update lgtm.yml

[jnethack/source.git] / dat / tribute

# NetHack 3.6  tribute       $NHDT-Date: 1574107001 2019/11/18 19:56:41 $  $NHDT-Branch: NetHack-3.6 $:$NHDT-Revision: 1.86 $
# Copyright (c) 2017 by Robert Patrick Rankin
# NetHack may be freely redistributed.  See license for details.
# A tribute introduced in NetHack 3.6.0 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
#
#
#
%title The Colour of Magic  (14)
# p. 67 (Signet edition; 'Morpork':  initially Ankh and Morpork were twin
#        cities with distinct characteristics on opposite sides of the Ankh
#        river--they were eventually consolidated into Ankh-Morpork without
#        regard to which area was where)
%passage 1
It has been remarked before that those who are sensitive to radiations 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 bazaars of Morpork with the Luggage trundling behind him, jostled
a tall dark 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
# p. 116
%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.  Everyone 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 cargoes 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
# p. 8 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
%passage 3
[...]  In the meantime, they could only speculate about the revealed
cosmos.

There was, for example, the theory that A'Tuin had come from nowhere and
would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all
time.  This theory was popular among academics.

An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that
A'Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were
all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant
turtles.  When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for
the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be
born to carry a new pattern of worlds.  This was known as the Big Bang
hypothesis.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 13 (end of a long footnote; the initial obsession with 'eight' ended
#        fairly quickly within the Discworld series)
%passage 4
[...]

There are, of course, eight days in a disc week and eight colours in its
light spectrum.  Eight is a number of some considerable occult
significance on the disc and must never, ever, be spoken by a wizard.

Precisely why all the above should be so is not clear, but goes some way
to explain why, on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 38 (first speaker is Rincewind, second is a pre-Vetinari Patrician)
%passage 5
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."

"Indeed?  Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 41 (title of 5th book is "Sourcery" but it's spelled "sorcery" here;
#        'organising': British spelling)
%passage 6
All the heroes of the Circle Sea passed through the gates of Ankh-Morpork
sooner or later.  Most of them were from the barbaric tribes nearer the
frozen Hub, which had a sort of export trade in heroes.  Almost all of
them had crude magic swords, whose unsuppressed harmonics on the astral
plane played hell with any delicate experiments in applied sorcery for
miles around, but Rincewind didn't object to them on that score.  He knew
himself to be a magical dropout, so it didn't bother him that the mere
appearance of a hero at the city gates was enough to cause retorts to
explode and demons to materialize all through the Magical Quarter.  No,
what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally
gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.  There were too many
of them, too.  Some of the most notable questing grounds were a veritable
hubbub in the season.  There was talk of organising a rota.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 82-83 (passage starts mid-paragraph;
#            pronouns for deities are not capitalized;
#            Bravd and the Weasel, obviously a parody of Fritz Leiber's
#            Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, appear at the beginning of the 1st
#            of 4 stories and then are left behind, never to be seen again;
#            "wenegrade wiffard" is Rincewind and "fome fort of clerk" is
#            Twoflower the tourist; the seemingly abrupt end of the passage
#            is the end of the 2nd of the 4 stories that make up the book;
#            'centre': British spelling; 'billion': British usage gives it a
#            value of 'million millions', equivalent to American 'trillion';
#            the second paragraph of this passage is the data.base quote
#            for "blind io" and the second half of the passage is the
#            data.base quote for "*lady" and "offler")
%passage 7
[...]  The disc gods themselves, despite the splendor of the world below
them, are seldom satisfied.  It is embarrassing to know that one is a god
of a world that only exists because every improbability curve must have
its far end; especially when one can peer into other dimensions at worlds
whose Creators had more mechanical aptitude than imagination.  No wonder,
then, that the disc gods spend more time bickering than in omnicognizance.

On this particular day Blind Io, by dint of constant vigilance the chief
of the gods, sat with his chin on his hand and looked at the gaming board
on the red marble table in front of him.  Blind Io had got his name
because, where his eye sockets should have been, there were nothing but
two areas of blank skin.  His eyes, of which he had an impressively large
number, led a semi-independent life of their own.  Several were currently
hovering above the table.

The gaming board was a carefully-carved map of the disc world, overprinted
with squares.  A number of beautifully modelled playing pieces were now
occupying some of the squares.  A human onlooker would, for example, have
recognized in two of them the likenesses of Bravd and the Weasel.  Others
represented yet more heroes and champions, of which the disc had a more
than adequate supply.

