Thief of Time (Discworld, #26; Death, #5)

by Terry Pratchett

And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment.

“It’s always ‘now’ everywhere,

the Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised. The first question they ask is: “Why was he eternally surprised?” And they are told: “Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, re-created anew. Therefore, he understood, there is, in truth, no Past, only a memory of the Past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.”

‘Oo, you are so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days’?”

“Dojo! What is Rule One!” Even the cowering challenger mumbled along with the chorus: “Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!”

“That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which, do you think, it was?”

You had to be a better person than Madam Frout to survive the intensity of that attention. It inspected your soul, putting little red circles around the bits it didn’t like.

If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds,

The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was waiting, it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun,”

“When in doubt, choose to live.

A prayer is always useful in the last resort.

“Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom in sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?” Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: “A fish!”

‘A washed pot never boils,’”

Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue hues that any professional artist would dismiss as the work of some enthusiastic amateur who’d never looked at a real sunset. This was one of those sunrises. It was the kind of sunrise a man rises and looks at and says, “No real sunrise could paint the sky Surgical Appliance Pink.”

Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and—this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit—it didn’t even make you right. But it did make you definite, and she was definite that what was happening around her was not, in any accepted sense, real.

“Bee’s knees, cat’s pajamas, and dog’s . . .elbows,”

.defend the small spaces, don’t run with scissors, and remember that there is often an unexpected chocolate,” said Wen. He smiled. “And never resist a perfect moment.”