Pyramids (Discworld, #7)

by Terry Pratchett

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

There was not a lot that could be done to make Morpork a worse place. A direct hit by a meteorite, for example, would count as gentrification.

There were distinct advantages to being the only child of parents too preoccupied with their own affairs to worry much about him, or indeed register his existence for days at a time.

Teppic hadn’t been educated. Education had just settled on him, like dandruff.

That was what was so likeable about Chidder. He had this enviable ability to avoid thinking seriously about anything he did.

“Oh. Look, there’s quite a few questions I’d like to ask—” THERE ALWAYS ARE. I’M SORRY. Death clapped his heels to his horse’s flanks, and vanished.

Not that he had anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. He just required that they stayed out of the way and let him get on with things.

I think my father is dead.” “Oh,” said Chidder. “Gosh, I’m sorry.” “Oh, no. It’s not like that. It’s what he would have wanted. I think he was rather looking forward to it. In our family, death is when you really start to, you know, enjoy life. I expect he’s rather enjoying it.”

A few stars had been let out early. Teppic looked up at them. Perhaps, he thought, there is life somewhere else. On the stars, maybe. If it’s true that there are billions of universes stacked alongside one another, the thickness of a thought apart, then there must be people elsewhere. But wherever they are, no matter how mightily they try, no matter how magnificent the effort, they surely can’t manage to be as godawfully stupid as us. I mean, we work at it. We were given a spark of it to start with, but over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve really improved on it.

It didn’t matter if they called it Ptaclusp’s Folly or Ptaclusp’s Glory. They’d call it Ptaclusp’s.

Tomorrow here is just like yesterday, warmed over.

“Brethren!” he cried. “Excuse me,” said the priestess of Sarduk. “And sistren—” “Thank you.”

I mean, we think we believe that the gods are wise and just and powerful, but what we really believe is that they are like our father after a long day.

“If they’re dead there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “And if they’re alive, there’s nothing I can do about it. So I shan’t.” Teppic stared at her in a species of horrified admiration. It was a beautiful summary of things as they were. He just couldn’t bring himself to think that way. His body had been away for seven years but his blood had been in the kingdom for a thousand times longer. Certainly he’d wanted to leave it behind, but that was the whole point. It would have been there. Even if he’d avoided it for the rest of his life, it would have still been a sort of anchor.

The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.

“OK,” said the Sphinx, in the uncertain tones of someone who has let the salesman in and is now regretfully contemplating a future in which they are undoubtedly going to buy life insurance.

The trouble with gods is that after enough people start believing in them, they begin to exist. And what begins to exist isn’t what was originally intended.