Still in the game were Io, Offler the Crocodile God, Zephyrus the god of
slight breezes, Fate, and the Lady.  There was an air of concentration
around the board now that the lesser players had been removed from the
Game.  Chance had been an early casualty, running her hero into a full
house of armed gnolls (the result of a lucky throw by Offler) and shortly
afterwards Night had cashed his chips, pleading an appointment with
Destiny.  Several minor deities had drifted up and were kibitzing over
the shoulders of the players.

Side bets were made that the Lady would be the next to leave the board.
Her last champion of any standing was now a pinch of potash in the ruins
of still-smoking Ankh-Morpork, and there were hardly any pieces that she
could promote to first rank.

Blind Io took up the dice-box, which was a skull whose various orifices
had been stoppered with rubies, and with several of his eyes on the Lady
he rolled three fives.

She smiled.  This was the nature of the Lady's eyes:  they were bright
green, lacking iris or pupil, and they glowed from within.

The room was silent as she scrabbled in her box of pieces and, from the
very bottom, produced a couple that she set down on the board with two
decisive clicks.  The rest of the players, as one God, craned forward to
peer at them.

"A wenegrade wiffard and fome fort of clerk," said Offler the Crocodile
God, hindered as usual by his tusks.  "Well, weally!"  With one claw he
pushed a pile of bone-white tokens into the centre of the table.

The Lady nodded slightly.  She picked up the dice-cup and held it as steady
as a rock, yet all the gods could hear the three cubes rattling about
inside.  And then she sent them bouncing across the table.

A six.  A three.  A five.

Something was happening to the five, however.  Battered by the chance
collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun
gently and came down a seven.

Blind Io picked up the cube and counted the sides.

"Come /on/," he said wearily.  "Play fair."

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 84 (Ankh-Morpork was burned soon after Twoflower introduced the concept
#        of fire insurance; a longer version of this passage is the data.base
#        quote for "tourist")
%passage 8
Picturesque.  That was a new word to Rincewind the wizard (B. Mgc.,
Unseen University [failed]).  It was one of a number he had picked up
since leaving the charred ruins of Ankh-Morpork.  Quaint was another one.
Picturesque meant--he decided after careful observation of the scenery
that inspired Twoflower to use the word--that the landscape was horribly
precipitous.  Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through
which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown.

Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld.  Tourist,
Rincewind decided, meant "idiot."

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 85 ('memorising': British spelling)
%passage 9
Currently Twoflower was showing a great interest in the theory and practice
of magic.

"It all seems, well, rather useless to me," he said.  "I always thought
that, you know, a wizard just said the words and that was that.  Not all
this tedious memorising."

Rincewind agreed moodily.  He tried to explain that magic had indeed once
been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the
Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of
Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve
a goal should be the same regardless of the means used.  In practical
terms, this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was
relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light
patterns.  On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in
the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic
preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of
leverage flicking his brain out through his ears.

He went on to add that some of the ancient magic could still be found in
its raw state, recognizable--to the initiated--by the eightfold shape it
made in the crystalline structure of space-time.  There was the metal
octiron, for example, and the gas octogen.  Both radiated dangerous
amounts of raw enchantment.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 166 ('Lio!rt' with embedded exclamation point is correct; book's text
#         is missing the opening quote before ["]You arrogant barbarian--")
%passage 10
"I challenge you," said Hrun, glaring at the brothers, "both at once."

Lio!rt and Liartes exchanged looks.

"You'll fight us both together?" said Liartes, a tall, wiry man with long
black hair.

"Yah."

"That's pretty uneven odds, isn't it?"

"Yah.  I outnumber you one to two."

Lio!rt scowled.  "You arrogant barbarian--"

"That just about does it!" growled Hrun.  "I'll--"

The Loremaster put out a blue-veined hand to restrain him.

"It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground," he said, and paused
while he considered the sense of this.  "You know what I mean, anyway," he
hazarded, giving up, and added, "As the challenged parties my lords Lio!rt
and Liartes have choice of weapons."

"Dragons," they said together.  Liessa snorted.

"Dragons can be used offensively, therefore they are weapons," said Lio!rt
firmly.  "If you disagree we can fight over it."

