they say, lad. 'Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to
|
|
him and he's warm for the rest of his life.' See my point?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't think that's actually what the saying is--"
|
|
|
|
[Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Last Continent (10)
|
|
# p. 260 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?"
|
|
|
|
YES.
|
|
|
|
"Ghastly thought, really." Rincewind shuddered. "Oh, /gods/, I've just
|
|
had another one. Suppose I /am/ just about to die and /this/ is my whole
|
|
life passing in front of my eyes?"
|
|
|
|
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. 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
|
|
# p.3 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
All tribal myths are true, for a given value of "true."
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 13-14
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Ponder /knew/ he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible
|
|
writings. Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what
|
|
it is that you actually /do/ all day?
|
|
|
|
But no matter what precautions you took, sooner or later the boss was bound
|
|
to come in and poke around and say things like, "Is this where you work,
|
|
then?" and "I thought I sent a memo out about people bringing in potted
|
|
plants," and "What d'you call that thing with the keyboard?"
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 21 (passage begins mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
[...] Any true wizard, faced with a sign like "Do not open this door.
|
|
Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the
|
|
end of the universe," would /automatically/ open the door in order to see
|
|
what all the fuss was about. This made signs a waste of time, but at least
|
|
it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving
|
|
relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, "We /told/ him not to."
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 22 (the books are acting up while the Librarian is incapacitated and
|
|
# now it's unsafe to go into the library)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"But we're a university! We /have/ to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It
|
|
adds /tone/. What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the
|
|
Library?"
|
|
|
|
"Students," said the Senior Wrangler morosely.
|
|
|
|
"Hah, I remember when I was a student," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
|
|
"Old 'Bogeyboy' Swallett took us on an expedition to find the Lost Reading
|
|
Room. Three weeks we were wandering around. We had to eat our own boots."
|
|
|
|
"Did you find it?" said the Dean.
|
|
|
|
"No, but we found the remains of the previous year's expedition."
|
|
|
|
"What did you do?"
|
|
|
|
"We ate their boots, too."
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 45-46
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Death had taken to keeping Rincewind's lifetimer on a special shelf in his
|
|
study, in much the way that a zoologist would want to keep an eye on a
|
|
particularly intriguing specimen.
|
|
|
|
The lifetimers of most people were the classic shape that Death thought
|
|
was right and proper for the task. They appeared to be large eggtimers,
|
|
although, since the sands they measured were the living seconds of
|
|
someone's life, all the eggs were in one basket.
|
|
|
|
Rincewind's hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who'd
|
|
had hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it
|
|
contained--and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate--he
|
|
should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of
|
|
glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing
|
|
backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much
|
|
magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that
|
|
he'd nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end
|
|
of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of
|
|
really sticky transparent tape.
|
|
|
|
Death was familiar with the concept of the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the
|
|
champion with a thousand faces. He'd refrained from commenting. He met
|
|
heroes frequently, generally surrounded by, and this was important, the
|
|
dead bodies of /very nearly/ all of their enemies and saying, "Vot the hell
|
|
shust happened?" Whether there was some arrangement that allowed them to
|
|
come back again afterwards was not something he would be drawn on.
|
|
|
|
But he pondered whether, if this creature /did/ exist, it was somehow
|
|
balanced by the eternal coward. The hero with a thousand retreating backs,
|
|
perhaps. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day
|
|
rise again, so perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn't.
|
|
|
|
Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the fact now was that Death did
|
|
not have the slightest idea of when Rincewind was going to die. This was
|
|
very vexing to a creature who prided himself on his punctuality.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 61
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
A black and white bird appeared, and perched on his head.
|
|
|
|
"You know what to do," said the old man.
|
|
|
|
"Him? What a wonga," said the bird. "I've been lookin' at him. He's not
|
|
even heroic. He's just in the right place at the right time."
|
|
|
|
The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a hero.
|
|
|
|
"All right, but why not go and get the thing yerself?" said the bird.
|
|
|
|
"You've gotta have heroes," said the old man.
|
|
|
|
"And I suppose I'll have to help," said the bird. It sniffed, which is
|
|
quite hard to do through a beak.
|
|
|
|
"Yep. Off you go."
|
|
|
|
The bird shrugged, which /is/ easy to do if you have wings, and flew down
|
|
off the old man's head. It didn't land on the rock but flew into it; for
|
|
a moment there was a drawing of a bird, and then if faded.
|
|
|
|
Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men
|
|
that make gods. This explains a lot.
|
|
|
|
The old man sat down and waited.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 186
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those
|
|
more distant than her sister's house in Quirm where she spent a week's
|
|
holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be
|
|
pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children.(1) And they
|
|
acted like savages.(2)
|
|
|
|
(1) That is to say, she secretly considered them to be vicious, selfish
|
|
and untrustworthy.
|
|
|
|
(2) Again, when people like Mrs. Whitlow use this term they are not, for
|
|
some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich
|
|
oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for
|
|
the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behavior
|
|
more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit
|
|
of clothes, often with the same sort of insignia.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 187 (last paragraph truncated)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?" he said.
|
|
|
|
"Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!" said the Dean.
|
|
|
|
"Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean," said Ridcully.
|
|
|
|
[The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Carpe Jugulum (8)
|
|
# p. 10 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
Agnes tended to obey rules. Perdita didn't. 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
|
|
# p. 2 (example of the silliness and incomprehensability of the
|
|
# Nac mac Feegle [aka pictsies, pict + pixie]; fortunately their
|
|
# speech doesn't constitute much of the book's dialogue)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"Nac mac Feegle!"
|
|
|
|
"Ach, stickit yer trakkans!"
|
|
|
|
"Gie you sich a kickin'!"
|
|
|
|
"Bigjobs!"
|
|
|
|
"Dere c'n onlie be whin t'ousand!"
|
|
|
|
"Nac mac Feegle wha hae!"
|
|
|
|
"Wha hae yersel, ya boggin!"
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 28 (from a discussion about whether Omnian priests still burn witches)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"Hah! The leopard does not change his shorts, my girl!"
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 133
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Things were not what they seemed. But then, as Granny always said, they
|
|
never were.
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 254-255 ("verra comp-lic-ated" is accurate)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"How can I ever repay you?" he said.
|
|
|
|
The pixie's eyes gleamed happily.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, there's a wee bitty thing the Carlin' Ogg said you could be givin' us,
|
|
hardly important at all," he said.
|
|
|
|
"Anything," said Verence.
|
|
|
|
A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which
|
|
was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a
|
|
quill pen.
|
|
|
|
"It's called a signature," he said, as Verence stared at the tiny
|
|
handwriting. "An' make sure ye initial all the sub-clauses and codicils.
|
|
We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk," he added, "but we write verra
|
|
comp-lic-ated documents."
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 326 (Igor's lisp of "th" for "s" makes this /look/ intentionally archaic
|
|
# although it wouldn't be pronounced that way)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"What goeth around, cometh around," said Igor.
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 336-337 (the plot is driven by the actions of a family of vampyres
|
|
# who do mostly cooperate with each other)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Vampires are not naturally cooperative creatures. It's not in their nature.
|
|
Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal
|
|
situation for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been
|
|
killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires anymore. They are by
|
|
nature as cooperative as sharks.
|
|
|
|
Vampyres are just the same, the only real difference being that they can't
|
|
spell properly.
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 338
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"Be resolute, my dear," said the Count. "Remember--that which does not
|
|
kill us can only make us stronger."
|
|
|
|
"And that which /does/ kill us leaves us /dead/!" snarled Lacrimosa. "You
|
|
saw what happened to the others! /You/ got your fingers burned!."
|
|
|
|
[Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Fifth Elephant (9)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 233 (Harper Torch edition) [this is a footnote]
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 80-81 (Harper Torch edition) [the pigeon is trained to carry messages]
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
Constable Shoe saluted, but a litle testily. He'd been waiting rather a
|
|
long time.
|
|
|
|
"Afternoon, Sergeant--"
|
|
|
|
"That's Captain," said Captain Colon. "See the pip on my shoulder, Reg?"
|
|
|
|
Reg looked closely. "I thought it was bird doings, Sarge."
|
|
|
|
"That's Captain," said Colon Automatically. "It's only chalk now because
|
|
I ain't got time to get it done properly," he said, "so don't be cheeky."
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
A pigeon chose that diplomatic moment to flutter into the factory and land
|
|
on Colon's shoulder, where it promoted him. [...]
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 187
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
The wheels clattered over the wood of a drawbridge.
|
|
|
|
As castles went, this looked as though it could be taken by a small squad
|
|
of not very efficient soldiers. Its builder had not been thinking about
|
|
fortifications. He'd been influenced by fairy tales and possibly by some
|
|
of the more ornamental sorts of cake. It was a castle for looking at.
|
|
For defense, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer.
|
|
|
|
The coach stopped in the courtyard. [...]
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 229
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"What a mess," he said. "Locked-room mysteries are even worse when they
|
|
leave the room unlocked."
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 246 ([sic] 'rules for which he termed "the art..."' seems like it
|
|
# ought to have been 'rules for _what_ he termed "the art..."')
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
He punched the dwarf in the stomach. This was no time to play by the
|
|
Marquis of Fantailler rules.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) The Marquis of Fantailler got into many fights in his youth, most of
|
|
them as a result of being known as the Marquis of Fantailler, and wrote
|
|
a set of rules for which he termed "the noble art of fisticuffs" which
|
|
mostly consisted of a list of places where people weren't allowed to hit
|
|
him. Many people were impressed with his work and later stood with noble
|
|
chest outthrust and fists balled in a spirit of manly aggression against
|
|
people who hadn't read the Marquis's book but /did/ know how to knock
|
|
people senseless with a chair. The last words of a surprisingly large
|
|
number of people were "Stuff the bloody Marquis of Fantailler--"
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 251
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Vimes shivered. He hadn't realized how warm it had been underground. Or
|
|
what time it was. There was a dim, a very dim light. Was this just after
|
|
sunset? What it almost dawn?
|
|
|
|
The flakes were piling up on his damp clothes, driven by the wind.
|
|
|
|
Freedom could get you killed.
|
|
|
|
Shelter ... that was /essential/. The time of day and a precise location
|
|
were of no use to the dead. They always knew what time it was and where
|
|
they were.
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 267
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
GOOD MORNING.
|
|
|
|
Vimes blinked. A tall dark-robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
|
|
|
|
"Are you Death?"
|
|
|
|
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT. PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
|
|
|
|
"I'm going to die?"
|
|
|
|
POSSIBLY.
|
|
|
|
"/Possibly/? You turn up when people are /possibly/ going to die?"
|
|
|
|
OH YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY
|
|
PRINCIPLE.
|
|
|
|
"What's that?"
|
|
|
|
I'M NOT SURE.
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 288 [sic: missing 4th '.' at end]
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Are you in charge of the Watch here?"
|
|
|
|
"No. That's the job of the Burgermaster."
|
|
|
|
"And who gives him /his/ orders?"
|
|
|
|
"Everyone," said Tantony bitterly. Vimes nodded. Been there, he thought.
|
|
Been there, done that, bought the dublet...
|
|
|
|
[The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Truth (8)
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 1-2 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
The rumor spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often
|
|
spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words "fire
|
|
insurance").
|
|
|
|
/The dwarfs can turn lead into gold.../
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs.
|
|
|
|
"Can we?"
|
|
|
|
"Damned if I know. /I/ can't."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. /I/ wouldn't say, if /I/ could.
|
|
|
|
"Can you?"
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
"/Ah-ha!/"
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 10 ('mucky' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
It would seem quite impossible, on such a mucky night, that there could
|
|
have been anyone to witness this scene.
|
|
|
|
But there was. The universe requires everything to be observed, lest it
|
|
cease to exist.
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 19
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Very occasionally, a frog was removed from the vivarium and put into a
|
|
rather smaller jar where it briefly became a very happy frog indeed, and
|
|
then went to sleep and woke up in that great big jungle in the sky.
|
|
|
|
And thus the university got the active ingredient that it made up into
|
|
pills and fed to the Bursar, to keep him sane. At least, /apparently/
|
|
sane, because nothing was that simple at good old UU. In fact he was
|
|
incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continually, but by a
|
|
remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned, in
|
|
that case, that the whole business could be sorted out if only they could
|
|
find a formula that caused him to /hallucinate that he was completely
|
|
sane/.(1)
|
|
|
|
This had worked well. [...]
|
|
|
|
(1) This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 107-108 ('zis', 'zat', 'vhich', 'Latation' are all accurate)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Er ... why do you need to work in a darkroom, though?" he said. "The imps
|
|
don't need it, do they?"
|
|
|
|
"Ah, zis is for my experiment," said Otto proudly. "You know zat another
|
|
term for an iconographer would be 'photographer'? From the old word
|
|
'photus' in Latation, vhich means--"
|
|
|
|
"To prance around like an idiot ordering everyone about as if you owned the
|
|
place," said William.
|
|
|
|
"Ah, you know it!"
