Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4)

by Terry Pratchett

E verything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree. But people have always been dimly aware of the problem with the start of things. They wonder aloud how the snowplow driver gets to work, or how the makers of dictionaries look up the spellings of the 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 . .

The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as “Things just happen. What the hell.”

Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvelous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.

it was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.

After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

Ernie listened. Once or twice he looked at the corpse at his feet. He looked smaller from the outside. He was bright enough not to argue. Some things are fairly obvious when it’s a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”