"Yah," said his brother, nodding at Hrun.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 196
%passage 11
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do.
Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth.  But the captain had
long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality
by not dying.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 201 (entire paragraph is enclosed within parentheses)
%passage 12
Plants on the disc, while including the categories known commonly as
/annuals/, which were sown this year to come up later this year,
/biennials/, sown this year to grow next year, and /perennials/, sown this
year to grow until further notice, also included a few rare /re-annuals/
which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could
be planted this year to come up /last year/.  The /vul/ nut vine was
particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years
prior to its seed actually being sown.  /Vul/ nut wine was reputed to give
certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut's
point of view, the past.  Strange but true.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 217 (Rincewind and Twoflower are slated to become ritual sacrifices)
%passage 13
"I hope you're not proposing to enslave us," said Twoflower.

Marchesa looked genuinely shocked.  "Certainly not!  Whatever could
have given you that idea?  Your lives in Krull will be rich, full and
comfortable--"

"Oh, good," said Rincewind.

"--just not very long."

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 228-229 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
%passage 14
[...]  She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her
never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest
need.  And, then again, sometimes she didn't.  She was like that.  She
didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of
dice.  No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times
when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick
up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face.  Of course,
sometimes he didn't.  Among all the gods she was at one and the same time
the most courted and the most cursed.

  [The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
%e title
#
#
#
%title The Light Fantastic (12)
# p. 92 (Signet edition)
%passage 1
'Cohen ish my name, boy.'  Bethan'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 gimlet gaze.

'Oh,' he said.  'Oh.  Of course.  Sorry.'

'Yesh,' said Cohen, and sighed.  'That's right boy.  I'm a lifetime in my
own legend.'

  [The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage 1
# p. 113 (Twoflower is teaching the Riders how to play bridge;
#         in /The Light Fantastic/, Death's dialog uses quotation marks
#         and full uppercase rather than the small capital letters used in
#         the other books)
%passage 2
Death sat at one side of a black baize table in the centre 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
# p. 7 (passage starts mid-sentence; the too-long-to-answer question is
#       "Why have Rincewind and Twoflower fallen off the Disc's rim?",
#       alluding to the conclusion of /The Colour of Magic/;
#       in /Sourcery/ and /Interesting Times/ and probably others, the
#       famous philosopher's name is spelled "Ly Tin Wheedle")
%passage 3
[...] such questions take time and could be more trouble than they are
worth.  For example, it is said that someone at a party once asked the
famous philosopher Ly Tin Weedle "Why are you here?" and the reply took
three years.

  [The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 8 ('libraries': plural is accurate)
%passage 4
The only furnishing in the room was a lectern of dark wood, carved into the
shape of a bird--well, to be frank, into the shape of a winged thing it is
probably best not to examine too closely--and on the lectern, fastened to
it by a heavy chain covered in padlocks, was a book.

A large, but not particularly impressive, book.  Other books in the
University's libraries had covers inlaid with rare jewels and fascinating
wood, or bound with dragon skin.  This one was just a rather tatty leather.
It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as "slightly
foxed," although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though
it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

  [The Light Fantastic, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 41-42
%passage 5
The barbarian chieftain said:  "What then are the greatest things that a
man may find in life?"  This is the sort of thing you're supposed to say to
maintain steppecred in barbarian circles.

The man on his right thoughtfully drank his cocktail of mare's milk and
snowcat blood, and spoke thus:  "The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind
in your hair, a fresh horse under you."

The man on his left said:  "The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the
fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow."

The chieftain nodded and said:  "Surely it is the sight of your enemy
slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women."

There was a general murmur of whiskery approval at this outrageous display.

Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, a small figure
carefully warming his chilblains by the fire, and said:  "But our guest,
whose name is legend, must tell us truly:  what is it that a man may call
the greatest things in life?"

The guest paused in the middle of another unsuccessful attempt to light up.

"What shay?" he said, toothlessly.

"I said:  what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?"

The warriors leaned closer.  This should be worth hearing.

The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation:  "Hot
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 do 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 an ellipsis)
%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
they 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 rhythmically 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 terrier 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 forbidding 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 genuine 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 curse 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 duchess 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, prophets, 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
#        ellipsis, second 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 desperate 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 author 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 sort 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 endless 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, encountered 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 existence.

  [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 chapel 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 believe 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;
#        'favour' and 'pedlar' are the spelling used)
%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 what 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
earnestly.

"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; 'rationalise' is accurate)
%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, rationalise 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 is 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 he 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 looked 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.

Magrat 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...

This 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."

