nethack/dat/tribute

# NetHack 3.6.0 tribute to:
#
#         Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett
#              April 28, 1948 - March 12, 2015          
# ("or until the ripples he caused in the world die away...")
#
#
%section books
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%title The Colour of Magic  (2)
%passage 1
It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiation in
the far octarine - the eighth colour, the pigment of the Imagination - can
see things that others cannot.

Thus it was that Rincewind, hurrying through the crowded, flare-lit,
evening bazarrs of Morpork with the Luggage trundling behind him, jostled a
tall figure, turned to deliver a few suitable curses, and beheld Death.

It had to be Death.  No-one else went around with empty eye sockets and, of
course, the scythe over one shoulder was another clue.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 1
%passage 2
As he was drawn towards the Eye the terror-struck Rincewind raised the box
protectively, and at the same time heard the picture imp say, 'They're
about ripe now, can't hold them any longer.  Every-one smile, please.'

There was a -
- flash of light so white and so bright - 
- it didn't seem like light at all.

Bel-Shamharoth screamed, a sound that started in the far ultrasonic and
finished somewhere in Rincewind's bowels.  The tentacles went momentarily
as stiff as rods, hurling their various cargos around the room, before
bunching up protectively in front of the abused Eye.  The whole mass
dropped into the pit and a moment later the big slab was snatched up by
several dozen tentacles and slammed into place, leaving a number of
thrashing limbs trapped around the edge.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 2
%e title
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%title The Light Fantastic (2)
%passage 1
'Cohen is my name, boy' Belthan's hands stopped moving.
'Cohen?' she said, 'Cohen the Barbarian?'
'The very shame.'
'Hang on, hang on,' said Rincewind, 'Cohen's a great big chap, neck like a
bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs.  I mean, he's the Disc's
greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime.  I remember my grandad
telling me he saw him ... my grandad telling me he ... my grandad ...'
He faltered under the gimlit gaze.
'Oh,' he said, 'Oh. Of course, Sorry.'
'Yesh,' said Cohen, and sighed, 'Thatsh right boy, I'm a lifetime in my own
legend.'

  [The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 1
%passage 2
Death sat at one side of a black baize table in the entre of the room,
arguing with Famine, War and Pestilence.  Twoflower was the only one to
look up and notice Rincewind.
'Hey, how did you get here?' he said.
'Well, some say that the creator took a handful - oh, I see, well, it's
hard to explain but I -'
'Have you got the Luggage?'
The wooden box pushed past Rincewind and settled down in front of its
owner, who opened its lid and rummaged around inside until he came up with
a small, leatherbound book which he handed to War, who was hammering the
table with a mailed fist.
'It's "Nosehinger on the Laws of Contract",' he said. 'It's quite good,
there's a lot in it about double finessing and how to -'
Death snatched the book with a bony hand and flipped through the pages, 
quite oblivious to the presence of the two men.
'RIGHT,' he said, 'PESTILENCE, OPEN ANOTHER PACK OF CARDS. I'M GOING TO GET
TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS IF IT KILLS ME. FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING OF COURSE.'

  [The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 2
%e title
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%title Equal Rites (3)
%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
%passage 2
Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten.

  [Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%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
%e title
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%title Mort (1)
%passage 1
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and hand 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
%e title
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%title Sourcery (2)
%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
%e title
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%title Wyrd Sisters (2)
%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
%passage 2
#submitted by Boudewijn
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
%e title
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%title Pyramids (2)
%passage 1
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
%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
%e title
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%title Guards! Guards! (2)
%passage 1
Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself.
The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that. 

  [Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%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 instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed. 

  [Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
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%title Eric (2)
%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 any more, 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
%passage 2
Rincewind 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
%e title
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%title Moving Pictures (4)
%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
%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
%passage 3
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...   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'.   'Could have bin worse, mister. I could have said "miaow".'

  [Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%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
%e title
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%title Reaper Man (4)
%passage 1
No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away..
. 

  [Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

  [Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%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
%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
%e title
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#
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%title Witches Abroad (1)
%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
%e title
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%title Small Gods (2)
%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
%e title
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#
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%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
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%title Men at Arms (1)
%passage 1
The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it.

