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

by Terry Pratchett

There is a curse. They say: May You Live in Interesting Times

According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.

They had been laid out, and a truer phrase was never used, by the renowned or at least notorious landscape gardener and all round inventor “Bloody Stupid” Johnson, whose absent-mindedness and blindness to elementary mathematics made every step a walk with danger.

Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students.

And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.

Rincewind sighed

cargocult

“Fascinatin’,” said Ridcully. “Sapient pearwood, eh?” He knelt down in an effort to see underneath. The Luggage backed away. It was used to terror, horror, fear, and panic. It had seldom encountered interest before.

He’d seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He’d been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost, and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

thaumic

not being able to think of himself as a wizard was being dead.

He’d always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.

Swords are outlawed, so only outlaws have swords.

extra glass eyes you could wear over the top of your own eyes to help you see better, even if it did mean you made a spectacle of yourself.

one remembered the author. Some said it was One Tzu Sung, some claimed it was Three Sun Sung.

These are what they call here”—he smiled—“interesting times.”

The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit.

they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep.

“Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; “Hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.”

‘When many expect a mighty stallion they will find hooves on an ant.’”

The Luggage lurked in a ditch, watched without much interest by a man holding a water buffalo on the end of a piece of string. It was feeling ashamed, and baffled, and lost.

“Three Yoked Oxen does not study,” said the girl. “Extra Success Attend Our Leaders!” “‘Tuppence A Bucket, Well Stamped Down!”’ said Rincewind encouragingly. “Much Ownership of Means of Production!” “‘How’s Your Granny Off For Soap?’” Three Yoked Oxen beamed.

He might, if he had time, have reflected that the purpose of civilization is to make violence the final resort, while to a barbarian it is the first, preferred, only and above all most enjoyable option.

Disembowel-Meself-Honorably Dibhala

He had been forty before he found out that oral sex didn’t mean talking about it.

“I’ve eaten everything else,” said Truckle, “but I ain’t eating dog. I had a dog once. Rover.” “Yeah,” said Cohen. “The one with the spiked collar? The one who used to eat people?” “Say what you like, he was a friend to me,” said Truckle, pushing the meat to one side.

A peasant who could not pay his taxes should be executed, in order to prevent him falling into the temptations of slothfulness and public disorder.

“They say that whoever pays the piper calls the tune.” “But, gentlemen,” said Mr. Saveloy, his eyes bright, “whoever holds a knife to the piper’s throat writes the symphony.”

Too much pure cerebration was bad for the mind.

And when people were called things like “o Great One,” it was pretty certain that there was no appeal.

“Rincewind?” “Twoflower?” “What are you doing here?” said Rincewind. “Rotting in a dungeon!” “Me, too!”

Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, “What happens if I do this?”

“You remember the good times we had?” “Did we? I must have had my eyes shut.” “The adventures!”

But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on.

“Three thousand years? That’s a bit short, isn’t it? The whole thing? Stars and oceans and intelligent life evolving from arts graduates, that sort of thing?”

“Extended Continuation To Filial Affection!” chanted Three Yoked Oxen. “‘Close Cover Before Striking!’” said Rincewind.

“But there are causes worth dying for,” said Butterfly. “No, there aren’t! Because you’ve only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!”

“You watching this hand? You watching this hand?” he demanded. “I am watching,” said the ninja, trying not to laugh. “Good,” said Caleb. He kicked the man squarely in the groin and then, as he doubled up, hit him over the head with the teak. “’Cos you should’ve been watchin’ this foot.”

“But there is more to civilization than that!” said Mr. Saveloy. “There’s … music, and literature, and the concept of justice, and the ideals of—”

“That’s the saga of my life,” said Cohen. “I’ve always been dying very slowly in interesting ways.

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow.

Don’t tell people anything, he said. Don’t tell them. You didn’t get to survive as a wizard in UU by believing what people told you. You believed what you were not told.

Don’t tell them. Ask them. Ask them if it’s true. You can beg them to tell you it’s not true. Or you can even tell them you’ve been told to tell them it’s not true, and that is the best of all.

Because Rincewind knew very well that when the Four rather small and nasty Horsemen of Panic ride out there is a good job done by Misinformation, Rumor, and Gossip, but they are as nothing co...

WITH HIM HERE, EVEN UNCERTAINTY IS UNCERTAIN. AND I’M NOT SURE EVEN ABOUT THAT.

Don’t go around believing that Great Wizards solve all your problems, because there aren’t any and they don’t and I should know because I’m not one!”

It was the Luggage. It contrived to look a little ashamed of itself.

Rincewind’s own sexual experiences were not excessive although he had seen diagrams. He hadn’t the faintest idea about how it applied to travel accessories. Did they say things like “What a chest!” or “Get a load of the hinges on that one!”? If it came to that, he had no real reason for considering that the Luggage was male. Admittedly it had a homicidal nature, but so had a lot of the women that Rincewind had met, and they had often become a little more homicidal as a result of meeting him. Capacity for violence, Rincewind had heard, was unisexual. He wasn’t certain what unisex was, but expected that it was what he normally experienced.

Authority always noticed a running man. The time to start running was around about the “e” in “Hey, you!”

“They’re fighting for you.” The man did not appear moved by this. The water buffalo burped gently. “Some want to see you enslaved and some want you to run the country, or at least to let them run the country while telling you it’s you doing it really,” said Rincewind. “There’s going to be a terrible battle. I can’t help wondering… What do you want?”