The Last Continent (Discworld, #22; Rincewind, #6)

by Terry Pratchett

Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the center of their heads.

All tribal myths are true, for a given value of “true.”

They’d never stopped, or even thought of stopping. You couldn’t stop Tradition. You could only add to it.

In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers.

banana-and-sushi pizza

Found it. Something Worse than pineapple pizza.

Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon—he’d run them all. Later, when he’d learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one.

He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was.

Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot.

“Do not remove this wood. Not even to see what happens.

A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes.

Roads went somewhere. Sooner or later they went everywhere.

All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards.”

If some god somewhere had said, “Let there be light,” they’d be the ones to say things like “Why? The darkness has always been good enough for us.”

astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job.

It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity.

“ ‘Never trust a wizard over sixty-five’? Whatever happened?” “We got past the age of sixty-five, Senior Wrangler.” “Ah, yes. And it turned out that we were trustworthy after all.” “Good thing we found out in time, eh?”

Ankh-Morpork beer was technically ale, that is to say, gravy made from hops.

And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts.

Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.”

You know the worst part? The worst part was that if you actually stopped the smiting, people wandered off and worshipped someone else.

I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mold. There’d be a bad weather front, a few silly shepherds would happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and next thing you know it was standing room only on the sacrificial stones and you couldn’t see for the smoke.”

A lot of things never entered Mrs. Whitlow’s head. She’d decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way.

Rincewind was pretty sure horses couldn’t snigger, but this one radiated an air of sniggerruity.

It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways.

The cover promised “hours of fun” although, after the first three minutes, you couldn’t help wondering what kind of person could make that kind of fun last for hours, and whether suffocating him as kindly as possible now would save the Serial Crimes Squad a lot of trouble in years to come.

“Oh, we’d never get anywhere if I just copied earlier ideas,” said the god. “Diversify and fill all niches, that’s the ticket.”

the wizards fanned out like small boys in an amusement arcade, ready to press anything in case there was a free game left.

an electric fire in the swimming pool of life.

It is very easy to get ridiculously confused about the tenses of time travel, but most things can be resolved by a sufficiently large ego.

Rice! All very nutritious in its way, but basically only grown where potatoes would’ve floated to the surface.

A flash of inspiration struck him with all the force and brilliance that ideas have when they’re traveling through beer.

Then another insight struck him at the speed of beer. Beer! It was only water, really, with stuff in it. Wasn’t it? And most of what was in it was yeast, which was practically a medicine and definitely a food.

In fact, when you thought about it, beer was only a kind of runny bread,

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED “LIVING.” WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN?

Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it.

The trouble is that it’s easy to abstain from sweets when you’re not standing knee deep in treacle and it’s raining sugar.

“I move that we abandon ship.” “What for?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “The sharks?” “That is a secondary problem,” said the Dean. “That’s right,” said Ponder, “we can always vote to abandon shark.”

“Ow . . .” Ponder slumped to his knees. “It was like wearing a lead suit! I never want to go through that again!” “Suicide’s your best bet, then,” said Ridcully. “Is this going to happen again?” “Probably. At least once, anyway.”

Ponder wasn’t sure how old he’d been, but he’d definitely thought he could hear a blade being sharpened. It was one thing to know you were on a journey, and quite, quite another to see your destination on the horizon.

Of course, more time was spent setting it up than was ever saved by using it, but this is the case in many similar fields and is a sign of Progress.

“Why did he have to go to prison?” “We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they’re elected. Don’t you?” “Why?” “It saves time.”

While he didn’t know what a pozza was, he was quite, quite sure that B. Smoth didn’t want to be called one. It was amazing how slang seemed to radiate its meaning even in another language.