Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil… prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.
The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.
I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.
The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.
But is all this true? said Brutha.Didactylos shrugged. Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.You mean you don’t KNOW it’s true? said Brutha.I THINK it might be, said Didactylos. I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.
I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.
We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.
YOU FEAR TO DIE?
“It’s not that I don’t want… I mean, I’ve always…it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break…
This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.
The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.
Heaven has no taste.Now-And not one single sushi restaurant.A look of pain crossed the angel’s suddenly very serious face.
Bishops move diagonally. That’s why they often turn up where the kings don’t expect them to be.
What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.
Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.
No! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! the man yelled. Really? said Vimes. What’s the orbital velocity of the moon?What?Oh, you’d like something simpler?
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don’t know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.
I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.
I meant, said Ipslore bitterly, what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?Death thought about it.CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.
Time and space were, from Death’s point of view, merely things that he’d heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not.
He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.
If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.
You can’t give her that!’ she screamed. ‘It’s not safe!’IT’S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY’RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.’She’s a child!’ shouted Crumley.IT’S EDUCATIONAL.’What if she cuts herself?’THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
You can’t give her that!’ she screamed. ‘It’s not safe!’IT’S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY’RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.’She’s a child!’ shouted Crumley.IT’S EDUCATIONAL.’What if she cuts herself?’THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.
Time and space were, from Death’s point of view, merely things that he’d heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not.
The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it’s not murder if you do it for a god).
Susan’s gotta poker, you know, it said, as if anxious to be helpful. WELL, WELL. INDEED. MY GOODNESS ME.I fort-thought all of you knew that now. Larst-last week she picked up a bogey by its nose.Death tried to imagine this. He felt sure he’d heard the sentence wrong, but it didn’t sound a whole lot better however he rearranged the words.
Don’t you understand? snarled Rincewind. We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!Can’t we do anything about it?No!Then I can’t see the sense in panicking, said Twoflower calmly.
Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?
I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.
Time was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn’t live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.
It was here that the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was succesfully demonstrated to be made up of /resons/ (Lit.: ‘Thing-ies’) or reality fragments. Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five ‘flavours’, known as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘sideways’, ‘sex appeal’ and ‘peppermint’.
It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.
No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…
He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year.
It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.
The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.
My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.My dream holiday would be a) a ticket to Amsterdam b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat.
Sooner or later it’d get to you. Death was fascinated by humans, and study was never a one-way thing. A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.
No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.
Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere, said the toad. You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs.But this is a real place!So? That’s what they believe. Besides, they’re only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there’s room? I’m a toad, so you’ll appreciate that I’m having to guess a lot here.
DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.