Daniel

“A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn’t really need to practice anymore because they had got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all
right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offense punishable by death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I glared at the man. "You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said. "I don't want to seem unconcerned. But it's really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you'd lose the testicle, but that's not a significant setback."

"Unless you happen to own the testicle," I growled.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“There are various reasons why an individual might habitually consume large quantities of alcohol, but they all effectively boil down to the same thing. Five years ago, my business partner was a happy drunk. Three years later, he had become a moody drunk. And by the last summer, he was fumbling at the knob of the door to alcoholism. As with most habitual drinkers, he was nice-enough, regular-if-not-exactly-sharp kind of guy. He thought so too. That's why he drank. Because it seemed that with alcohol in his syste, he could more fully embody this idea of being that kind of guy.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“I'm afraid they're not very well-designed creatures, dragons."
Vimes listened.
"They would never have survived at all except that their home swamps were isolated and short of predators. Not that a dragon made good eating,
anyway-once you'd taken away the leathery skin and the enormous flight muscles, what was left must have been like biting into a badly-run chemical factory. No wonder dragons were always ill. They relied on permanent stomach trouble for supplies of fuel. Most of their brain power was taken up with controlling the complexities of then-digestion, which could distill flame-producing fuels from the most unlikely ingredients. They could even rearrange their internal plumbing overnight to deal with difficult processes. They lived on a chemical knife-edge the whole time. One misplaced hiccup and they were geography.
And when it came to choosing nesting sites, the females had all the common sense and mothering instinct of a brick."
Vimes wondered why people had been so worried about dragons in the olden days. If there was one in a cave near you, all you had to do was wait until it self-ignited, blew itself up, or died of acute indigestion.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!