  [Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
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%title Soul Music (2)
%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
%e title
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%title Interesting Times (2)
%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
%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 in 
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
%e title
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%title Maskerade (4)
%passage 1
'Maybe you could... help us?'
'What's wrong?'
'It's my boy...'
Granny opened the door further and saw the womand 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.   'Hmm,' said Granny, after a while.
'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?' siad
 Granny. 'Very good place for a sick-room, a cowshed. It's the warmth. You
better show me were 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.'
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. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES.

  [Maskerade, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
Ahahahahaha!
Ahahahaha!
Aahahaha!
BEWARE!!!!!
Yrs sincerely,
The Opera Ghost
'What sort of person,' said Salzella, '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
%passage 3
Agnes had woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd
been saddled with a lovely personality. 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 9 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
%passage 4
'And what can I get you, officers?' she said.
'Officers? Us? What makes you think we're watchment?'
'He's got a helmet on,' Nanny pointed out.
'Milit'ry chic,' Nobby 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
%e title
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%title Feet of Clay (2)
%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
%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
%e title
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%title Hogfather (1)
%passage 1
#addition text contributed by Boudewijn
Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree. 
But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of
things.  They wonder how the snowplough driver gets to work, or how the
makers of dictionaries look up the spelling of words.  Yet there is the
constant desire to find some point in the twisting, knotting, ravelling
nets of space-time on which a metaphorical finger can be put to indicate
that here, /here/, is the point where it all began . . .

/Something/ began when the Guild of Assassins enrolled Mister Teatime,
who saw things differently from other people, and one of the ways that 
he saw things differently from other people was in seeing other people
as things (later, Lord Downey of the Guild said, 'We took pity on him 
because he'd lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on 
reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.') 

  [Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Jingo (2)
%passage 1
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to
think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault.
If it was us, what did that make Me?  After all, I'm one of Us. I must be.
I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them.  No one ever thinks
of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us.  It's Them that do
the bad things. 

  [Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
#contributed by Boudewijn
There was a general shifting of position and a group clearing of throats.
'What about mercenaries?' said Boggis.
'The problem with mercenaries', said the Patrician, 'is that they need
to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end
up paying them even more to stop--'
Selachii thumped the table.
'Very well, then, by jingo!' he snarled. 'Alone!'
'We could certainly do with one,' said Lord Vetinari. 'We need the 
money. I was about to say that we cannot /afford/  mercenaries.'
'How can this be?' said Lord Downey. Don't we pay our taxes?'
'Ah, I thought we might come to that,' said Lord Vetinari. He raised
his hand and, on cue again, his clerk placed a piece of paper in it.
'Let me see now . . . ah yes. Guild of Assassins . . . Gross earnings
in the last year: AM$13,207,048. Taxes paid in the last year: 
forty-seven dollars, twenty-two pence and what on examination turned
out to be a Hershebian half-/dong/, worth one eighth of a penny.'
'That's all perfectly legal! The Guild of Accountants--'
'Ah yes. Guild of Accountants: gross earnings AM$7,999,011. 
Taxes paid: nil. But, ah yes, I see they applied for a rebate of 
AM$200,000.'
'And what we received, I may say, included a Hershebian half-/dong/,'
said Mr Frostrip of the Guild of Accountants.
'What goes around comes around,' said Vetinari calmly.
He tossed the paper aside. 'Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like
dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with
the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is 
moo.' 
'Are you telling us that Ankh-Morpork is /bankrupt/?' said Downey.
'Of course. While, at the same time, full of rich people. I trust they
have been spending their good fortume on swords.'
'And you have /allowed/ this wholesale tax avoidance?' said Lord 
Selachii. 'Oh, the taxes haven't been avoided,' said Lord Vetinari.
'Or even evaded. They just haven't been paid.'
'That is a disgusting state of affairs!'
The Patrician raised his eyebrows. 'Commander Vines?'
'Yes, sir?'
'Would you be so good as to assemble a squad of your most experienced
men, liaise with the tax gatherers and obtain the accumulated back 
taxes, please? My clerk here will give you a list of the prime 
defaulters.'
'Right, sir. And if they resist, sir?' said Vimes, smiling nastily.
'Oh, how can they resist, commander? This is the will of our civic 
leaders.' He took the paper his clerk proferred. 'Let me see, now. 
Top of the list--' Lord Selachii coughed hurriedly. 'Far too late for
that sort of nonsense now,' he said.
'Water under the bridge,' said Lord Downey.
'Deat and buried,' said Mr Slant.
'I paid mine,' said Vimes.