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 100
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"Vy are ve stoppink?" said Otto.
|
|
|
|
"That's Sergeant Detritus on the gate," said William.
|
|
|
|
"Ah. A troll. Very stupid," opined Otto.
|
|
|
|
"But hard to fool. I'm afraid we shall have to try the truth."
|
|
|
|
"Vy vill that vork?"
|
|
|
|
"He's a policeman. The truth usually confuses them. They don't often
|
|
hear it."
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 290
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Mr. Tulip raised a trembling hand.
|
|
|
|
"Is this the bit where my whole life passes in front of my eyes?" he said.
|
|
|
|
NO, THAT WAS THE BIT JUST NOW.
|
|
|
|
"Which bit?"
|
|
|
|
THE BIT, said Death, BETWEEN YOU BEING BORN AND YOU DYING. NO, THIS...
|
|
MR. TULIP, THIS IS YOUR WHOLE LIFE AS IT PASSED BEFORE /OTHER PEOPLE'S/
|
|
EYES...
|
|
|
|
[The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Thief of Time (8)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"No running with scythes!"
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 24 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Silver stars weren't awarded frequently, and gold starts happened less
|
|
than once a fortnight, and were vied for accordingly. Right now, Miss
|
|
Susan selected a silver star. Pretty soon Vincent the Keen would have a
|
|
galaxy of his very own. To give him his due, he was quite disinterested
|
|
in which kind of star he got. Quantity, that was what he liked. Miss
|
|
Susan had privately marked him down as Boy Most Likely To Be Killed One
|
|
Day By His Wife.
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 53 ('... with the chorus:', '"Do not act...' are separate paragraphs;
|
|
# 'challanger' has been cowed after finding out that the little old
|
|
# man he challanged--for entering the dojo--is actually Lu-Tze)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
As Lobsang followed the ambling Lu-Tze, he heard the dojo master, who like
|
|
all teachers never missed an opportunity to drive home a lesson, say:
|
|
"Dojo! What is Rule One?"
|
|
|
|
Even the cowering challanger mumbled along with the chorus:
|
|
|
|
"Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling
|
|
man!"
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 74-75 (the novices didn't know that the little old man known as Sweeper
|
|
# is actually Lu-Tze; see passage 3 regarding Rule One)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little
|
|
shrine that Lu-Tze kept beside his sleeping mat.
|
|
|
|
Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts
|
|
with the doors barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time
|
|
was fifty years old again, summoned the three novices to his room. There
|
|
were three brooms leaning against the wall. He spoke as follows:
|
|
|
|
"You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because
|
|
the messenger got there in time?"
|
|
|
|
They did. You learned this early in your studies. And they bowed
|
|
nervously, because this was the abbot, after all.
|
|
|
|
"And you know then that when the messenger's horse threw a shoe he espied
|
|
a man trudging beside the road carrying a small portable forge and pushing
|
|
an anvil on a barrow?"
|
|
|
|
They knew.
|
|
|
|
"And you know that man was Lu-tze?"
|
|
|
|
They did.
|
|
|
|
"Surely you know that Janda Trapp, Grand Master of /Oki-doki/, /Toro-fu/,
|
|
and /Chang-fu/, has only ever yielded to one man?"
|
|
|
|
They knew.
|
|
|
|
"And you know that man is Lu-Tze?"
|
|
|
|
They did.
|
|
|
|
"You know the little shrine you kicked over last night?"
|
|
|
|
They knew.
|
|
|
|
"You know it had an owner?"
|
|
|
|
There was silence. Then the brightest of the novices looked up at the
|
|
abbot in horror, swallowed, picked up one of the three brooms, and walked
|
|
out of the room.
|
|
|
|
The other two were slower of brain and had to follow the story all the way
|
|
through to the end.
|
|
|
|
Then one of them said, "But it was only a sweeper's shrine!"
|
|
|
|
"You will take up the brooms and sweep," said the abbot, "and you will
|
|
sweep every day, and you will sweep until the day you find Lu-Tze and dare
|
|
to say 'Sweeper, it was I who knocked over and scattered your shrine and
|
|
now I will in humility accompany you to the dojo on the Tenth Djim, in
|
|
order to learn the Right Way.' Only then, if you are still able, may you
|
|
resume your studies here. Understood?"(1)
|
|
|
|
Older monks sometimes complained, but someone would always say: "Remember
|
|
that Lu-Tze's Way is not our Way. Remember he learned everything by
|
|
sweeping unheeded while students were being educated. Remember, he has
|
|
been everywhere and done many things. Perhaps he is a little... strange,
|
|
but remember he walked into a citadel full of armed men and traps and
|
|
nevertheless saw to it that the Pash of Muntab choked innocently on a fish
|
|
bone. No monk is better than Lu-Tze at finding the Time and the Place."
|
|
|
|
Some, who did not know, would say: "What is this Way that gives him so
|
|
much power?"
|
|
|
|
And they were told: "It is the Way of Mrs. Marietta Cosmopolite, 3 Quirm
|
|
Street, Ankh-Morpork, Rooms To Rent Very Reasonable. No, we don't
|
|
understand it, either. Some subsendential rubbish, apparently."
|
|
|
|
(1) And the story continues: The novice who had protested that it was only
|
|
the shrine of a sweeper ran away from the temple; the student who said
|
|
nothing remained a sweeper for the rest of his life; and the student who
|
|
has seen the inevitable shape of the story went, after much agonizing and
|
|
several months of meticulous sweeping, to Lu-Tze and knelt and asked to be
|
|
shown the Right Way. Whereupon the sweeper took him to the dojo of the
|
|
Tenth Djim, with its terrible multibladed fighting machines and its
|
|
fearsome serrated weapons such as the /clong-clong/ and the /uppsi/. The
|
|
story runs that the sweeper then opened a cupboard at the back of the dojo
|
|
and produced a broom and spake thusly: "One hand /here/ and the other
|
|
/here/, understand? People never get it right. Use good, even strokes
|
|
and let the broom do most of the work. Never try to sweep up a big pile,
|
|
you'll end up sweeping every bit of dust twice. Use your dustpan wisely,
|
|
and remember: a small brush for the corners."
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 102 ('coming here': to the remote mountains where the monks live)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"But did not Wen say that if the truth is anywhere, it is everywhere?" said
|
|
Lobsang.
|
|
|
|
"Well done. I see you learned /something/, at least. But one day it
|
|
seemed to me that everyone else had decided that wisdom can only be found a
|
|
long way off. So I went to Ankh-Morpork. They were all coming here, so it
|
|
seemed only fair.
|
|
|
|
"Seeking /enlightenment/?"
|
|
|
|
"No. The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while
|
|
I was waiting, it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more
|
|
fun," said Lu-Tze. "After all, enlightenment begins where perplexity ends.
|
|
And I found perplexity. And a kind of enlightenment, too. I had not been
|
|
there for five minutes, for example, when some men in an alley tried to
|
|
enlighten me of what little I possessed, giving me a valuable lesson in
|
|
the ridiculousness of material things."
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 286 (food in general, and chocolate in particular, has proven to be an
|
|
# effective 'weapon' against Auditors who've taken on human form)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Let's get up into Zephyr Street," said Susan.
|
|
|
|
"What is there for us?"
|
|
|
|
"Wienrich and Boettcher."
|
|
|
|
"Who are they?"
|
|
|
|
"I think the original Herr Wienrich and Frau Boettcher died a long time ago.
|
|
But the shop still does very good business," said Susan, darting across the
|
|
street. "We need ammunition."
|
|
|
|
Lady LeJean caught up.
|
|
|
|
"Oh. They make chocolate?" she said.
|
|
|
|
"Does a bear poo in the woods?" said Susan and realized her mistake right
|
|
away.(1)
|
|
|
|
Too late. Lady LeJean looked thoughtful for a moment.
|
|
|
|
"Yes," she said at last. "Yes, I believe that most varieties do, indeed,
|
|
excrete, as you suggest, at least in the temperate zones, but there are
|
|
several that--"
|
|
|
|
"I mean to say that, yes, they make chocolate," said Susan.
|
|
|
|
(1) Teaching small children for any length of time can do this to a
|
|
vocabulary.
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 308
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Kaos listened to history.
|
|
|
|
There were new words. Wizards and philosophers had found Chaos, which is
|
|
Kaos with his hair combed and a tie on, and had found in the epitome of
|
|
disorder a new order undreamed of. /There are different kinds of rules./
|
|
/From the simple comes the complex, and from the complex comes a different/
|
|
/kind of simplicity. Chaos is order in a mask.../
|
|
|
|
Chaos. Not dark, ancient Kaos, left behind by the evolving universe, but
|
|
new, shiny Chaos, dancing in the heart of everything. The idea was
|
|
strangely attractive. And it was a reason to go on living.
|
|
|
|
[Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 355 (starts mid-paragraph, with a clause about eating in class omitted)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
[...] Susan [...] took the view that, if there were rules, they applied to
|
|
everyone, even her. Otherwise they were merely tyranny. But rules were
|
|
there to make you think before you broke them.
|
|
|
|
[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 forbidden 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 (7)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 2-4 (Harper Torch edition; omitted section describes how the student
|
|
# assassin, who has fallen off a booby-trapped shed roof into a
|
|
# cesspit, is on an assignment to try to get into position to
|
|
# target Vimes but not actually attack or try to kill him)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
"You're a bit young to be sent on this contract, aren't you?" said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
"Not a contract, sir," said Jocasta, still paddling.
|
|
|
|
"Come now, Miss Wiggs. The price on my head is at least--"
|
|
|
|
"The Guild council put it in abeyance, sir," said the patient swimmer.
|
|
"You're off the register. They're not accepting contracts on you at
|
|
present."
|
|
|
|
[...]
|
|
|
|
"And quite a few of the traps drop you into something deadly," said Vimes.
|
|
|
|
"Lucky for me that I fell into this one, eh, sir?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, that one's deadly too," said Vimes. "/Eventually/ deadly." He
|
|
sighed. He really wanted to discourage this sort of thing but... they'd
|
|
put him off the register? It wasn't that he'd /liked/ being shot at by
|
|
hooded figures in the temporary employ of his many and varied enemies,
|
|
but he'd always looked at it as some kind of vote of confidence. It
|
|
showed that he was annoying the rich and arrogant people who ought to be
|
|
annoyed.
|
|
|
|
Besides, the Assassin's Guild was easy to outwit. They had strict rules,
|
|
which they followed quite honorably, and this was fine by Vimes, who, in
|
|
certain practical matters, had no rules whatever.
|
|
|
|
Off the register, eh? The only other person not on it anymore, it was
|
|
rumored, was Lord Vetinari, the Patrician. The Assassins understood the
|
|
political game in the city better than anyone, and if they took you off
|
|
the register it was because they felt that your departure would not only
|
|
spoil the game but also smash the board.
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 12 (some trainee Watchmen have been taught a marching/running song by
|
|
# Sergeant Detritus, a troll; trolls count "one, two, many, lots"
|
|
# and evidently can't go any higher)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"/Now we sing dis stupid song!/
|
|
/Sing it as we run along!/
|
|
/Why we sing dis we don't know!/
|
|
/We can't make der words rhyme prop'ly!/"
|
|
"Sound off!"
|
|
"/One! Two!/"
|
|
"Sound off!"
|
|
"/Many! Lots!/"
|
|
"Sound off!"
|
|
"/Er... what?/"
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 137
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it.
|
|
That was how you maintained your authority--everyone, talking to a copper,
|
|
was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their
|
|
forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag
|
|
someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they
|
|
told you what it was.
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 138 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
[...] Doctor Lawn was wearing a face mask and holding a pair of very long
|
|
tweezers in his hand.
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm going out," said Vimes. "Trouble?"
|
|
|
|
"Not too bad. Slidey Harris was unlucky at cards last night, that's all.
|
|
Played the ace of hearts."
|
|
|
|
"That's an unlucky card?"
|
|
|
|
"It is if Big Tony knows he didn't deal it to you. But I'll soon have it
|
|
removed. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 141 ('it' is a piece of paper concealed inside one of CMOT Dibbler's
|
|
# "meat" pies, partly eaten by Vimes but intended for someone else)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
He unfolded it. In smudged pencil, but still readable, it read:
|
|
/Morphic Street, 9 o'clock tonight. Password: Swordfish/.
|
|
|
|
Swordfish? Every password was "swordfish"! Whenever anyone tried to
|
|
think of a word that no one would ever guess, they /always/ chose
|
|
"swordfish." It was just one of those strange quirks of the human mind.