Harga 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 sophisticated 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
genius, 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
situation 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, regrettably, 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 vicinity 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, hopeless 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 embarrassingly 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 tattooed
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 population.  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 thoughtful 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 elaborate 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
# p. 206 (Harper Torch Edition; passage starts mid-paragraph)
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 profferred.  '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 the undead community, sir," said Carrot.

"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 fascinated
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 little 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;
#        'challenger' has been cowed after finding out that the little old
#        man he challenged--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 challenger 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
#
#
# _The_Amazing_Maurice_and_His_Educated_Rodents_ (sometimes spelled with
# "his" uncapitalized--the book itself uses all uppercase on both the
# cover and the title page so doesn't help resolve which is correct...)
# was the first of six Discworld books marketed for "Young Adults" (at
# least in the US), ages 12 to 16 give or take, so tended to be stocked
# on different shelves from the rest of Discworld in book stores and
# libraries.  In the UK, _The_Amazing_Maurice..._ won the Carnegie Medal
# which is awarded for best children's book of the year.
# (The other Young Adult Discworld books are the five Tiffany Aching ones.)
#
# _The_Amazing_Maurice..._ may well be the most serious Discworld book.
# (Don't worry, it has lots of humor/humour in it....)
#
%title The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (10)
# p. 68 (Harperteen edition; _Mr._Bunnsy_Has_an_Adventure_ is a book
#        within the book, and a brief quote is shown at the beginning
#        of each chapter.  This one is from the start of chapter 4.)
%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
# p. 9 (passage starts mid-paragraph)
%passage 2
"Stealing from a thief isn't stealing, 'cos it cancels out."

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 11-12 (rats became intelligent from eating wizards' trash just outside
#            one of the walls of Unseen University; Maurice insists that he
#            never did that, implying that he'd eaten some of the rats instead
#            [never explicitly stated] before he became intelligent himself)
%passage 3
They said he was amazing.  The Amazing Maurice, they said.  He'd never
meant to be amazing.  It just happened.

He'd realized something was odd that day, just after lunch, when he'd
looked into a reflection in a puddle and thought, /that's me/.  He'd never
been /aware/ of himself before.  Of course it was hard to remember /how/
he'd thought before becoming amazing.  It seemed to him that his mind had
been just a kind of soup.

And then there had been the rats, who lived under the rubbish heap in one
corner of his territory.  He'd realized there was something educated
about the rats when he'd jumped on one and it'd said, "Can we talk about
this?" and part of his amazing new brain had told him you couldn't eat
someone who could talk.  At least, not until you'd heard what it'd got
to say.

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 32 (Maurice the cat, Keith the human boy, and the intelligent rat clan are
#        in the town of Bad Blintz; people are queuing up for rationed food)
%passage 4
"Shall we line up too?" asked the kid.

"I shouldn't think so," said Maurice carefully.

"Why not?"

"See those men on the door?  They look like the Watch.  They've got big
truncheons.  And everyone's showing them a bit of paper as they go past.
I don't like the look of that," said Maurice.  "That looks like
/government/ to me."

"We haven't done anything wrong," said the kid.  "Not here, anyway."

"You never know, with governments," said Maurice.  "Just stay here kid.
I'll take a look."

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 52 (speaker is Darktan, the traps expert; "Number One" platoon seems
#        like an obvious joke here--missed deliberately or accidentally?)
%passage 5
"All right, Number Three platoon, you're on widdling duty," he said.  "Go
and have a good drink."

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 110 (opening quote for chapter 6)
%passage 6
There were big adventures and small adventures, Mr. Bunnsy knew.  You
didn't get told what size they were going to be before you started.
Sometimes you could have a big adventure even when you were standing
still.

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 127-128 (searching for a secret door...)
%passage 7
Malicia leaned against the wall with incredible nonchalance.

There was not a click.  A panel in the floor did not slide back.

"Probably the wrong place," she said.  "I'll just rest my arm innocently
on this coat hook."

A sudden door in the wall completely failed to happen.

"Of course, it'd help if there was an ornate candlestick," said Malicia.
"They're always a surefire secret-passage lever.  Every adventurer knows
that."

"There isn't a candlestick," said Maurice.

"I know.  Some people totally fail to have any /idea/ of how to design a
proper secret passage," said Malicia.  She leaned against another piece
of wall, which had no affect whatsoever.

"I don't think you'll find it that way," said Keith, who was carefully
examining a trap.

"Oh?  Won't I?" said Malicia.  "Well at least I'm being /constructive/
about things!  Where would you look, if you're such an expert?"