  [Jingo, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Last Continent (2)
%passage 1
PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE
PROCESS IS CALLED 'LIVING'. 

  [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
"When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the
Rest of Your Life." 

  [The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Carpe Jugulum (1)
%passage 1
Perdita thought that not obeying rules was somehow cool. 
Agnes thought that rules like "Don't fall into this huge pit of spikes" 
were there for a purpose.

  [Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Fifth Elephant (2)
%passage 1
You did something because it had always been done, 
and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." 
A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?

  [The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery:  It facinated
people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and
interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they
created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day
they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips, if it was well done and
maybe had a slice of tomato. 

  [The Fifth Elephant, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Truth (2)
%passage 1
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are
those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this
glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half
empty. 

The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say:
What's up with this glass?  Excuse me?  Excuse me?  This is my glass?  I
don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!  Who's been
pinching my beer? 

  [The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 1
%passage 2
The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. 
This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. 
There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.

  [The Truth, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 2
%e title
#
#
#
%title Thief of Time (1)
%passage 1
"No running with scythes!"

  [Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
# The Last Hero has never been released in the U.S. (or anywhere?) as a
# conventional mass market paperback.  The large (roughly 10" by 12")
# trade paperback contains many full page color illustrations and most
# text pages include decorations of varying degrees of elaborateness.
# The actual text is probably only novella length.
#
%title The Last Hero (7)
# p. 41 (end of 1st paragraph)
%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 (1st page of text, 4th & 5th paragraphs)
# second paragraph is a bit "on the nose" but is too good to leave out
%passage 2
The reason for the story was a mix of many things.  There was humanity's
desire to do forebidden deeds merely because they were forbidden.
There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live
beyond them.  There were the mysterious scrolls.  There was the cucumber.
But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, it would all be over.

'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies.  But from the
point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't.  It's the
universe that goes on.  Just as the deceased was getting the hang of
everything it's all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one
case, a cucumber.  Why this has to be is one of the imponderables of
life, in the face of which people either start to pray...
or become really, really angry.

  [The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
%e passage
# p. 19 (bottom 20%)
%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 (2nd & 3rd fifths)
%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 (middle)
%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 (top)
%passage 7
Evil Harry looked down and shuffled his feet, his face a battle between
pride and relief.

'Good of you to say that, lads,' he mumbled.  'I mean, you know, if it
was up to me I wouldn't do this to yer, but I got a reputation to--'

'I said we /understand/,' said Cohen.  'It's just like with us.  You see
a big hairy thing galloping towards you, you don't stop to think:  Is
this a rare species on the point of extinction?  No, you hack its head
off.  'Cos that's heroing, am I right?  An' /you/ see someone, you
betray 'em, quick as a wink.  'Cos that's villaining.'

  [The Last Hero, written by Terry Pratchett, illustrated by Paul Kidby]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (1)
%passage 1
The important thing about adventures, thought Mr Bunnsy, was that they
shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes. 

  [The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Night Watch (1)
%passage 1
When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.

  [Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Wee Free Men (1)
%passage 1
"Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! We willna
be fooled again!" 

  [The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Monstrous Regiment (1)
%passage 1
'How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if 
you don't know how to use it?'

'Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and 
don't attack me,' said Maladict patiently.

'Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn't be any good with it,' said the
sergeant. 

'No, sir. I'd probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. 
That's what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. 
And I'd get hell from the League if I did that, sir'

  [Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title A Hat Full of Sky (1)
%passage 1

Why do you go away?

So that you can come back. So that you can see the place 
you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people 
there see you differently, too. 