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 345 (text actually has "worth more *that* AM$10,000"--obviously a typo)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
There were rules. When you had a Guild of Assassins, there had to be rules
|
|
that everyone knew and that were never, ever broken.(1)
|
|
|
|
An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one--black clothes, hood,
|
|
boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what
|
|
could anyone do but spend all day sitting in a small room with a loaded
|
|
crossbow pointed at the door?
|
|
|
|
And they couldn't kill a man incapable of defending himself (although a
|
|
man worth more than AM$10,000 a year was considered automatically capable
|
|
of defending himself or at least of employing people who were).
|
|
|
|
And they had to give the target a chance.
|
|
|
|
(1) Sometimes, admittedly, for a given value of "never."
|
|
|
|
[Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Wee Free Men (9)
|
|
# p. 100 (HarperTempest edition; quin==queen;
|
|
# this rallying cry occurs multiple times; p. 167 has "/Nae quin!
|
|
# Nae king! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna be fooled again!/",
|
|
# p. 193 has same except that King and Quin are reversed and
|
|
# capitalized, p. 287 has "/Nae Quin! Nae Laird! Wee Fee Men!/")
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae
|
|
master! /We willna be fooled again!/"
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 18-19 (unlike in Lancre and its surrounding Ramtop mountains, witches
|
|
# are unwelcome in the Chalk; the first paragraph continues with
|
|
# mention of things Miss Tick doesn't carry, then things she does,
|
|
# ending with 'and, of course, a lucky charm.')
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Miss Tick did not look like a witch. Most witches don't, at least the ones
|
|
who wander from place to place. Looking like a witch can be dangerous when
|
|
you walk among the uneducated. [...]
|
|
|
|
Everyone in the country carried lucky charms, and Miss Tick had worked out
|
|
that if you didn't have one, people would suspect that you /were/ a witch.
|
|
You had to be a bit cunning to be a witch.
|
|
|
|
Miss Tick did have a pointy hat, but it was a stealth hat and pointed only
|
|
when she wanted it to.
|
|
|
|
The one thing in her bag that might have made anyone suspicious was a very
|
|
small, grubby booklet entitled /An Introduction to Escapology, by the
|
|
Great Williamson/. If one of the risks of your job is being thrown into a
|
|
pond with your hands tied together, then the ability to swim thirty yards
|
|
underwater, fully clothed, plus the ability to lurk under the weeds
|
|
breathing air through a hollow reed, count as nothing if you aren't also
|
|
/amazingly/ good at knots.
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 29-30 ('pune' is accurate; a mispronunciation of 'pun', as indicated
|
|
# by the footnote; one wonders how a nine year old farm girl knows
|
|
# how to pronounce 'mystique'...)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"My name," she said at last, "is Miss Tick. And I /am/ a witch. It's a
|
|
good name for a witch, of course."
|
|
|
|
"You mean blood-sucking parasite?" said Tiffany, wrinkling her forehead.
|
|
|
|
"I'm sorry," said Miss Tick, coldly.
|
|
|
|
"Ticks," said Tiffany. "Sheep get them. But if you use turpentine--"
|
|
|
|
"I /meant/ that it /sounds/ like 'mystic,'" said Miss Tick.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, you mean a pune, or play on words," said Tiffany.(1) "In that case it
|
|
would be even better if you were Miss /Teak/, a dense foreign wood, because
|
|
that would sound like 'mystique,' or you could be Miss Take, which would--"
|
|
|
|
"I can see we're going to get on like a house on fire," said Miss Tick.
|
|
"There may be no survivors."
|
|
|
|
(1) Tiffany had read lots of words in the dictionary that she'd never heard
|
|
spoken, so she had to guess at how they were pronounced.
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 64-65
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overhead and
|
|
there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because
|
|
she'd read in the Almanack that /gibbous/ means what the moon looked like
|
|
when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of
|
|
paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to
|
|
herself, "Ah, I see the moon's very gibbous tonight."
|
|
|
|
It's possible that this tells you more about Tiffany than she would want
|
|
you to know.
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 159 (bigjob: pictsie term for human; 'heid', 'dinna', 'canna', 'noo',
|
|
# 'aroound', and 'Tiffan' are accurate)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"[...] Ye have the First Sight and the Second Thoughts, just like yer
|
|
Granny. That's rare in a bigjob."
|
|
|
|
"Don't you mean Second Sight?" Tiffany asked. "Like people who can see
|
|
ghosts and stuff?"
|
|
|
|
"Ach, no. That's typical bigjob thinking. /First Sight/ is when you can
|
|
see what's really there, not what your heid tells you /ought/ to be there.
|
|
Ye saw Jenny, ye saw the horseman, ye saw them as real thingies. Second
|
|
sight is dull sight, it's seeing only what you expect to see. Most bigjobs
|
|
ha' that. Listen to me, because I'm fadin' noo and there's a lot you dinna
|
|
ken. Ye think this is the whole world? That is a good thought for sheep
|
|
and mortals who dinna open their eyes. Because in truth there are more
|
|
worlds than stars in the sky. Understand? They are everywhere, big and
|
|
small, close as your skin. They are /everywhere/. Some ye can see an'
|
|
some ye canna, but there are doors, Tiffan. They might be a hill or a
|
|
tree or a stone or a turn in the road, or they might e'en be a thought in
|
|
yer heid, but they are there, all aroound ye. You'll have to learn to see
|
|
'em, because you walk among them and dinna know it. And some of them...
|
|
is poisonous."
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 193 (source text is all italics here; passage continues with the speakers
|
|
# getting in synch and shouting the cry from passage 1)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"They can tak' oour lives but they canna tak' oour troousers!"
|
|
|
|
"Ye'll tak' the high road an' I'll tak' yer wallet!"
|
|
|
|
"There can only be one t'ousand!"
|
|
|
|
"Ach, stick it up yer trakkans!"
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 227 (also all italics; end of a reminiscence of Granny Aching by Tiffany)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up
|
|
for them as has no voices."
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 287 (like passage 6, this ties back to passage 1; the cry there is
|
|
# one of the things Tiffany hears)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Tiffany might have been the only person, in all the worlds that there are,
|
|
to be happy to hear the sound of the Nac Mac Feegle.
|
|
|
|
They poured out of the smashed nut. Some were still wearing bow ties.
|
|
Some were back in their kilts. But they were all in a fighting mood and,
|
|
to save time, were fighting with one another to get up to speed.
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 313-314 (passage starts mid-paragraph; 'mebbe' and 'oour' are accurate)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"[...] Can you bring Wentworth?"
|
|
|
|
"Aye."
|
|
|
|
"And you won't get lost or--or drunk or anything?"
|
|
|
|
Rob Anybody looked offended. "We ne'er get lost!" he said. "We always ken
|
|
where we are! It's just sometimes mebbe we aren't sure where everything
|
|
else is, but it's no' our fault if /everything else/ gets lost! The Nac
|
|
Mac Feegle never get lost!"
|
|
|
|
"What about drunk?" said Tiffany, dragging Roland toward the lighthouse.
|
|
|
|
"We've ne'er been lost in oour lives! Is that no' the case, lads?" said
|
|
Rob Anybody. There was a murmur of resentful agreement. "The words /lost/
|
|
and /Nac Mac Feegle/ shouldna turn up in the same sentence!"
|
|
|
|
"And drunk?" said Tiffany again, laying Roland down on the beach.
|
|
|
|
"Gettin' lost is something that happens to other people!" declared Rob
|
|
Anybody. "I want to make that point perfectly clear!"
|
|
|
|
[The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Monstrous Regiment (8)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 6 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
/There was always a war./ Usually they were border disputes, the national
|
|
equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow
|
|
too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving
|
|
country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had
|
|
to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting
|
|
them, eh? There was always a war.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 115-116 (plural 'forests' is odd but accurate [1st sentence];
|
|
# so is 'knew' which ought to be 'known' [4th paragraph];
|
|
# 9 '0's and 7 '0's are accurate too)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
A pigeon rose over the forests, banked slightly, and headed straight for
|
|
the valley of the Kneck.
|
|
|
|
Even from here, the black stone bulk of the Keep was visible, rising above
|
|
the sea of trees. The pigeon sped on, one spark of purpose in the fresh
|
|
new morning--
|
|
|
|
--and squawked as darkness dropped from the sky, gripping it in talons of
|
|
steel. Buzzard and pigeon tumbled for a moment, and then the buzzard
|
|
gained a little height and flapped onwards.
|
|
|
|
The pigeon thought: 000000000. But had it been more capable of coherent
|
|
thought, and knew something about how birds of prey caught pigeons,(1) it
|
|
might have wondered why it was being gripped so... kindly. It was being
|
|
held, not squeezed. As it was, all it could think was 0000000!
|
|
|
|
(1) And allowing for the fact that all pigeons who knew how birds of prey
|
|
catch pigeons are dead, and therefore capable of slightly less thought
|
|
than a living pigeon.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 131
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"All the food's been taken but there's carrots and parsnips in a little
|
|
garden down the hill a bit," Shufti said as they walked away.
|
|
|
|
"It'd be s-stealing from the dead," said Wazzer.
|
|
|
|
"Well, if they object they can hold on, can't they?" said Shufti. "They're
|
|
underground already!"
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 160
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"And there you have it, Sergeant Towering," said the lieutenant, turning
|
|
to the prisoner. "Of course, we all know there is some atrocious behavior
|
|
in times of war, but it is not the sort of thing we would expect of a
|
|
royal prince.(1) If we are to be pursued because a gallant young soldier
|
|
prevented matters from becoming even more disgusting, then so be it."
|
|
|
|
(1) Lieutenant Blouse read only the more technical history books.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 176 (fire: almost certainly to make tea)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
There are three things a soldier wants to do when there's a respite on the
|
|
road. One involves lighting a cigarette, one involves lighting a fire,
|
|
and the other involves no flames at all but does, generally, require a
|
|
tree.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Technically, a tree is not required, but seems to be insisted upon for
|
|
reasons of style.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 179 ('humor': American spelling is accurate)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Maladict dropped his crossbow, which fired straight up into the air,(1)
|
|
and sat down with his head in his hands.
|
|
|
|
(1) And failed to hit anything, especially a duck. This is so unusual
|
|
in situations like this that it must be reported under the new humor
|
|
regulations. If it had hit a duck, which quacked and landed on somebody's
|
|
head, this would, of course, have been very droll and would certainly have
|
|
been reported. Instead, the arrow drifted in the breeze a little on the
|
|
way and landed in an oak tree some thirty feet away, where it missed a
|
|
squirrel.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 284 (soldiers disguised as washerwomen in order to sneak into an
|
|
# enemy-controlled castle have been put to work doing the laundry)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"Look at this, will you?" said Shufti, waving a sodden pair of men's long
|
|
pants at her. "They keep putting the colors in with the whites."
|
|
|
|
"Well, so what? These are /enemy/ long johns," said Polly.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, but there's such a thing as doing it properly! Look, they put in
|
|
this red pair and all the others are going pink."
|
|
|
|
"And? I used to love pink when I was about seven."(1)
|
|
|
|
"But pale pink? On a man?"
|
|
|
|
Polly looked at the next tub for a moment and patted Shufti on the shoulder.
|
|
|
|
"Yes. It is /very/ pale, isn't it? You'd better find a couple more red
|
|
items," she said.
|
|
|
|
"But that'll make it even worse--" Shufti began.
|
|
|
|
"That was an /order/, soldier," Polly whispered in her ear. "And add some
|
|
starch."
|
|
|
|
"How much?"
|
|
|
|
"All you can find."
|
|
|
|
(1) It is an established fact that, despite everything society can do,
|
|
girls of seven are magnetically attracted to the color pink.
|
|
|
|
[Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title A Hat Full of Sky (11)
|
|
# p. 405 (HarperTempest edition)
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 11-12
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Miss Tick was a sort of witch finder. That seemed to be how witchcraft
|
|
worked. Some witches kept a magical lookout for girls who showed promise,
|
|
and found them an older witch to help them along. They didn't teach you
|
|
how to do it. They taught you how to know what you were doing.
|
|
|
|
Witches were a bit like cats. They didn't much like one another's company,
|
|
but they /did/ like to know where all the other witches were, just in case
|
|
they needed them. And what you might need them for was to tell you, as a
|
|
friend, that you were beginning to cackle.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 31
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
"Oh," said Miss Tick. But because she was a teacher as well as a witch,
|
|
and probably couldn't help herself, she added, "The funny thing is, of
|
|
course, that officially there is no such thing as a white horse. They're
|
|
called gray."(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) She had to say that because she was a witch and a teacher, and that's
|
|
a terrible combination. They want things to be /right/. They like things
|
|
to be /correct/. If you want to upset a witch, you don't have to mess
|
|
around with charms and spells--you just have to put her in a room with a
|
|
picture that's hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 51
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Oh," she said. "It's like cat's cradle."
|
|
|
|
"You've played that, have you?" said Miss Tick vaguely, still
|
|
concentrating.
|
|
|
|
"I can do all the common shapes," said Tiffany. "The Jewels and the
|
|
Cradle and the House and the Flock and the Three Old Ladies, One With a
|
|
Squint, Carrying the Bucket of Fish to Market When They Meet the Donkey,
|
|
although you need two people for that one, and I only ever did it once,
|
|
and Betsy Tupper scratched her nose at the wrong moment and I had to get
|
|
some scissors to to cut her loose..."
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 106 (passage starts mid-paragraph; 'doon' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"[...] It's a bad case o' the thinkin' he's caught, missus. When a man
|
|
starts messin' wi' the readin' and the writin', then he'll come doon with
|
|
a dose o' the thinkin' soon enough. I'll fetch some o' the lads and we'll
|
|
hold his head under water until he stops doin' it--'tis the only cure. It
|
|
can kill a man, the thinkin'."
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 107 ('braked', 'Polis'men', 'dinna' all accurate)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"I never braked my word yet," said Rob. "Except to Polis'men and other o'
|
|
that kidney, ye ken, and they dinna count."
