The Light Fantastic (Discworld, #2; Rincewind, #2)

by Terry Pratchett

Rincewind the wizard, in what on the Disc passes for a spacesuit. Picture it as a diving suit designed by men who have never seen the sea.

For a man with an itch to see the whole of infinity, Twoflower never actually moved outside his own head. Telling him the truth would be like kicking a spaniel.

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it . . .

Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential. There was absolutely nothing pert about any of them. Look, they can wear leather if you like.

The thought had crossed his mind, only very fast and looking nervously from side to side in case it got knocked over.

“Ah, then he can’t be mad. I’ve been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he’sh just ecshentric.”

But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.

There was no real need for the torches. The Octavo filled the room with a dull, sullen light, which wasn’t strictly light at all but the opposite of light; darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence, and what was radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic. It was a rather disappointing purple color.

But mainly he hit it to stop it hitting back.

In fact most people on the Disc were currently in a state of mind normally achievable only by a lifetime of dedicated meditation or about thirty seconds of illegal herbage.

You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.