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

  [A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Going Postal (1)
%passage 1

What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the 
snap of a finger?  Where was the magic in that?  It was mumbled 
words and weird drawings in old books and in the wrong hands it 
was dangerous as hell, but not one half as dangerous as it could 
be in the right hands.

  [Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Thud! (2)
%passage 1
Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?

  [Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
#submitted by Boudewijn
He wanted to sleep. He'd never felt this tired before. 
Vimes slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways on to the sand.
When he forced open his eyes he saw pale stars above him, and had once
again the sensation that there was someone else present.
He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but 
brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining 
in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it.
A white skeletal hand turned a page.
'You'll be Death, then?' said Vimes, after a while.

AH. MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting 
the book on his finger to keep the place.

'I've seen you before.'

I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.

'And this is /it/, is it?'

HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRITTEN NARRATIVE IS
SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.

Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really
didn't want to say, and it was happening here.
'Is it?' he insisted. 'Is this it? This time I die?'

COULD BE.

'Could be? What sort of answer is that?' said Vimes.

A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE,
WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR VIMES EXPERIENCE. 
DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.

Vimes rolled over on to his stomach, gritted his teeth and pushed 
himself on to his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before 
slumping back down. He heard the sound of a chair being moved. 
'Shouldn't you be somewhere else?' he said.

I AM, said Death, sitting down again.
  
'But you're here!'
  
AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed
a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT.

'Did what?'

IT IS A MADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEEDS TO DO IS TURN TO THE
LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF 
DELIBERATEDLY NOT KNOWING?

It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches
had gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling,
everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.

  [Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Wintersmith (2)
%passage 1
That's Third Thoughts for you. 
When a huge rock is going to land on your head,
they're the thoughts that think: 
Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?

  [Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
They say that there can never be two snowflakes that are exactly alike, but
has anyone checked lately? 

  [Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Making Money (3)
%passage 1
Making Money, by Terry Pratchett
'I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth.'
'Really? Why not?'
'I don't know, thur. I didn't athk.'

  [Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
%e pasasge
%passage 2
 The Watch armour fitted like a glove. He'd have preferred it to fit like a
 helmet and breastplate. It was common knowledge that the Watch's approach
 to uniforms was one-size-doesn't-exactly-fit-anybody, and that Commander
 Vimes disapproved of armour that didn't have that kicked-by-trolls look.

 He liked it to make it clear that it had been doing its job. 

  [Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 3
 'The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn
 stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where's the sense in that?
 What are we, magpies? Good heavens, /potatoes/ are worth more than gold!'  
 'Surely not!'   'If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you
 prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?'   'Yes, but a desert island
 isn't Ankh-Morpork!'   'And that proves gold is only valuable because we
 agree it is, right? It's just a dream. But a potato is always worth a
 potato, anywhere. A knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you've got a
 meal, /anywhere/. Bury gold in the ground and you'll be worrying about
 thieves for ever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at
 a dividend of a thousand per cent.'   

  [Making Money, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Unseen Academicals (1)
%passage 1
Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, 
and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, 
but even sitting down, you had to stand out.

  [Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title I Shall Wear Midnight (2)
%passage 1
It is important that we know where we come from, 
because if you do not know where you come from, 
then you don't know where you are, 
and if you don't know where you are, 
you don't know where you're going. 

And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.

  [I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I 
could change the past. Well, I can't, but I can change the 
present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out 
to be a past worth having.

  [I Shall Wear Midnight, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Snuff (2)
%passage 1
They were crude weapons, to be sure, but a flint axe hitting your head does
not need a degree in physics.  

  [Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
It is a strange thing to find yourself doing something you 
have apparently always wanted to do, when in fact up until 
that moment you had never known that you always wanted to do it...

  [Snuff, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title Raising Steam (2)
%passage 1
Yesterday you never thought about it and after today you 
don't know what you would do without it. 

That was what the technology was doing. 
It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way round.

  [Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%passage 2
If you take enough precautions, you never need to take precautions.

  [Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
%e section
#-----------------------------------------------------
# Used for interaction with Death.
#
%section Death
%title Death Quotes (2)
%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
%passage 2
I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. *I* TURN UP ONLY ONCE.
%e passage
%e title
%e section