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 111 (passage starts mid-paragraph; 'land o' the living': the Nac Mac
|
|
# Feegle believe that they're dead and are on Discworld because it
|
|
# is heaven, also that if they die on Discworld they'll be reborn
|
|
# on their "real world"; 'big wee hag': Tiffany, apprentice witch
|
|
# [big: she's human, wee: she's still a child, hag: she's a witch])
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"[...] Now lads, ye ken all about hivers. They cannae be killed! But
|
|
'tis oor duty to save the big wee hag, so this is, like, a sooey-side
|
|
mission and ye'll probably all end up back in the land o' the living
|
|
doin' a borin' wee job. So... I'm askin' for volunteers!"
|
|
|
|
Every Feegle over the age of four automatically put his hand up.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, come /on/," said Rob. "You canna /all/ come! Look, I'll tak'...
|
|
Daft Wullie, Big Yan, and you... Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin. An' I'm takin'
|
|
no weans, so if yez under three inches high, ye're not comin'! Except
|
|
for ye, o' course, Awf'ly Wee Billy. As for the rest of youse, we'll
|
|
settle this the traditional Feegle way. I'll tak' the last fifty men
|
|
still standing!"
|
|
|
|
He beckoned the chosen three to a place in the corner of the mound while
|
|
the rest of the crowd squared up cheerfully. A Feegle liked to face
|
|
enormous odds all by himself, because it meant you didn't have to look
|
|
where you were hitting.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 114 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
[...] It was a mad, desperate plan, which was very dangerous and risky
|
|
and would require tremendous strength and bravery to make it work.
|
|
|
|
Put like that, they agreed to it instantly.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 225 (last paragraph continues--they didn't understand the contents
|
|
# since most pictsies can't read)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Oh, aye?" he said. "We looked at her diary loads o' times. Nae harm
|
|
done."
|
|
|
|
"You /looked/ at her /diary/?" said Miss Level, horrified. "Why?"
|
|
|
|
Really, she though later, she should have expected the answer.
|
|
|
|
"Cuz it wuz locked," said Daft Wullie. "If she didna want anyone tae look
|
|
at it, why'd she keep it at the back o' her sock drawer? [...]"
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 240 (passage starts mid-paragraph; 'frannit' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"[...] All we need tae do is frannit a wheelstone on it and it'll tak' us
|
|
right where she is."(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) If anyone knew what this meant, they'd know a lot more about the Nac
|
|
Mac Feegle's way of traveling.
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 351 (the hiver's dialog is telepathic--internal would be more
|
|
# accurate--and occurs in italics without quote marks)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Tiffany took a deep breath. This was about words, and she knew about
|
|
words. "Here is a story to believe," she said. "Once we were blobs in
|
|
the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats, and then monkeys,
|
|
and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand
|
|
once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and
|
|
the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood
|
|
is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened, the
|
|
hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We /are/
|
|
history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still
|
|
are. Would you like to hear the rest of the story?"
|
|
|
|
/Tell us/, said the hiver.
|
|
|
|
"I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my
|
|
ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I'm
|
|
made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who
|
|
is 'me'?"
|
|
|
|
[A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Going Postal (13)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 5 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates
|
|
a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably
|
|
concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is
|
|
going to be hanged.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 18
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
There is a saying, "You can't fool an honest man," which is much quoted
|
|
by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men. Moist
|
|
never tried it, knowingly anyway. If you did fool an honest man, he
|
|
tended to complain to the local Watch, and these days they were harder
|
|
to buy off. Fooling dishonest men was a lot safer, and somehow, more
|
|
sporting. And, of course, there were so many more of them. You hardly
|
|
had to aim.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 47 (passage starts mid-paragraph;
|
|
# italics because it's Moist von Lipwig's internal monolog)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
/What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch
|
|
of government? Apart from, say, the average voter./
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 137
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Now he could see the mysterious order clearly. They were robed, of course,
|
|
because you couldn't have a secret order without robes. They had pushed
|
|
the hoods back now, and each man(1) was wearing a peaked cap with a bird
|
|
skeleton wired to it.
|
|
|
|
(1) Women are always significantly underrepresented in secret orders.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 184 ('Tubso' and 'Bissonomy' are accurate)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
Just below the dome, staring down from their niches, were statues of the
|
|
Virtues: Patience, Chastity, Silence, Charity, Hope, Tubso, Bissonomy,(1)
|
|
and Fortitude.
|
|
|
|
(1) Many cultures practice neither of these in the hustle and bustle of
|
|
the modern world, because no one can remember what they are.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 249-250 (Moist and Miss Dearheart are in a fancy restaurant)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
She froze, staring over his shoulder. He saw her right hand scrabble
|
|
frantically among the cutlery and grab a knife.
|
|
|
|
"That bastard has just walked into the place!" she hissed. "Reacher Gilt!
|
|
I'll just kill him and join you for the pudding..."
|
|
|
|
"You can't do that!" hissed Moist.
|
|
|
|
"Oh? Why not?"
|
|
|
|
"You're using the wrong knife! That's for the fish! You'll get into
|
|
trouble!"
|
|
|
|
She glared at him, but her hand relaxed, and something like a smile
|
|
appeared on her face.
|
|
|
|
"They don't have a knife for stabbing rich, murdering bastards?" she said.
|
|
|
|
"They bring it to the table when you order one," said Moist urgently.
|
|
"Look, this isn't the Drum, they don't just throw the body into the river!
|
|
They'll call the Watch! Get a grip. Not on a knife! And get ready to
|
|
run."
|
|
|
|
"Why?"
|
|
|
|
"Because I forged his signature on Grand Trunk notepaper to get us in
|
|
here, that's why."
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp 260-261 (Mr. Groat: elderly postal employee recently attacked in
|
|
# the palacial but severely dilapidated post office;
|
|
# "his imagination": Moist's; "him": Mr. Groat; "he": Moist)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
The vision of Mr. Groat's chest kept bumping insistently against his
|
|
imagination. It looked as though something with claws had taken a swipe
|
|
at him, and only the thick uniform coat prevented him from being opened
|
|
like a clam. But that didn't sound like a vampire. They weren't messy
|
|
like that. It was a waste of good food.
|
|
|
|
Nevertheless, he picked up a piece of smashed chair. It had splintered
|
|
nicely. And the nice thing about a stake through the heart was that it
|
|
also worked on non-vampires.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 262 (Stanley, a young postal employee who collects pins, recently
|
|
# fought off /something/ using a bag of pins as a weapon)
|
|
# [this passage doesn't have a very satisfactory ending...]
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
You probably couldn't /kill/ a vampire with pins...
|
|
|
|
And after a thought like that is when you realize that however hard you
|
|
try to look behind you, there's a behind you, behind you, where you aren't
|
|
looking. Moist flung his back to the cold stone wall where he slithered
|
|
along it until he ran out of wall and acquired a doorframe.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
#p. 278 ('thoughted' and 'thoughting' are accurate)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"Oh, Mr. Lipwig!"
|
|
|
|
It is not often that a wailing woman rushes into a room and throws herself
|
|
at a man. It had never happened to Moist before. Now it happened, and it
|
|
seemed such a waste that the woman was Miss Maccalariat.
|
|
|
|
She tottered forward and clung to the startled Moist, tears streaming down
|
|
her face.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Mr. Lipwig!" she wailed. "Oh, Mr. Lipwig!"
|
|
|
|
Moist reeled under her weight. She was dragging at his collar so hard
|
|
that he was likely to end up on the floor, and the thought of being found
|
|
on the floor with Miss Maccalariat was--well, a thought that just couldn't
|
|
be thoughted. The head would explode before thoughting it.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
#p. 315
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same
|
|
crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 326 (homage to "To Have and Have Not"; Lauren Bacall's character says
|
|
# to Humphrey Bogart's character, "You know how to whistle, don't
|
|
# you Steve? Just put your lips together and--blow."
|
|
# Miss Dearheart's slight pause seems better placed...)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Miss Dearheart stubbed out her cigarette. "Go up there tonight, Mr. Lipwig.
|
|
Get yourself a little bit closer to heaven. And then get down on your
|
|
knees and pray. You know how to pray, don't you? You just put your hands
|
|
together--and hope."
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 333 ('crackers' have been sending and receiving clandestine clacks
|
|
# messages without owners/operators of the clacks network noticing)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
It was a little like stealing. It was exactly like stealing. It was, in
|
|
fact, stealing. But there was no law against it, because no one knew the
|
|
crime existed, so is it really stealing if what's stolen isn't missed?
|
|
And is it stealing if you're stealing from thieves? Anyway, all property
|
|
is theft, except mine.
|
|
|
|
[Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
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%title Thud! (7)
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|
# p. 39 (Harper Torch edition; passage starts mid-paragraph; speaker is Nobby)
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%passage 1
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|
"Why mess about with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?"
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[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
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%e passage
|
|
# pp. 334-336 (originally transcribed from some other edition)
|
|
%passage 2
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|
He wanted to sleep. He'd never felt this tired before. Vimes slumped to
|
|
his knees, and then fell sideways on to the sand.
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|
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|
When he forced his eyes open, he saw pale stars above him, and had, once
|
|
again, the sensation that there was someone else present.
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|
|
|
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.
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|
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|
A white, skeletal hand turned a page.
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|
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|
'You'll be Death, then?' said Vimes, after a while.
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|
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|
AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the
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|
book on his finger to keep the place.
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|
'I've seen you before.'
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|
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|
I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.
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|
'And this is /it/, is it?'
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|
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|
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT
|
|
STRANGE? said Death.
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|
|
|
Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really
|
|
didn't want to say, and it was happening here.
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|
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|
'Is it?' he insisted. 'Is this it? This time I die?'
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|
COULD BE.
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|
'Could be? What sort of answer is that?' said Vimes.
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|
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|
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 WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
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|
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.
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|
|
|
'Shouldn't you be somewhere else?' he said.
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|
I AM, said Death, sitting down again.
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|
'But you're here!'
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|
|
|
AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a
|
|
pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT.
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|
|
|
'Did what?'
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|
|
|
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
|
|
DELIBERATELY NOT KNOWING?
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|
|
|
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
|
|
# pp. 225-226
|
|
%passage 3
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|
And I'm going home, Vimes repeated to himself. Everyone wants something
|
|
from Vimes, even though I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell,
|
|
I'm probably a spoon. Well I'm going to be Vimes, and Vimes reads
|
|
/Where's My Cow?/ to Young Sam at six o'clock. With the noises done right.
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 261-262
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Fred Colon peered through the bars. He was, on the whole, a pretty good
|
|
jailer; he always had a pot of tea on the go, he was, as a general rule,
|
|
amiably disposed to most people, he was too slow to be easily fooled, and
|
|
he kept the cell keys in a box in the bottom drawer of his desk, a long
|
|
way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt, or
|
|
trained Klatchian monkey spider.(1)
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|
|
|
(1) Making Fred Colon possibly unique in the annals of jail history.
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 287 (American spelling of 'theater' is accurate [Harper Torch edition])
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
Brushing aside cobwebs with one hand and holding up a lantern with the
|
|
other, Sybil led the way past boxes of MEN'S BOOTS, VARIOUS; RISIBLE
|
|
PUPPETS, STRING & GLOVE; MODEL THEATER AND SCENERY. Maybe that was the
|
|
reason for their wealth: they bought things that were built to last, and
|
|
now they seldom had to buy anything at all. Except food, of course, and
|
|
even then Vimes would not have been surprised to see boxes labeled APPLE
|
|
CORES, VARIOUS, or LEFTOVERS, NEED EATING UP.(1)
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|
|
|
(1) That was a phrase of Sybil's that got to him. She'd announce at lunch,
|
|
"we must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up." Vimes never had an
|
|
actual problem with this, because he'd been raised to eat what was put in
|
|
front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away.
|
|
He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a
|
|
favor.
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 296-297
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Tell me Drumknott, are you a betting man at all?"
|
|
|
|
"I have been know to have the occasional 'little flutter,' sir."
|
|
|
|
"Given, then, a contest between an invisible and very powerful quasidemonic
|
|
/thing/ of pure vengeance on the one hand, and the commander on the other,
|
|
where would you wager, say... one dollar?"
|
|
|
|
"I wouldn't, sir. That looks like one that would go to the judges."
|
|
|
|
"Yes," said Vetinari, staring thoughtfully at the closed door. "Yes,
|
|
/indeed/."
