Kindle Notes & Highlights
Which is like defining death as feeling a bit under the weather, or describing the Second World War as a free and frank exchange of views.
The meek shall inherit the Earth. Eventually. When everyone else has quite finished with it, and the meek have stopped saying, ‘No, please, after you.’ Until then, the cocky little bastards shall inherit the Earth; which means that by the time the meek get their hands on it, they’ll wish the old fool had left them some money or a clock or something instead.
Everybody knows that when it comes to affairs of the heart, gods come second only to the characters in a long-running soap opera for spreading it around. At the height of the Heroic Age, the average god scarcely dared set foot outside his own temple for fear of process-servers with paternity suits.
‘Um,’ replied the postman. Of all the places he delivered to, Sunnyvoyde was the one he dreaded most. Since his round also included the Grand Central Abattoir, the explosives factory and the Paradise Hill Home for Stray Killer Dogs, this was probably significant.
Because they really were doctors, and had therefore served their time as the lowest form of life in a busy hospital, they still had buried deep in their psyches the basic fear of nurses that all doctors carry with them to the grave. This fear springs from the subconscious belief that the nurse knows a damn sight more about what’s going on than they do, and for two pins will show them up in front of the patient.
‘That’s terrible,’ Osiris said, shaken. ‘I mean to say, surely everybody is capable of believing in gods. We built you that way, for pity’s sake.’ ‘I’m afraid you’re a bit out of touch, Mr Osiris.’ ‘Strewth.’ Osiris leaned back in his chair and thought about it. It wasn’t a concept he found easy to get hold of. People could dislike gods, sure enough. Despise them, certainly; hate them, even. But not believe in them at all - that was like people not believing in rain just because they didn’t like getting wet.
faith does indeed move mountains, but always puts them down again in the wrong place and invariably loses or breaks a couple of foothills in the process.
‘It’s all right him saying act natural,’ Pan grumbled, ‘but it’s not as easy as that. I’ve been trying to do it all my life and I’ve never quite seemed to get the hang of it . . .’
‘I’m telling you where you can stick your advice,’ Osiris replied, wiggling his toes. ‘If your basic anatomy’s a bit rusty, it’s the part of your body you seem to talk through. Goodbye.’
The Law is my shepherd, wherefore shall I have nothing. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, shamming dead.
And, when the First Day dawned, the wicked prince Set looked out from his throne and saw the sun. And he turned to his two brothers and asked them what it might be. And his brothers turned to each other in amazement (they had perfectly good names but somehow always ended up being called Game and Match)
But that sort of thing is par for the course if you’re a tiny individual caught up in the ebbing and flowing of the tide of Destiny; just as you’re about to overthrow the forces of Darkness and bring back the old King or whatever, along comes some bastard and treads on you. Still, there it is.
It is one thing, however, to storm the Bastille; quite another to consolidate your position to the extent that you can start issuing your own postage stamps.
You’ve given the world over to the charge of lawyers and accountants and politicians - men whose only function in life is to make the truth appear lies and lies appear the truth.
