Eric (Discworld, #9)

by Terry Pratchett

No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn’t own their own horses any more, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.

you always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

QED.

You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel.

“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 draught, 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.”

Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people 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.