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 351 ('teeth-aching' probably ought to have been 'teeth-achingly')
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Vimes reached up and took a mug of water from Angua. It was teeth-aching
|
|
cold and the best drink he'd ever tasted. And his mind worked fast, flying
|
|
in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a
|
|
huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened
|
|
and, if it had happened, hadn't happened very much.
|
|
|
|
It was all mystic, that's what it was. Oh, it /might/ all be true, but how
|
|
could you ever tell? You had to stick to the things you can see. And you
|
|
had to keep reminding yourself of that, too.
|
|
|
|
Yeah, that was it. What had really happened, eh? A few signs? Well,
|
|
anything can look like you want it to, if you're worried and confused
|
|
enough, yes? A sheep can look like a cow, right? Ha!
|
|
|
|
[Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Wintersmith (16)
|
|
# p. 82 (HarperTeen edition--presumably HarperTempest suffered a name change)
|
|
%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
|
|
p. 113
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 32-33
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
All witches are a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed
|
|
quite normal. There was Miss Level, for example, who had two bodies,
|
|
although one of them was imaginery. Mistress Pullunder, who bred pedigreed
|
|
earthworms and gave them all names... well, she was hardly odd at all, just
|
|
a bit peculiar, and anyway earthworms were quite interesting in a basically
|
|
uninterestng kind of way. And there had been Old Mother Dismass, who
|
|
suffered from bouts of temporal confusion, which can be quite strange when
|
|
it happens to a witch; her mouth never moved in time with her words, and
|
|
sometimes her footsteps came down the stairs ten minutes before she did.
|
|
|
|
But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn't just take the cake, but a
|
|
packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 34 ('villages': plural is accurate; 'clonk-clank' is rendered bold)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone
|
|
who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went
|
|
*clonk-clank* instead of /tick-tock/. She wore it on her belt and could
|
|
tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.
|
|
|
|
There was a story in the villages that the clock was Miss Treason's heart,
|
|
which she'd used ever since her first heart died. But there were lots of
|
|
stories about Miss Treason.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 40 (Boffo)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
First Sight and Second Thoughts, that's what a witch had to rely on: First
|
|
Sight to see what's really there, and Second Thoughts to watch the First
|
|
Thoughts to check that they were thinking right. Then there were the
|
|
Third Thoughts, which Tiffany had never heard discussed and therefore kept
|
|
quiet about; they were odd, seemed to think for themselves, and didn't
|
|
turn up very often. And they were telling her that there was more to Miss
|
|
Treason than met the eye.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 53-54 (in Carpe Jugulum, most of the lore [for humans] about how to kill
|
|
# vampires had been written by long-lived/long-not-defunct vampires
|
|
# [meaning that it was deliberately full of inaccuracies...])
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
It was in fact Miss Tick who had written /Witch Hunting for Dumb People/,
|
|
and she made sure that copies of it found their way into those areas where
|
|
people still believed that witches should be burned or drowned.
|
|
|
|
Since the only witch ever likely to pass through these days was Miss Tick
|
|
herself, it meant that if things did go wrong, she'd get a good night's
|
|
sleep and a decent meal before being thrown into the water. The water was
|
|
no problem at all for Miss Tick, who had been to the Quirm College for
|
|
Young Ladies, where you had to have an icy dip every morning to build Moral
|
|
Fiber. And a No. 1 Bosun's knot was very easy to undo with your teeth,
|
|
even underwater.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 55-56
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Working quickly, she emptied her pockets and started a shamble.
|
|
|
|
Shambles worked. That was about all you could say about them for certain.
|
|
You made them out of some string and a couple of sticks and anything you
|
|
had in your pocket at the time. They were a witch's equivalent of those
|
|
knives with fifteen blades and three screwdrivers and a tiny magnifying
|
|
glass and a thing for extracting earwax from chickens.
|
|
|
|
You couldn't even say precisely what they did, although Miss Tick thought
|
|
that they were a way of finding out what things the hidden bits of your
|
|
own mind already knew. You had to make a shamble from scratch every time,
|
|
and only from things in your pockets. There was no harm in having
|
|
interesting things in your pockets, though, just in case.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 69
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
A witch didn't do things because they seemed like a good idea at the time!
|
|
That was practically cackling! You had to deal every day with people who
|
|
were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you
|
|
could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably
|
|
improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn't because, as Miss Tick
|
|
had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a
|
|
very short period of time; b) it would then make the world a slightly
|
|
worse place; and c) you're not supposed to be as stupid as they are.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 106 (Rob Anybody is married to their kelda, ruler of the clan;
|
|
# passage continues with three or so pages about Explaining
|
|
# [focusing on the reactions of the recipient of the explanation:
|
|
# Pursin' o' the Lips; Foldin' o' the Arms; Tappin' o' the Feets;
|
|
# and also the reactions of the listening Feegles as they hear
|
|
# about them] but would end up on the long side if included here)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Aye, but the boy willna be interested in marryin'," said Slightly Mad
|
|
Angus.
|
|
|
|
"He might be one day," said Billy Bigchin, who'd made a hobby of watching
|
|
humans. "Most bigjob men get married."
|
|
|
|
"They do?" said a Feegle in astonishment.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, aye."
|
|
|
|
"They want tae get married?"
|
|
|
|
"A lot o' them do, aye," said Billy.
|
|
|
|
"So there's nae more drinkin', and stealin', and fightin'?"
|
|
|
|
"Hey, ah'm still allowed some drinkin' and stealin' and fightin'!" said
|
|
Rob Anybody.
|
|
|
|
"Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin' ye also have tae do the Explainin',
|
|
too." said Daft Wullie.
|
|
|
|
There was a general nodding from the crowd. To Feegles, Explaining was a
|
|
dark art. It was just so /hard/.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 126-127 (passage starts mid-paragraph;
|
|
# witches know in advance when they're going to die)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"[...] We shall hold the funeral tomorrow afternoon."
|
|
|
|
"Sorry? You mean /before/ you die?" said Tiffany.
|
|
|
|
"Why, of course! I don't see why I shouldn't have some fun!"
|
|
|
|
"Good thinkin'!" said Rob Anybody. "That's the kind o' sensible detail
|
|
people usually fails tae consider."
|
|
|
|
"We call it a going-away party," said Miss Treason. "Just for witches, of
|
|
course. Other people tend to get a bit nervous--I can't think why. And
|
|
on the bright side, we've got that splendid ham that Mr. Armbinder gave us
|
|
last week for settling the ownership of the chestnut tree, and I'd love to
|
|
try it."
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 129
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Some people think that "coven" is a word for a group of witches, and it's
|
|
true that's what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of
|
|
witches is an "argument."
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 174-175 (passage starts mid-paragraph; last paragraph continues, but
|
|
# changes topic so abruptly Tiffany gasps; 'rumbustious' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"[...] And now I shall tell you something vitally important. It is the
|
|
secret of my long life."
|
|
|
|
Ah, thought Tiffany, and she leaned forward.
|
|
|
|
"The important thing," said Miss Treason, "is to stay the passage of the
|
|
wind. You should avoid rumbustious fruits and vegetables. Beans are the
|
|
worst, take it from me."
|
|
|
|
"I don't think I understand--" Tiffany began.
|
|
|
|
"Try not to fart, in a nutshell."
|
|
|
|
"In a nutshell, I imagine it would be pretty unpleasant!" said Tiffany
|
|
nervously. She couldn't believe she was being told this.
|
|
|
|
"This is no joking matter," said Miss Treason. "The human body has only
|
|
so much air in it. You have to make it last. One plate of beans can take
|
|
a year off your life. I have avoided rumbustiousness all my days. I am
|
|
an old person and that means what I say is wisdom!" She gave the
|
|
bewildered Tiffany a stern look. "Do you understand, child?"
|
|
|
|
Tiffany's mind raced. Everything is a test! "No," she said. "I'm not a
|
|
child and that's nonsense, not wisdom!"
|
|
|
|
The stern look cracked into a smile. "Yes," said Miss Treason. "Total
|
|
gibberish. But you've got to admit it's a corker, all the same, right?
|
|
You definitely believed it, just for a moment? The villagers did last
|
|
year. You should have seen the way they walked about for a few weeks!
|
|
The strained looks on their faces quite cheered me up! [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 185 (Miss Treason tells people she's 113, but she's actually /only/ 111)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
MISS EUMENIDES TREASON, AGED ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN?
|
|
|
|
Tiffany heard the voice inside her head. It didn't seem to have come
|
|
through her ears. And she'd heard it before, making her quite unusual.
|
|
Most people hear the voice of Death only once.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 229
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
Tiffany had looked up "strumpet" in the Unexpurgated Dictionary, and found
|
|
it meant "a woman who is no better than she should be" and "a lady of easy
|
|
virtue." This, she decided after some working out, meant that Mrs. Gytha
|
|
Ogg, known as Nanny, was a very respectable person. She found virtue easy,
|
|
for one thing. And if she was no better than she should be, she was just
|
|
as good as she ought to be.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 360-361 ('wurds' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
"An heroic effect, Mr. Anybody," said Granny. "The first thing a hero must
|
|
conquer is his fear, and when it comes to fightin', the Nac Mac Feegle
|
|
don't know the meanin' of the word."
|
|
|
|
"Aye, true enough," Rob grunted. "We dinna ken the meanin' o' thousands
|
|
o' wurds!"
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 398-399 ("Chumsfanleigh" is pronounced "Chuffley")
|
|
%passage 16
|
|
At the back of the Feegles' chalk pit, more chalk had been carved out of
|
|
the wall to make a tunnel about five feet high and perhaps as long.
|
|
|
|
In front of it stood Roland de Chumsfanleigh (it wasn't his fault). His
|
|
ancestors had been knights, and they had come to own the Chalk by killing
|
|
the kings who thought they did. Swords, that's what it had all been about.
|
|
Swords and cutting off heads. That was how you got land in the old days,
|
|
and then the rules were changed so that you didn't need a sword to own
|
|
land anymore, you just needed the right piece of paper. But his ancestors
|
|
had still hung on to their swords, just in case people thought that the
|
|
whole thing with the bits of paper had been unfair, it being a fact that
|
|
you can't please everybody.
|
|
|
|
He'd always wanted to be good with a sword, and it had come as a shock to
|
|
find that they were so /heavy/. He was great at air sword. In front of a
|
|
mirror he could fence against his reflection and win nearly all the time.
|
|
Real swords didn't allow that. You tried to swing them and they ended up
|
|
swinging you. He'd realized that maybe he was more cut out for bits of
|
|
paper. Besides, he needed glasses, which could be a bit tricky under a
|
|
helmet, especially if someone was hitting /you/ with a sword.
|
|
|
|
[Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Making Money (17)
|
|
# p. 187 (Harper edition -- what's become of Harper Torch?)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
"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 passage
|
|
# p. 177 (originally transcribed from some other edition; Harper edition
|
|
# uses American spelling for "armor")
|
|
# [some off-duty Watchmen moonlight as bank security guards]
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
The Watch armor he'd lifted from the bank's locker room fitted like a
|
|
glove. He'd have preferred it to fit like a helmet and breastplate.
|
|
But, in truth, it probably didn't look any better on its owner, currently
|
|
swanking along the corridors in the bank's own shiny but impractical armor.
|
|
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 armor
|
|
that didn't have that kicked-by-trolls look. He liked armor to state
|
|
clearly that it had been doing its job.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 108 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%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. Add
|
|
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 forever.
|
|
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
|
|
# pp. 22-24 (Albert Spangler is one of Moist Lipwig's aliases;
|
|
# 'dyslectic' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Let us talk about angels," said Lord Vetinari.
|
|
|
|
"Oh yes, I know that one," said Moist bitterly. "I've heard that one.
|
|
That's the one you got me with after I was hanged--"
|
|
|
|
Vetinari raised an eyebrow. "Only mostly hanged, I think you'll find. To
|
|
within an inch of your life."
|
|
|
|
"Whatever! I was hanged! And the worst part of that was finding out I
|
|
only got two paragraphs in the /Tanty Bugle/!(1) Two paragraphs, may I
|
|
say, for a life of ingenious, inventive, and strictly nonviolent crime?
|
|
I could have been an example to the youngsters! Page one got hogged by
|
|
the Dyslectic Alphabet Killer, and he only maanaged A and W!"
|
|
|
|
"I confess the editor does appear to believe that it is not a proper crime
|
|
unless someone is found in three alleys at once, but that is the price of
|
|
a free press. And it suits us both, does it not, that Albert Spangler's
|
|
passage from this world was... unmemorable?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes, but I wasn't expecting an afterlife like this! I have to do what
|
|
I'm told for the rest of my life?"
|
|
|
|
"Correction, your new life. That is a crude summary, yes," said Vetinari.
|
|
"Let me rephrase things, however. Ahead of you, Mr. Lipwig, is a life of
|
|
respectable quiet contentment, of civic dignity, and, of course, in the
|
|
fullness of time, a pension. Not to mention, of course, the proud gold-ish
|
|
chain."
|
|
|
|
Moist winced at this. "And if I /don't/ do what you say?"
|
|
|
|
"Hmm? Oh, you misunderstand me, Mr. Lipwig. That is what will happen to
|
|
you if you decline my offer. If you accept it, you will survive on your
|
|
wits against powerful and dangerous enemies, with every day presenting
|
|
fresh challanges. Someone may even try to kill you."
|
|
|
|
"What? Why?"
|
|
|
|
"You annoy people. A hat goes with the job, incidentally."
