Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3)

by Terry Pratchett

They all knew the Librarian, in the same definite but diffused way that people know walls and floors and all the other minor but necessary scenery on the stage of life.

Eventually there was nothing but silence, but it was that particularly massive silence created by something moving very stealthily,

the crumpled pages. The book

“Talent just defines what you do,” he said. “It doesn’t define what you are. Deep down, I mean. When you know what you are, you can do anything.”

The important thing is to know what you really are.”

It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t even an order. It was a sort of forecast.

The truth isn’t easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find…

All wizards can see Death, but they don’t necessarily want to.

“We need a plan,” said Nijel. “We could try running again,” said Rincewind. “That doesn’t solve anything!” “Solves most things,”

propelled by some vague but absolutely accurate animal instinct.

There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away.

“Magic uses people,” said Rincewind hurriedly. “It affects you as much as you affect it, sort of thing. You can’t mess around with magical things without it affecting you.

“Like a wine bottle,” said Creosote, “that—” “—drinks you back,”

He had nothing in the whole world but a magic carpet, a magic lamp, a magic ring and a grotto full of assorted jewels.”

The universal bootstraps story

if you kept on trying to see both types of dragon at once your brains would trickle out of your ears.

Two thousand years of peaceful magic had gone down the drain, the towers were going up again, and with all this new raw magic floating around something was going to get very seriously hurt. Probably the universe. Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn’t good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.

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.

This wasn’t the old, gentle, rather silly magic that the Disc was used to; this was magic war, white-hot and searing.

he knew with weary certainty that at some point in the very near future, like thirty seconds or so, someone would say: “Surely there’s something we could do?”

“Poor I don’t mind,” said the Seriph. “It’s sobriety that is giving me difficulties.”

you could do something about it. Like what? You could destroy the sourcerer. All this would collapse then. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Then at least you could die in the attempt. That might be preferable to letting magical war break out.

“Speaking as a poet,” said Conina carefully, “what would you say about this situation?” Creosote shifted uneasily. “Funny old thing, life,” he said. “Pretty apt.”

wizards are good at getting you out of the sort of trouble that only wizards can get you into,” said Creosote. “Then they expect you to thank them.”

“Wha—” he began, which is a pretty poor syllable on which to end a life.

In other words, it’s the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit creek.

There was a weird light. No, now he came to think about it, not weird but wyrd, which was much weirder.

The whole edifice that operated as the balance wheel of magic was falling to bits. Rincewind resented that, deeply. He’d never been any good at magic, but that wasn’t the point. He knew where he fitted. It was right at the bottom, but at least he fitted.

All he had was nothing, but that was something, and now it had been taken away.

Wizards aren’t allowed to have wives but they are allowed to have parents, and many of them go back to the old home town for Hogswatch Night or Soul Cake Thursday, for a bit of a sing-song and the heart-warming sight of all their boyhood bullies hurriedly avoiding them in the street.

Rincewind couldn’t go home because it actually wasn’t there anymore.

Rincewind had always been rather proud of the fact that he always felt alone, even in the teeming city, but it was even worse being alone when he was by himself.

It made you feel sorry even for stone that it should have to undergo such treatment.

Towards where the Library had been.

“There’s more to life than narrative, you know.”

Distance is, however, an entirely subjective phenomenon and creatures of magic can adjust it to suit themselves.

He examined his conscience. It said: I’m out of options. Please yourself.

The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to spot the flaw until the journey was complete.

a solid core of antique darkness that had been there since the dawn of time

Books are pretty good at conveying meaning, not necessarily their own personal meanings of course, and Rincewind grasped the fact that they were trying to tell him something.

The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said “oook,” that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical practitioner could need.

There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onward, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.

the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn’t want to know.

The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away…

Somehow, all his old friends had gone. Well, not friends. A wizard never had friends, at least not friends who were wizards. It needed a different word. Ah yes, that was it. Enemies. But a very decent class of enemies. Gentlemen. The cream of their profession. Not like these people, for all that they seemed to have risen in the craft since the sourcerer had arrived.

Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.

A man should lean on his staff, not the other way around…it’s steering him, leading him…

“You’re pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,” he said. “Others have given them a pathway but you’ve given them an avenue!”

a sufficient exercise of magic can, shall we say, um, break through the actuality at its lowest point and offer, perhaps, a pathway to the inhabitants or, if I may use a more correct term, denizens of the lower plane (which is called by the loose-tongued the Dungeon Dimensions) who, because perhaps of the difference in energy levels, are naturally attracted to the brightness of this world. Our world.”

while everybody mentally inserted commas and stitched the fractured clauses together.

“If failure had no penalty success would not be a prize,” he said.