"Why is there a rat hole in a rat catcher's shed?" said Keith.  "It smells
of dead rats and wet dogs and poison.  I wouldn't come near this place,
if I was a rat."

Malicia glared at him.  Then her face wrapped itself in an expression of
acute concentration, as if she was trying out several ideas in her head.

"Ye-es," she said.  "That usually works, in stories.  It's often the stupid
person who comes up with the good idea by accident."

She crouched down and peered into the hole.

"There's a sort of little lever," she said.  "I'll just give it a little
push...."

There was a /clonk/ under the floor, part of it swung back, and Keith
dropped out of sight.

"Oh, yes," said Malicia.  "I thought something like that would probably
happen."

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 231 (passage ends mid-paragraph)
%passage 8
He had to admit that he was cleverer at plans than at underground
navigation.  He wasn't exactly lost, because cats never get lost.  He
merely didn't know where everything else was.

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 298-300 (Keith has challanged the professional rat piper and offered
#              to rid the town of rats for a much lower price; Sardines is
#              one of the Educated Rodents, known for dancing all the time;
#              "hwun/two/three/four/" is run-together "one /two/ three /four/";
#              quite a long passage primarily for the 'a bit more grimy' gag)
%passage 9
[...]
"But first I shall need to borrow a pipe," Keith went on.

"You haven't got one?" asked the mayor.

"It got broken."

Corporal Knopf nudged the mayor.  "I've got a trombone from when I was in
the army," he said.  "It won't take a moment to get it."

The rat piper burst out laughing.

"Doesn't that count?" asked the mayor, as Corporal Knopf hurried off.

"What?  A trombone for charming rats?  No, no, let him try.  Can't blame
a kid for trying.  Good with a trombone, are you?"

"I don't know," said Keith.

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I meant I've never played one.  I'd be a lot happier with a flute,
trumpet, piccolo, cornet, or Lancre bagpipe, but I've seen people playing
the trombone, and it doesn't look too difficult.  It's only an overgrown
trumpet, really."

"Hah!" said the piper.  "This I'd like to see--but not hear."

The Watch came running back, rubbing a battered trombone with his sleave
and therefore making it just a bit more grimy.  Keith took it, wiped the
mouthpiece, put it to his mouth, moved the slide a few times, and then
blew one long note.

"Seems to work," he said.  "I expect I can learn as I go along."  He gave
the rat piper a brief smile.  "Do you want to go first?"

"You won't charm one rat with that mess, kid," said the piper, "but I'm
glad I'm here to see you try."

Keith gave him a smile again, took a breath, and played.

There was a tune there.  The instrument squeaked and wheezed, because
Corporal Knopf had occasionally used the thing as a hammer, but there was
a tune, quite fast, almost jaunty.  You could tap your feet to it.

Someone tapped his feet to it.

Sardines emerged from a crack in a nearby wall, going "hwun/two/three/four/"
under his breath.  The crowd watched him dance ferociously across the
cobbles until he disappeared into a drain.  Then they broke into applause.

The piper looked at Keith.

"Did that one have a /hat/ on?" he asked.

"I didn't notice," said Keith.  "Your go."

  [The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 309-310
%passage 10
"You really /can/ talk?  You can think?" asked the mayor.

Darktan looked up at him.  It had been a long night.  He didn't want to
remember any of it.  And now it was going to be a longer, harder day.
He took a deep breath.

"Here's what I suggest," he said.  "You pretend that rats can think, and
I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too."

  [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
#
#
#
%title Thud! (7)
# p. 39 (Harper Torch edition; passage starts mid-paragraph; speaker is Nobby)
%passage 1
"Why mess about with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?"

  [Thud!, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 334-336 (originally transcribed from some other edition)
%passage 2
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 his eyes open, 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 WITH 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
DELIBERATELY 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
# pp. 225-226
%passage 3
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)

(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)

(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 imaginary.  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
uninteresting 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 managed 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 challenges.  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 TOMORROW.
    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 their 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 version 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 unusually 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.

Drumknott 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
#
#
# Sir Terry Pratchett's final book, published posthumously.
# The story is complete, but the length is substantially shorter than
# other recent Discworld novels.  Presumably it would have been expanded
# if he had had more time to work on it....
#
%title The Shepherd's Crown (7)
# pp. 29-30 (Harper edition)
%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, Mr. 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
# p. 30 ('she' is Miss Tick, a travelling witch who finds new witches;
#        'under water' is spelled as two words; 'ducking' is accurate)
%passage 2
She sighed.  It was such a shame when old customs disappeared.  A good
witch-ducking was something she had liked doing in the bad old days--she
had even /trained/ for it.  All those swimming lessons, and practice with
knots at the Quirm College for Young Ladies.  She had been able to defeat
the mobs under water if necessary.  Or at least work at breaking her own
record for untying the simple knots they all thought worked on the nasty
witch.