|
|
|
|
(1) A periodical published throughout the Plains, noted for its coverage
|
|
of murder (preferably 'orrible) trials, prison escapes, and the world that
|
|
in general is surrounded by a chalk outline. Very popular.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
#p. 71
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
When he got back to the Post Office, Moist looked up the Lavish family in
|
|
/Whom's Whom/. They were indeed what was known of as "old money," which
|
|
meant that it had been made so long ago that the black deeds which had
|
|
originally filled the coffers were now historically irrelevant. Funny,
|
|
that: a brigand for a father was something you kept quiet about, but a
|
|
slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to
|
|
boast of over the port. Time turned the evil bastards into rogues, and
|
|
/rogue/ was a word with a twinkle in its eye and nothing to be ashamed of.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 72 ('clacks' is a communication system, here analogous to a telegraph)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
He spotted the flimsy pink clacks among the other stuff and tugged it out
|
|
quickly.
|
|
|
|
It was from Spike!
|
|
|
|
He read:
|
|
|
|
SUCCESS. RETURNING DAY AFTER TOMMOROW.
|
|
ALL WILL BE REVEALED. S.
|
|
|
|
Moist put it down carefully.
|
|
|
|
Obviously she'd missed him terribly and was desperate to see him again, but
|
|
she was stingy about spending Golem Trust money. Also, she'd probably run
|
|
out of cigarettes.
|
|
|
|
Moist drummed his fingers on the desk. A year ago he'd asked Adora Belle
|
|
Dearheart to be his wife, and she'd explained that, in fact, he was going
|
|
to be her husband.
|
|
|
|
It was going to be... well, it was going to be sometime in the near future,
|
|
when Mrs. Dearheart finally lost patience with her daughter's busy schedule
|
|
and arranged the wedding herself.
|
|
|
|
But he was a nearly married man, however you looked at it. And nearly
|
|
married men didn't get mixed up with the Lavish family. A nearly married
|
|
man was steadfast and dependable and always ready to hand his nearly wife
|
|
an ashtray. He had to be there for his oneday children, and make sure
|
|
they slept in a well-ventilated nursery.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 79 (passage starts mid-paragraph; departed Mrs. Lavish is a bank owner)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
"[...] Now what, Mr. Death?"
|
|
|
|
NOW? said Death. NOW, YOU COULD SAY, COMES... THE AUDIT.
|
|
|
|
"Oh. There is one, is there? Well, I'm not ashamed."
|
|
|
|
THAT COUNTS.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 183-184 (American spelling of 'gray' is accurate)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Moist lit the lamp and walked over to the battered wreckage of his wardrobe.
|
|
Once again he selected the tatty gray suit. It had sentimental value; he
|
|
had been hanged in it. And it was an unmemorable suit for an unmemorable
|
|
man, with the additional advantage, unlike black, of not showing up in the
|
|
dark.(1) [...]
|
|
|
|
(1) Every assassin knew that real black often stood out in the dark,
|
|
because the night in the city is usually never full black, and that gray
|
|
or green merge much better. But they wore black anyway, because style
|
|
trumps utility every time.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 218 (the Cabinet of Curiosity)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"All right, then," said Moist, "/what does it do/?"
|
|
|
|
"We don't know."
|
|
|
|
"How does it work?"
|
|
|
|
"We don't know."
|
|
|
|
"Where did it come from?"
|
|
|
|
"We don't know."
|
|
|
|
"Well, that seems to be all," said Moist sarcastically. "Oh no, one last
|
|
one: what is it? And let me tell you, I'm agog."
|
|
|
|
"That may be the wrong sort of question to ask," said Ponder, shaking his
|
|
head. "Technically it appears to be a classic Bag of Holding but with /n/
|
|
mouths, where /n/ is the number of items in an eleven-dimensional universe,
|
|
which are not currently alive, not pink, and can fit in a cubical drawer
|
|
14.14 inches on a side, divided by P."
|
|
|
|
"What's P?"
|
|
|
|
"That may be the wrong sort of question."
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 225 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
"[...] I'll talk to Dr. Hicks. He's the head of the Department of
|
|
Postmortem Communications."
|
|
|
|
"Postmortem Com..." Moist began. "Isn't that the same as necroman--"
|
|
|
|
"I said the /Department of Postmortem Communications/," said Ponder very
|
|
firmly. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 247 (it's a spirit summoned by Dr. Hicks that is describing the art/risk)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Necromancy is a fine art?" said Moist.
|
|
|
|
"None finer, young man. Get things just a tiny bit wrong and the spirits
|
|
of the vengeful dead may enter your head via your ears and blow your brains
|
|
out down your nose."
|
|
|
|
The eyes of Moist and Adora Belle focused on Dr. Hicks like those of an
|
|
archer on his target. He waved his hands frantically and mouthed, "Not
|
|
very often!"
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 269
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"If you can't stand the heat, get off the pot, that's what I always say,"
|
|
said a senior clerk, and there was a general murmur of agreement.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 264 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
[...] if the fundamental occult maxim "as above, so below" was true, then
|
|
so was "as below, so above"...
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 280
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
"In the Old Country we have a thaying," Igor volunteered.
|
|
|
|
"A what?"
|
|
|
|
"A thaying. We thay, 'if you don't want the monthter you don't pull the
|
|
lever.'"
|
|
|
|
"You don't think I've gone mad, do you, Igor?"
|
|
|
|
"Many great men have been conthidered mad, Mr. Hubert. Even Dr. Hanth
|
|
Forvord wath called mad. But I put it to you: could a madman have created
|
|
a revolutionary living-brain extractor?"
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 302
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
There was a saying: "Old necromancers never die." When he told them this,
|
|
people would say "... and?" and Hicks would have to reply, "That's all of
|
|
it, I'm afraid. Just 'Old necromancers never die.'"
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 336 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 16
|
|
[...] What the iron maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to
|
|
Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive,(1) far less messy,
|
|
considerably more efficient, and, best of all, you had to /force/ people
|
|
to climb inside the iron maiden.
|
|
|
|
(1) The only real expense was tea and biscuits halfway through, which
|
|
seldom happened with the iron maiden.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 361 (Mr. Slant is a zombie)
|
|
%passage 17
|
|
"Mrs. Lavish, a lady many of us were privileged to know, recently confided
|
|
in me that she was dying," said Vetinari. "She asked me for advice on the
|
|
future of the bank, given that her obvious heirs were, in her words, 'as
|
|
nasty a bunch of weasels as you could ever hope not to meet--'"
|
|
|
|
All thirty-one of the Lavish lawyers stood up and spoke at once, incuring
|
|
a total cost to clients of $AM119.28p.
|
|
|
|
Mr. Slant glared at them.
|
|
|
|
Mr. Slant did not, despite what had been said, have the respect of Ankh-
|
|
Morpork's legal profession. He commanded its fear. Death had not
|
|
diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew
|
|
reasoning, and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it
|
|
advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, for if you do I will have the flesh
|
|
from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound
|
|
tomes you have on the wall behind your desks to impress your clients? I
|
|
have read them all, and wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a
|
|
good mood.
|
|
|
|
One by one, they sat down.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Total cost, including time and disbursements: $AM253.16p.
|
|
|
|
[Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Unseen Academicals (12)
|
|
# p. 68 (Harper edition)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 1 (footnote, so "(1)" ought to be "(2)", but somebody would complain...)
|
|
%passage 2
|
|
Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always
|
|
the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been
|
|
somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of
|
|
democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified
|
|
by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.
|
|
|
|
And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel,
|
|
somehow, that it should not work, and who want a monarch instead, thus
|
|
replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep
|
|
understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking
|
|
diplomancy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree,
|
|
a mind like a finely balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there
|
|
by being born.(1)
|
|
|
|
However, the crown has hung on anyway, as crowns do--on the Post Office
|
|
and the Royal Bank and the Mint and, not least, in the sprawling,
|
|
brawling, squalling consciousness of the city itself. Lots of things
|
|
live in that darkness. There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds
|
|
of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden.
|
|
Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they
|
|
just can't take it any more.
|
|
|
|
(1) A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of
|
|
respectable members of the community who would promise not to give
|
|
themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly
|
|
the subject of music hall jokes all over the city.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 16
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
A wizard could do what he liked in his own study, and in the old days that
|
|
had largely meant smoking anything he fancied and farting hugely without
|
|
apologizing. These days it meant building out into a congruent set of
|
|
dimensions. Even the Archchancellor was doing it, which made it hard for
|
|
Ponder to protest: he had half a mile of trout stream in his bathroom,
|
|
and claimed that messin' about in his study was what kept a wizard out
|
|
of mischief. And, as everyone knew, it did. It generally got him into
|
|
trouble instead.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 18 (Ridcully is furious at the former Dean, who left UU to become a
|
|
# rival [Arch-]Chancellor at Brazeneck University in Pseudopolis)
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
"Remuneration? Since when did a wizard work for wages? We are pure
|
|
academics, Mister Stibbons! We do not care for mere money!"
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental
|
|
confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an
|
|
angry Archchancellor, were, to use the proper academic term, unhelpful.
|
|
And he neglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to
|
|
fellow academics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at
|
|
this point, common sense.
|
|
|
|
"That's because we never actually pay for anything very much," he said,
|
|
"and if anyone needs any petty cash they just help themselves from the
|
|
big jar--"
|
|
|
|
"We are part of the very fabric of the university, Mister Stibbons! We
|
|
take only what we require! We do not seek wealth! And most certainly
|
|
we do not accept a 'post of vital importance which includes an attractive
|
|
package of remuneration,' whatever the hells that means, 'and other
|
|
benefits including a generous pension!' A pension, mark you! When has a
|
|
wizard ever retired?"
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 19 (She: plump Glenda; Her: fashion-model-to-be Juliet)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had
|
|
clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her.(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected
|
|
this to "she was not she," which would have caused the Professor of Logic
|
|
to spit out his drink.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 48 (He: Nutt, a key element of the story who doesn't figure in any
|
|
# of the other selected passages...)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
He'd tried wandering around the other cellars, but there was nothing much
|
|
happening at night, and people gave him funny looks. Ladyship did not
|
|
rule here. But wizards are a messy lot and nobody tidied up much and
|
|
lived to tell the tale, so all sorts of old storerooms and junk-filled
|
|
workshops became his for the use of. And there was so much for a lad with
|
|
keen night vision to find. He had already seen some luminous spoon ants
|
|
carrying a fork, and, to his surprise, the forgotten mazes were home to
|
|
that very rare indoorovore, the Uncommon Sock Eater. There were some
|
|
things living up in the pipes, too, which periodically murmured "Awk! Awk!"
|
|
Who knew what strange monsters made there home here?
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 58
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this,
|
|
Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain
|
|
the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth got its,
|
|
correction, /her/ boots on, and since she would have to choose which
|
|
pair--the idea that any woman in the position to choose would have just
|
|
one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. Indeed, as a goddess she
|
|
would have lots of shoes, and thus many choices: comfy shoes for home
|
|
truths, hobnail boots for unpleasant truths, simple clogs for universal
|
|
truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth. More
|
|
important right now was what kind of truth he was going to have to impart
|
|
to his colleagues, and he decided not on the whole truth, but instead on
|
|
nothing but the truth, which dispensed with the need for honesty.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 166 (see "the wrong sort of question" passage from /Making Money/
|
|
# for a description of the Cabinet; items removed from it have to
|
|
# be returned within 14:14 hours or they're drawn back magically;
|
|
# student in question had removed a sandwich and then eaten it)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
"Yes, sir?" said Ponder wearily.
|
|
|
|
"Promote him. Whatever level he is, move him up one."
|
|
|
|
"I think that'll send the wrong kind of signal," Ponder tried.
|
|
|
|
"On the contrary, Mister Stibbons. It will send exactly the right kind of
|
|
message to the student body."
|
|
|
|
"But he disobeyed an express order, may I point out?"
|
|
|
|
"That's right. He showed independent thinking and a certain amount of
|
|
pluck, and in the course of so doing added valuable data to our
|
|
understanding of the Cabinet."
|
|
|
|
"But he might have destroyed the whole university, sir."
|
|
|
|
"Right, in which case he would have been vigorously disciplined, if we'd
|
|
been able to find anything left of him. But he didn't and he was lucky
|
|
and we need lucky wizards. Promote him, on the direct order of me, not
|
|
pp'd at all. Incidentally, how loud were his screams?"
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 192-193 ('pants': underpants; 'football': soccer ;-)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"You will arrange yourself into two teams, set up goals, and strive to win!
|
|
No man will leave the field of play unless injured! The hands are not to
|
|
be used, is that clear? Any questions?" A hand went up. Ridcully sought
|
|
the attached face.
|
|
|
|
"Ah, Rincewind," he said, and, because he was not a determinedly unpleasant
|
|
man, amended this to, "Professor Rincewind, of course."
|
|
|
|
"I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir."
|
|
|
|
Ridcully sighed. "Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting
|
|
puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before
|
|
you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would
|
|
you like another try?"
|
|
|
|
"Permission to go and find my mother?"
|
|
|
|
Ridcully hesitated. The Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography had no
|
|
students and no real duties other than to stay out of trouble. Although
|
|
Ridcully would never admit it, it was against all reason an emeritus
|
|
position. Rincewind was a coward and an unwitting clown, but he had
|
|
several times saved the world in slightly puzzling circumstances. He was
|
|
a luck sink, the Archchancellor decided, doomed to being a lightning rod
|
|
for the fates so that everyone else didn't have to. Such a person was
|
|
worth all his meals and laundry (including an above-average level of
|
|
soiled pants) and a bucket of coal every day even if he was, in Ridcully's
|
|
opinion, a bit of a whiner. However, he was fast, and therefore useful.
|
|
|
|
"Look," said Rincewind, "a mysterious urn turns up and suddenly it's all
|
|
about football. That bodes. It means that something bad is going to
|
|
happen."
|
|
|
|
"Come now, it could be something wonderful," Ridcully protested.
|
|
|
|
Rincewind appeared to give this due consideration. "Could be wonderful,
|
|
will be dreadful. Sorry, that's how it goes."
|
|
|
|
"This is Unseen University, Rincewind. What is there to fear?" Ridcully
|
|
said. "Apart from me, of course. Good heavens, this is a sport." He
|
|
raised his voice. "Arrange yourselves into two teams and play football!"
