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

by Terry Pratchett

THERE ARE PLACES WHERE EVEN MAGIC MAY NOT GO.

THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, said Death.

“I meant,” said Ipslore, bitterly, “what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?” Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE.

“Hey, hold on,” said Rincewind. “I’ve seen you around here for years and you never talked before.” I didn’t have anything that needed to be said. Rincewind nodded. That seemed reasonable.

But there are people who can’t quite believe that children are fully human, and think that the operation of normal good manners doesn’t apply to them.

Silence isn’t the opposite of sound, it is merely its absence. But this was the sound that lies on the far side of silence, anti-noise, its shadowy decibels throttling the market cries like a fall of velvet.

—and he has sighed, because the white-hot lines searing across his imagination never seem to come out exactly as he wants them. It is, in fact, impossible that they ever will. Sadly, this sort of thing happens all the time.

Rincewind looked blank. Not for the first time in his life, he felt that there were whole areas of human experience that had passed him by, if areas could pass by people. Maybe he had passed them by. He shrugged.

“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 Luggage’s lid was set in an expression of grim determination. It didn’t want much out of the world, except for the total extinction of every other lifeform, but what it needed more than anything else now was its owner.

There was a noise behind him. He turned around. “Wha—” he began, which is a pretty poor syllable on which to end a life.

High over the Circle Sea Rincewind was feeling like a bit of an idiot. This happens to everyone sooner or later.

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.

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