Interesting Times (Discworld, #17; Rincewind, #5)

by Terry Pratchett

the Counterweight Continent was an unknown land, or terror incognita

in the Agatean language is a word identical with “universe.” On the other side is—nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is.

The Agatean word for foreigner is the same as the word for ghost, and only one brush stroke away from the word for victim.

Many of them die in the attempt, of course. Most of the others are soon caught, and made to live in interesting times.

And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep. Rincewind sometimes thought that his life was punctuated by awakenings.

This is actually a kind of Finnegans Wake

The sun had come up in its humdrum fashion, the waves had washed the beach in quite a boring way, and on several occasions he’d managed to erupt from unconsciousness without his habitual small scream.

Rincewind did some calculation, and reached a conclusion. “This is the seventeenth worst day of my life so far,” he thought.

generally the knocker wanted to keep you alive. The Thieves’ Guild were punctilious about that. As they said: “Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; “Hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.”

the words of the great philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, ‘When many expect a mighty stallion they will find hooves on an ant.’

whoever had thought that rough, splintery wood was the right surface for a floor was also the person who thought “triangular” was a nice shape for a wheel.

Ly Tin Wheedle says an ass may do the work of an ox in a time of no horses. One of his less convincing aphorisms, I’ve always thought.”

“You listen to me, you lot,” said Cohen. “This slaughtering and butchering business isn’t how you do it these days, right? That’s what Mr. Saveloy says and he knows how to spell words like ‘marmalade’ which is more than you do.

The path of the ambitious man was a nightingale floor. One wrong step and it would sing out.

Anyone he’d publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset.

“It’s a revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make their own copy and pass it on.” “Yes, it’s called samizdat.” “What does that mean?” “It means each one must be the same as the one before.

The aroma from the proffered paper bag hit Six Beneficent Winds like a flamethrower.

Scent dictionary

It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus.

“If we’ve got the Empire by your kind of plan, we’ll keep it by our kind of plan. You’ve shown us civilization, so we’ll shown you barbarism.” He walked a few steps and then turned, an evil glint in his eye. “Barbarism? Hah! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin’ ’em in the eye, and we’d be happy to buy ’em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make ’em look pretty, or put poison in people’s grub. Civilization? If that’s civilization, you can shove it where the sun don’t shine!”

What d’you think this is, homeopathic warfare? The smaller your side the more likely you are to win?

it was only a temporary measure, but Rincewind had always considered that life was no more than a series of temporary measures strung together.

the traditional gesture for the dismissal of demons. Seven thousand terracotta middle fingers stabbed towards the ceiling.