Now, a bit of pond-dipping had become more like a hobby, and she had a
nasty feeling that others were copying her after she passed through their
villages.  She'd even heard talk of a swimming club being started in one
small hamlet over by Ham-on-Rye.(1)

(1) A popular idea among the young lads, since they felt that everyone--
and "everyone" definitely included the young ladies--should swim without
their clothes.

  [The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 37 (passage starts mid-paragraph; 'she' is Tiffany Aching)
%passage 3
Not for the first time, she wondered how it was that cats seemed to be
able to be in one place one moment, and then /almost at the same time/,
reappear somewhere else.(1)

(1) She did not know it, but a keen young philosopher in Ephebe had
pondered exactly that same conumdrum, until he was found one morning--
most of him, anyway--surrounded by a number of purring, and very well fed,
cats.  No one had seemed keen to continue his experiments after that.

  [The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# pp. 112-113 (the footnote has a misprint of mismatched quotes: "Chuffley')
%passage 4
Roland de Chumsfanleigh,(1) the young Baron on the Chalk /did/ want to be
like his father in many ways.  He knew the old man had been popular--what
was known as an "old-school Baron," which meant that everyone knew what
to expect and the guards polished up their armor and saluted, and did
what was expected of /them/, while the Baron did what was expected of him,
and pretty much left them alone.

But his father had also been a bit of a bad-tempered bully at times.  And
/that/ bit Roland wanted to forget about.  He particularly wanted to sound
the right note when he called round to see Tiffany Aching at Home Farm.
For they had once been good friends, and to Roland's alarm, Tiffany was
thought of as a good friend by his wife Letitia.  Any man with sense was
wise to be fearful of a wife's best friends.  For who knew what ... little
secrets might be shared.  Roland, having been educated at home and with
limited knowledge of the world outside the Chalk, feared that "little"
might be /exactly/ the kind of comment Letitia might share with Tiffany.

(1) Pronounced "Chuffley" under the strange rule that the more gentrified
a family is, the more peculiar the pronunciation of their name becomes.
Tiffany had once heard a high-born visitor named Ponsonby-Macklewright
(/Pwt/) refer to Roland as /Chf/.  She wondered how they managed at dinner
when /Pwt/ introduced /Chf/ to /Wm/ or /Hmpfh/.  Surely it could lead to
misunderstandings?

  [The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 158
%passage 5
He kicked the helmet of his chief, the Big Man of the clan, and shouted,
"There's elves here!  I can smell it, ye ken!"

And from every hole in turn, the clan of the Nac Mac Feegle poured out in
their hundreds to deal with the ancient enemy, waving claymores and swords,
yodeling their war cries:

"Ach, stickit yer trakkans!"

"Nac Mac Feegle wha hae!"

"Gae awa' wi' ye, yer bogle!"

"Gi'e you sich a guid kickin'!"

"Nae king!  Nae quin!  We will nae be fooled agin!"

There is a concept known as a hustle and bustle, and the Feegles were very
good at it, cheerfully getting in one another's way in the drive to be the
first into battle, and it seemed as if each small warrior had a battle cry
of his own--and he was very ready to fight anyone who tried to take it
away from him.

"How many elves?" asked Rob Anybody, trying to adjust his spog.

There was a pause.

"One," said Big Yan sheepishly.

  [The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 159 (passage starts mid-paragraph. 'oor' is accurate)
%passage 6
"This elf is oor prisoner.  A hostage, ye ken.  That means ye are nae tae
kill it until ye are told."  He ignored the grumbles from the clan.  "As
tae the rest o' ye, tak guard around yon stones.  And if they come in
force, show them what the Feegles can dae!"

Daft Wullie said, "I can play the harmonica."

Rob Anybody sighed.  "Aye, weel, I suppose that puts the willies up me,
so wud likely keep them awa'."

  [The Shepherd's Crown, by Terry Pratchett]
%e passage
# p. 202
%passage 7
Sometimes, Tiffany thought, I am so /fed up/ with being young.(1)

(1) A thought that she would most certainly grow out of, assuming she
survived long enough.

  [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