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 268 (passage starts mid-paragraph; Glenda is cleaning UU's Night Kitchen)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
[...] If you wanted a job done properly, you had to do it yourself.
|
|
Juliet's verison of cleanliness was next to godliness, which was to say
|
|
it was erratic, past all understanding and seldom seen.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 358-359
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
"Well, big day, lads!" said Ridcully. "Looks like there's going to be a
|
|
nice day for it as well. They're all over there waiting for us to give
|
|
them a show. I want you to approach this in the best traditions of Unseen
|
|
University sportsmanship, which is to cheat whenever you are unobserved,
|
|
though I fear that the chance of anyone being unobserved today is remote.
|
|
But in any case, I want you to give it one hundred and ten percent."
|
|
|
|
"Excuse me, Archchancellor," said Ponder Stibbons. "I understand the
|
|
sense of what you are saying, but there is only one hundred percent."
|
|
|
|
"Well, they could give it one hundred and ten percent if they tried
|
|
harder," said Ridcully.
|
|
|
|
"Well, yes and no, sir. But, in fact, that would mean that you had just
|
|
made the one hundred percent bigger while it would still be one hundred
|
|
percent. Besides, there is only so fast a man can run, only so high a man
|
|
can jump. I just wanted to make the point."
|
|
|
|
"Good point, well made," said Ridcully, dismissing it instantly. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 363 (more lyrics occur later on; they're generally about using
|
|
# economics to conquer any opposition)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
The singing of the National Anthem was always a ragged affair, the good
|
|
people of Ankh-Morpork feeling that it was unpatriotic to sing songs about
|
|
how patriotic you were, taking the view that someone singing a song about
|
|
how patriotic they were was either up to something or a Head of State.(1)
|
|
|
|
An additional problem today lay in the acoustics of the arena, which were
|
|
rather too good, coupled with the fact that the speed of sound at one end
|
|
of the stadium was slightly offbeat compared with the other end, a
|
|
drawback exacerbated when both sides tried to recover the gap.
|
|
|
|
These acoustical anomalies did not count for much if you were standing
|
|
next to Mustrum Ridcully, as the Archchancellor was one of those gentleman
|
|
who will sing it beautifully, correctly enunciated and very, very loudly.
|
|
|
|
"'When dragons belch and hippos flee, my thoughts, Ankh-Morpork, are of
|
|
thee.'" he began.
|
|
|
|
(1) i.e., up to something.
|
|
|
|
[Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title I Shall Wear Midnight (13)
|
|
# p. 447 (Harper edition; this passage is a quote from the "Authur's Note",
|
|
# three extra pages after the conclusion of the story; there is a
|
|
# similar, slightly shorter version of this in the text on p. 236,
|
|
# where it's preceded by "The past needs to be remembered." but
|
|
# lacks the final 'going wrong' sentence)
|
|
%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
|
|
# pp. 429-430 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 2 (passage starts mid-paragraph; scene is a village fair)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
[...] And so here, [...], you heard the permanent scream of, well,
|
|
everyone. It was called having fun. The only people not making any noise
|
|
were the thieves and pickpockets, who went about their business with
|
|
commendable silence, and they didn't come near Tiffany; who would pick a
|
|
witch's pocket? You would be lucky to get all your fingers back. At
|
|
least, that's what they feared, and a sensible witch would encourage them
|
|
in this fear.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 61
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
/The hare runs into the fire./
|
|
|
|
Had she seen that written down anywhere? Had she heard it as part of a
|
|
song? A nursery rhyme? What had the hare got to do with anything? But
|
|
she was a witch, after all, and there was a job to do. Mysterious omens
|
|
could wait. Witches knew that mysterious omens were around all the time.
|
|
The world was always very nearly drowning in mysterious omens. You just
|
|
had to pick the one that was convenient.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 64
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
That was the thing about thoughts. They thought themselves, and then
|
|
dropped into your head in the hope that you would think so too. You had
|
|
to slap them down, thoughts like that; they would take a witch over if she
|
|
let them. And then it would all break down, and nothing would be left but
|
|
the cackling.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 65 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"[...] It just so happens that I was passing by, ye ken, and not
|
|
following ye at all. One of them coincidences."
|
|
|
|
"There have been a lot of those coincidences lately," said Tiffany.
|
|
|
|
"Aye," said Rob, grinning, "it must be another coincidence."
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 179-180
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Tiffany cleared her throat. "Well," she said, "I suppose Rob Anybody would
|
|
tell you that there are times when promises should be kept and times when
|
|
promises should be broken, and it takes a Feegle to know the difference."
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Proust grinned hugely. "You could almost be from the city, Miss
|
|
Tiffany Aching."
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 183 (Wee Mad Arthur is a member of the Ankh-Morpork Watch; he was a
|
|
# foundling raised by gnomes and didn't know he was a Feegle until
|
|
# he met with the ones accompanying Tiffany)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. "Have you boys got no shame?"
|
|
|
|
Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. "I couldna say," he replied, "but
|
|
if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else."
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 219 (footnote)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
There is a lot of folklore about equestrian statues, especially the ones
|
|
with riders on them. There is said to be a code in the number and
|
|
placement of the horse's hooves: If one of the horse's hooves is in the
|
|
air, the rider was wounded in battle; two legs in the air means that the
|
|
rider was killed in battle; three legs in the air indicates that the
|
|
rider got lost on the way to the battle; and four legs in the air means
|
|
that the sculptor was very, very clever. Five legs in the air means that
|
|
there's probably at least one other horse standing behind the one you're
|
|
looking at; and the rider lying on the ground with his horse lying on top
|
|
of him with all four legs in the air means that the rider was either a
|
|
very incompetent horseman or owned a very bad-tempered horse.
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 318 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
[...] "Knowledge is power, power is energy, energy is matter, matter is
|
|
mass, and mass changes time and space." [...]
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 362 (passage starts mid-paragraph; speaker is Preston, a castle guard;
|
|
# quote is a parody of J.R.R.Tolkien's "Do not meddle in the affairs
|
|
# of wizards, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.")
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
[...] "My granny said, 'Don't meddle in the affairs of witches because
|
|
they clout you around the ear.'"
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 386-387 (Tiffany is trying to rescue some witches from a castle roof)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
Tiffany crawled a little farther, well aware of the sheer drop an inch
|
|
away from her hand. "Preston has gone to fetch a rope. Do you have a
|
|
broomstick?"
|
|
|
|
"A sheep crashed into it," said Mrs. Proust.
|
|
|
|
Tiffany could just make her out now. "You crashed into a sheep in
|
|
/the air/?"
|
|
|
|
"Maybe it was a cow, or something. What are those things that go
|
|
/snuffle snuffle/?"
|
|
|
|
"You ran into a flying hedgehog?"
|
|
|
|
"No, as it happened. We were down low, looking for a bush for Mrs.
|
|
Happenstance." There was a sigh in the gloom. "It's because of her
|
|
trouble, poor soul. We've stopped at a lot of bushes on the way here,
|
|
believe me! And do you know what? Inside every single one of them is
|
|
something that stings, bites, kicks, screams, howls, squelches, farts
|
|
enormously, goes all spiky, tries to knock you over, or does an enormous
|
|
pile of poo! Haven't you people up here ever heard of porcelain?"
|
|
|
|
Tiffany was taken aback. "Well, yes, but not in the fields!"
|
|
|
|
"They would be all the better for it," said Mrs. Proust. "I've ruined
|
|
a decent pair of boots, I have."
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 442 (passage starts mid-paragraph; see /The Wee Free Men/;
|
|
# 'underrr' and 'ag-rreeeed' are accurate; 'arr-angement' is
|
|
# hyphenated to span lines--it's just a guess that it would have
|
|
# been hyphenated anyway)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
"Nae king, nae quin, nae laird! One baron--and underrr mutually
|
|
ag-rreeeed arr-angement, ye ken!"
|
|
|
|
[I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Snuff (16)
|
|
# p. 168 (Harper edition; 'ax' is spelled without the 'e' there...)
|
|
%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
|
|
# p. 2 (the subject is goblins)
|
|
%passage 3
|
|
At this point, Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, stopped reading
|
|
and stared at nothing. After a few seconds, nothing was eclipsed by the
|
|
form of Drumknott, his secretary (who, it must be said, had spent a career
|
|
turning himself as much like nothing as anything).
|
|
|
|
Drumknott said, "You look pensive, my lord," to which observation he
|
|
appended a most delicate question mark, which gradually evaporated.
|
|
|
|
"Awash with tears, Drumknott, awash with tears."
|
|
|
|
Drumknott stopped dusting the impeccably shiny black lacquered desk.
|
|
"Pastor Oats is a very persuasive writer, isn't he, sir...?"
|
|
|
|
"Indeed he is, Drumknott, but the basic problem remains and it is this:
|
|
humanity may come to terms with the dwarf, the troll and even the orc,
|
|
terrifying though all these have proved to be at times, and you know why
|
|
this is, Drumknott?"
|
|
|
|
The secretary carefully folded the duster he had been using and looked at
|
|
the ceiling. "I would venture to suggest, my lord, that in their violence
|
|
we recognize ourselves?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, well done, Drumknott, I shall make a cynic of you yet! Predators
|
|
respect other predators, do they not? They may perhaps even respect the
|
|
prey: the lion may lie down with the lamb, even if only the lion is
|
|
likely to get up again, but the lion will not lie down with the rat.
|
|
Vermin, Drumknott, an entire race reduced to vermin!"
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 6
|
|
%passage 4
|
|
Vimes grunted. "Where there are policemen there's crime, sergeant,
|
|
remember that."
|
|
|
|
"Yes, I do, sir, although I think it sounds better with a little reordering
|
|
of the words."
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 46-47 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph; it's a
|
|
# long slog for a weak punchline...)
|
|
%passage 5
|
|
"[...] The third earl, 'Mad' Jack Ramkin, had a brother called
|
|
Woolsthorpe, probably for his sins. He was something of a scholar and
|
|
would have been sent to the university to become a wizard were it not for
|
|
the fact that his brother let it be known that any male sibling of his who
|
|
took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited
|
|
with a cleaver.
|
|
|
|
"Nevertheless, young Woolsthorpe persevered in his studies in natural
|
|
philosophy in the way a gentleman should, by digging into any suspicious-
|
|
looking burial mounds he could find in the neighborhood, filling up his
|
|
lizard press with as many rare species as he could collect, and drying
|
|
samples of any flowers he could find before they became extinct. The
|
|
story runs that, on one warm summer day, he dozed off under an apple tree
|
|
and was awakened when an apple fell on his head. A lesser man, as his
|
|
biographer put it, would have seen nothing untoward about this, but
|
|
Woolsthorpe surmised that, since apples and practically everything else
|
|
always fell down, then the world would eventually become dangerously
|
|
unbalanced... unless there was another agency involved that natural
|
|
philosophy had yet to discover. He lost no time in dragging one of the
|
|
footmen to the orchard and ordering him, on the pain of dismissal, to lie
|
|
under the tree until an apple hit him on the head! The possibility of
|
|
this happening was increased by another footman who had been told by
|
|
Woolsthorpe to shake the tree vigorously until the required apple fell.
|
|
Woolsthorpe was ready to observe this from a distance.
|
|
|
|
"Who can imagine his joy when the inevitable apple fell and a second apple
|
|
was seen rising from the tree and disappearing at speed into the vaults of
|
|
heaven, proving the hypothesis that what goes up must come down, provided
|
|
that what goes down must come up, thus safeguarding the equilibrium of the
|
|
Universe. Regrettably, this only works with apples and, amazingly, only
|
|
the apples on this one tree, /Malus equilibria/! I hear that someone has
|
|
worked out that the apples at the top of the tree fill with gas and fly up
|
|
when the tree is disturbed so that it can set its seeds some way off.
|
|
Wonderful thing, nature, shame the fruit tastes like dog's business,"
|
|
Willikins added as Young Sam spat some out. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 100
|
|
%passage 6
|
|
"Look, Willikins, I don't like to involve you in all this. It's only a
|
|
hunch, after all."
|
|
|
|
Willikins waved this away. "You wouldn't keep me out of it for a big
|
|
clock, sir, because all this is tickling my fancy as well. I shall lay
|
|
out a selection of cutting edges for you in your dressing room, sir, and I
|
|
myself will go up to the copse half an hour before you're due to be there,
|
|
with my trusty bow and an assortment of favorite playthings. It's nearly
|
|
full moon, clear skies, there'll be shadows everywhere, and I'll be
|
|
standing in the darkest one of them."
|
|
|
|
Vimes looked at him for a moment and said, "Could I please amend that
|
|
suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour
|
|
before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?"
|
|
|
|
"Ah yes, that's why you command the watch, sir," said Willikins, and to
|
|
Vimes's shock there was a hint of a tear in the man's voice. "You're
|
|
listening to the street, aren't you, sir, yes?"
|
|
|
|
Vimes shrugged. "No streets here, Willikins."
|
|
|
|
Willikins shook his head. "Once a street boy, always a street boy, sir.
|
|
It comes with us, in the pinch. Mothers go, fathers go--if we ever knew
|
|
who they were--but the Street, well, the Street looks after us. In the
|
|
pinch it keeps us alive."
