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No enemies had ever taken Ankh-Morpork. Well, technically they had, quite often; the city welcomed free-spending barbarian invaders, but somehow the puzzled raiders always found, after a few days, that they didn’t own their own horses anymore, and within a couple of months they were just another minority group with its own graffiti and food shops.
trying to re-route his train of thought.
in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.
Whatever sins it had committed in life, it hadn’t deserved what the taxidermist had done to it.
Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.
So it's all down to who wins
Hell needed horribly bright, self-centered people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage.
No one looking at that desk could have any doubt that they were, in cold fact, truly damned.
it didn’t matter if you were fleeing from or to, so long as you were fleeing. It was flight alone that counted. I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I’ll still be.
He thought he knew the meaning of the word “exquisite,” and it didn’t seem to belong anywhere near “pain.”
you probably would want to spend some time explaining to him how incredibly disappointed you were.
If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was people who were fearless in the face of death.
“You never should have wanted to be ruler of the world,” he said. “I mean, what did you expect? You can’t expect people to be happy about seeing you. No one ever is when the landlord turns up.”
the whole point of the wish business was to see to it that what the client got was exactly what he asked for and exactly what he didn’t really want.
he liked people to believe that all the bad things happening to them were just fate and destiny.
Everywhere in time was now, once you were there, or then.
That was the thing about time travel. You were never ready for it.
“Don’t you worry about to,” he said. “In my experience that always takes care of itself. The important word is away.”
most of the first type of commander are brave men, whereas cowards make far better strategists.
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
Brave lads, I’ll grant you, but look at them. Too busy posing for triumphant statues and making sure the historians spell their names right. Bloody years we’ve been laying siege to this place. More military, they said. You know, they actually enjoy it? I mean, when all’s said and done, who cares? Let’s just get it over with and go home, that’s what I say.”
“You see, sir, what it is, he likes to get it over with without anyone getting hurt, sir, especially him. That’s why he dreams up things like the horse, sir. And bribing people and that. We got into civvies last night and come in and got drunk in a pub with one of the palace cleaners, see, and found out about this tunnel.”
We will just take the young lady and go home, which is where anyone of any sense ought to be.
No one’s going to be interested in a war fought over a, a quite pleasant lady, moderately attractive in a good light. Are they?”
“Anyway, you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the Classics,” Rincewind added. “They never check their facts. They’re just out to sell legends.”
“Everyone seems quite pleased about it.” The opposing armies were, at any rate. No one was bothering to ask the civilians, whose views on warfare were never very reliable.
I thought, you see, that if I could show people how to get what they wanted more easily they’d stop being so bloody stupid.”
“The trouble is,” he said, “is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so.
Gods and demons, being creatures outside of time, don’t move in it like bubbles in the stream. Everything happens at the same time for them. This should mean that they know everything that is going to happen because, in a sense, it already has. The reason they don’t is that reality is a big place with a lot of interesting things going on, and keeping track of all of them is like trying to use a very big video recorder with no freeze button or tape counter. It’s usually easier just to wait and see.
He also appeared to have changed the course of history, although this is impossible since the only thing you can do to the course of history is facilitate it.
“So we’re surrounded by absolutely nothing,” said Rincewind. “Total nothing.” He hesitated. “There’s a word for it,” he said. “It’s what you get when there’s nothing left and everything’s been used up.” “Yes. I think it’s called the bill,” said Eric.
“You’re just seeing what there is before the darkness has been installed, sort of thing.”
Forever was over. All the sands had fallen. The great race between entropy and energy had been run, and the favorite had been the winner after all.
Death sat back. He could wait. Whenever they needed him, he’d be there.
“You know, people think it must all be very easy, creating. They think you just have to move on the face of the waters and wave your hands a bit. It’s not like that at all.”
Well, I imagine there’ll be some gods along soon. They don’t wait long to move in, you know. Like flies around a—flies around a—like flies.
“I take it that isn’t a philosophical question,” said Rincewind, “I take it you mean: why are we here at the dawn of creation on this beach which has hardly been used?” “Yes. That’s what I meant.” Rincewind sat down on a rock and sighed. “I think it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” he said. “You wanted to live forever.”
Still, he’d acquired an ancestor. That was something. Not everyone had an ancestor. What would his ancestor have done in a situation like this? He wouldn’t have been here.
In fact the scope for error was so huge it seemed something of an anticlimax to emerge in a fairly ordinary, sandy-floored cavern.
“Personal service, that’s what it used to be. People used to feel that we were taking an interest, that they weren’t just numbers but, well, victims.
“The coffee machine, now, the coffee machine’s a good one, I’ll grant you. We only used to drown people in lakes of cat’s pee, we didn’t make them buy it by the cup.”
Hell, it has been suggested, is other people. This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought that hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on. This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul.
You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel.
Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which a) is costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.
For boredom to be enjoyable there had to be something to compare it with.
“This is really horrible,” said Eric, as they walked away. “It gives evil a bad name.”
if he didn’t actually invent original sin, at least he made one of the first copies. In terms of sheer enterprise and deviousness of mind he might even have passed for human and, in fact, generally took the form of an old, rather sad lawyer with an eagle somewhere in his ancestry.
demons are strong believers in precedence and hierarchy.
The kings of Hell might have heard of words like “subtlety” and “discretion,” but they had also heard that if you had it you should flaunt it and reasoned that, if you didn’t have it, you should flaunt it even more, and what they didn’t have was good taste.
the minnows of suspicion suddenly darting across the oceans of self-esteem.
“I think they’re meant to be good intentions,” said Rincewind. This was a road to Hell, and demons were, after all, traditionalists.