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 116 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
Well, we live and learn, Vimes thought, or perhaps more importantly, we
|
|
learn and live. [...]
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 153
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
In the country, there is always somebody watching you, he thought as they
|
|
sped along. Well, there was always somebody watching you in the city, too,
|
|
but that was generally in the hope that you might drop dead and they could
|
|
run off with your wallet. They were never /interested/. But here he
|
|
thought he could feel many eyes on him. Maybe they belonged to squirrels
|
|
or badgers, or whatever the damn things were that Vimes heard at night;
|
|
gorillas, possibly.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# pp. 169-170
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
"Well, sir, it looks as though they're pleased to see us, yes?"
|
|
|
|
Feeney's relief and hope should have been bottled and sold to despairing
|
|
people everywhere. Vimes just nodded, because the ranks were pulling
|
|
apart, leaving a pathway of sorts, at the end of which there was,
|
|
inarguably, a corpse. It was a mild relief to see that it was a goblin
|
|
corpse, but no corpse is good news, particularly when seen in a grimy low
|
|
light and especially for the corpse. And yet something inside him exulted
|
|
and cried /Hallelujah!/, because here was a corpse and he was a copper
|
|
and this was a crime and this place was smoky and dirty and full of
|
|
suspicious-looking goblins and here was a /crime/. His world. Yes, here
|
|
was /his/ world.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 211
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Vimes lay back in the bed, enjoying the wonderful sensation of gradually
|
|
being eaten by the pillows, and said to Sybil, "Do the Rust family have a
|
|
place down here?"
|
|
|
|
Too late he reflected that this might be a bad move because she might well
|
|
have told him all about it on one of those occasions when, so unusally for
|
|
a married man, he was not paying much attention to what his wife was
|
|
saying, and therefore he might be the cause of grumpiness in those
|
|
precious, warm minutes before sleep. All he could see of her right now
|
|
was the very tip of her nose, as the pillows claimed her, but she mumbled,
|
|
drowsily, "Oh, they bought Hangnail Manor ten years or so ago, after the
|
|
Marquis of Fantailer murdered his wife with a pruning knife in the
|
|
pineapple house. Don't you remember? You spent weeks searching the city
|
|
for him. In the end everybody seemed to think he'd gone off to Fourecks
|
|
and disguised himself by not calling himself the Marquis of Fantailer."
|
|
|
|
"Oh yes," said Vimes, "and I remember that a lot of his chums were quite
|
|
indignant about the investigation! They said he'd only done one murder,
|
|
and it was his wife's fault for having the bad taste to die after just one
|
|
little stab!"
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 212 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
[...] he had heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns
|
|
drinking champagne.(1) [...]
|
|
|
|
(1) This is, of course, absolutely true.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 217 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
"[...] and the Summoning Dark is /real/. It's not all in your head,
|
|
commander: no matter what you hear, I sometimes hear it too. Oh dear,
|
|
you of all people must recognize a substition when you're possessed by it?
|
|
It's the opposite of superstition: it's real even if you don't believe
|
|
in it. [...]"
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 233
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
Vimes frowned. He couldn't remember ever going into a church or a temple
|
|
or one of the numerous other places of more or less spirituality for any
|
|
other reason than the occasional requirements of the job. These days he
|
|
tended to go in for reasons of Sybil, i.e., his wife dragging him along
|
|
so that he could be seen, and, if possible, seen remaining awake.
|
|
|
|
No, the world of next worlds, afterlives, and purgatorial destinations
|
|
simply did not fit into his head. Whether you wanted it or not, you were
|
|
born, you did the best you could, and then, whether you really wanted to
|
|
or not, you died. They were the only certainties, and so the best thing
|
|
for a copper to do was to get on with the job. And it was about time
|
|
that Sam Vimes got back to doing his.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 254 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
[...] And maybe if I distinguish myself I can get a job in the city, so
|
|
that my mum can live in a place where you don't lie awake at night
|
|
listening to the mice fighting the cockroaches--hooray!(1)
|
|
|
|
(1) Regrettably, Constable Upshot was overly hopeful: in Ankh-Morpork the
|
|
mice and cockroaches had decided to forget their differences and gang up
|
|
on the humans.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 403 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
"[...] And I remember reading somewhere that you would arrest the gods
|
|
for doing it wrong."
|
|
|
|
Vimes shook his head. "I'm sure I never said anything of the sort! But
|
|
law is order and order is law and it must be the highest thing. The world
|
|
runs on it, the heavens run on it and without order, lad, one second
|
|
cannot follow another."
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 404 (footnote)
|
|
%passage 16
|
|
The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away
|
|
all demons, a little-known fact.
|
|
|
|
[Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title Raising Steam (13)
|
|
# p. 281 (Anchor Books edition; passage starts mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
[...] And 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
|
|
# p. 358 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph; quote is
|
|
# attributed to Lord Vetinari but he's not present in the scene)
|
|
%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
|
|
##
|
|
# passages 9..13 added after 3.6.0's release
|
|
##
|
|
# pp. 20-21
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
Moist Von Lipwig had done some heavy work once and couldn't see any future
|
|
in it, but he could look at it for hours, provided other people were doing
|
|
it, of course, and clearly some of them liked what they were doing, and so
|
|
he shrugged and felt happy that Crisp was happy being a handyman whilst
|
|
Moist was happy not picking up anything that was heavier than a glass.
|
|
After all, his work was unseen and depended on words, which were
|
|
fortunately not very heavy and didn't need grease. In his career as a
|
|
crook they had served him well and now he felt somewhat smug at using them
|
|
to the benefit of the citizenry.
|
|
|
|
There was a difference between a banker and a crook, there really was, and
|
|
although it was very, very teeny Moist felt that he should point out that
|
|
it did exist and, besides, Lord Vetinari always had his eye on him.
|
|
|
|
So everybody was happy and Moist went to work in very clean clothes and
|
|
with a very clean conscience.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 22
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
Harry, red-faced and impatient, looked over his desk and said to him, "Lad,
|
|
time is money and I'm a busy man. You told Nancy down on reception that
|
|
you've got something I might like. Now stop fidgeting and look me in the
|
|
face square like. If you're another chancer wanting to bamboozle me I'll
|
|
have you down the Effing stairs(1) before you know it."
|
|
|
|
(1) The wonderfully colored oak wood of the Effing Forest was much in
|
|
demand for high-class joinery.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 80
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
Moist knew about the zeitgeist, he tasted it in the wind, and sometimes it
|
|
allowed him to play with it. He understood it, and now it hinted at speed,
|
|
escape, something wonderfully new, the very bones of the land awakening,
|
|
and suddenly it seemed to cry out for motion, new horizons, faraway places,
|
|
/anywhere that is not here/! No doubt about it, the railway was going to
|
|
turn coal into gold.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 195 (passage starts mid-paragraph and ends mid-paragraph)
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
And the trouble with madness was that the mad didn't know they were mad.
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# p. 284 (passage starts mid-paragraph; speaker is Cmdr Vimes of the Watch)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
"[...] That's the trouble, you see. When you've had hatred on your tongue
|
|
for such a long time, you don't know how to spit it out."
|
|
|
|
[Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
#
|
|
%title The Shepherd's Crown (1)
|
|
%passage 1
|
|
'It's an inconvenience, true enough, and I don't like it at all, but I
|
|
know that you do it for everyone, Mister Death. Is there any other way?'
|
|
|
|
NO, THERE ISN'T, I'M AFRAID. WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME.
|
|
BUT YOUR CANDLE, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX, WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE
|
|
IT GOES OUT -- A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE
|
|
BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND
|
|
IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT...
|
|
|
|
[The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
|
|
%e passage
|
|
%e title
|
|
#
|
|
%e section
|
|
#
|
|
#-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
# Used for interaction with Death.
|
|
#
|
|
# Death Quotes are always one line, and '%e passage' can be omitted.
|
|
#
|
|
%section Death
|
|
%title Death Quotes (31)
|
|
%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 ... DIMENSIONALLY 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
|
|
# Small Gods, p. 90 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 7
|
|
THERE IS A LITTLE CONFUSION AT FIRST. IT IS ONLY TO BE EXPECTED.
|
|
%e passage
|
|
# Hogfather, p. 343 (Harper Torch edition; Death "lives" outside of normal
|
|
# time and space)
|
|
%passage 8
|
|
THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR ANOTHER LAST MINUTE.
|
|
# Wintersmith, p. 187 (HarperTeen edition; dying Miss Treason takes a ham
|
|
# [too silly?] sandwich with her to the grave, and it accompanies
|
|
# her to the afterlife, but its condiments don't)
|
|
%passage 9
|
|
MUSTARD IS ALWAYS TRICKY.
|
|
%passage 10
|
|
PICKLES OF ALL SORTS DON'T SEEM TO MAKE IT. I'M SORRY.
|
|
# The Colour of Magic, p. 68 (Signet edition)
|
|
%passage 11
|
|
IT WON'T HURT A BIT.
|
|
# p. 177
|
|
%passage 12
|
|
SHALL WE GO?
|
|
# p. 251 (speaker is actually a demon named 'Scrofula' filling in for Death)
|
|
%passage 13
|
|
I HAVE COME FOR THEE.
|
|
# The Light Fantastic, p. 52 (Signet edition; quote has quotation marks but
|
|
# including them here wouldn't fit with the rest;
|
|
# Death is addressing an elderly wizard who went
|
|
# to extreme measures to hide himself [from Death])
|
|
%passage 14
|
|
DARK IN HERE, ISN'T IT?
|
|
# Equal Rites, p. 14 (Signet edition; second sentence continues
|
|
# 'said the deep, heavy voice...')
|
|
%passage 15
|
|
THERE IS NO GOING BACK. THERE IS NO GOING BACK.
|
|
# p. 15 (contradicts later descriptions of Death as existing outside of time;
|
|
# presumably it's just intended as a colloquial expression)
|
|
%passage 16
|
|
I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY, YOU KNOW.
|
|
# p. 15 (same page)
|
|
%passage 17
|
|
LIFE IS FOR THE LIVING.
|
|
# Mort, p. 148 (Signet edition)
|
|
%passage 18
|
|
NO-ONE EVER WANTED TO TALK TO ME BEFORE.
|
|
# p. 149
|
|
%passage 19
|
|
I HAVEN'T GOT A SINGLE FRIEND. EVEN CATS FIND ME AMUSING.
|
|
# Sourcery, p. 12 (Signet edition)
|
|
%passage 20
|
|
YOU'RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE.
|
|
# Wyrd Sisters, p. 11 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 21
|
|
I SAID WAS. IT'S CALLED THE PAST TENSE. YOU'LL SOON GET USED TO IT.
|
|
# p. 13
|
|
%passage 22
|
|
DON'T LET IT UPSET YOU.
|
|
# Pyramids, p. 57 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 23
|
|
I CAN SEE THAT YOU HAVE GOT A LOT TO THINK ABOUT.
|
|
# Eric, p. 134 (Harper Torch edition)
|
|
%passage 24
|
|
PERHAPS IT'S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY.
|
|
# Moving Pictures, p. 260 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 25
|
|
I KNOW WHEN EVERYONE'S HAD ENOUGH.
|
|
# Reaper Man, p. 10 (ROC edition)
|
|
%passage 26
|
|
I HAVE ALWAYS DONE MY DUTY AS I SAW FIT.
|
|
# p. 18
|
|
%passage 27
|
|
I AM NOT KNOWN FOR MY SENSE OF FUN.
|
|
# p. 160
|
|
%passage 28
|
|
I MEAN THAT THERE IS A TIME FOR EVERYONE TO DIE.
|
|
# p. 227
|
|
%passage 29
|
|
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHORE DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE REAL.
|
|
# p. 334
|
|
%passage 30
|
|
I AM ALWAYS ALONE. BUT JUST NOW I WANT TO BE ALONE BY MYSELF.
|
|
# Witches Abroad, p. 298 (Death's explanation why he didn't come for zombie 12
|
|
# years earlier: YOU STOPPED LIVING. YOU NEVER DIED.)
|
|
%passage 31
|
|
I HAD AN APPOINTMENT WITH YOU TONIGHT.
|
|
%e title
|
|
%e section
|
|
#
|
|
#eof
|