The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

particularly bad fire.
    The Mended Drum in Filigree Street, foremost of the city’s taverns. It was famed not for its beer, which looked like maiden’s water and tasted like battery acid, but for its clientele. It was said that if you sat long enough in the Drum, then sooner or later every major hero on the Disc would steal your horse.
    *
    Ysabell was heavily into frills. Even the dressing table seemed to be wearing a petticoat. The whole room wasn’t so much furnished as lingeried.
    *
    Mort is reading from a very old book in the Library of Death:
    ‘… turnered hys hand, butt was sorelie vexed that alle menne at laste comme to nort, viz. Deathe, and vowed hymme to seke Imortalitie yn his pride … It’s written in Old,’ he said. ‘Before they invented spelling.’
    *
    Death visits a job centre:
    ‘It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,’ Keeble said. ‘Have you thought of going into teaching?’
    Death’s face was a mask of terror. Well, it was always a mask of terror, but this time he meant it to be.

    They opened the ledger.
    They looked at it for a long time.
    Then Mort said, ‘What do all those symbols mean?’
    ‘Sodomy non sapiens,’ said Albert under his breath.
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘Means I’m buggered if I know.’

    Harga’s House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city’s leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn’t get it. They don’t go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice.
    *
    ‘Rincewind!’ bawled Albert. ‘Take this thing away and dispose of it.’
    The toad crawled into Rincewind’s hand and gave him an apologetic look.
    ‘That’s the last time that bloody landlord gives any lip to a wizard,’ said Albert with smug satisfaction. ‘It seems I turn my back for a few hundred years and suddenly people in this town are encouraged to think they can talk back to wizards, eh?’
    As the bursar of this university I must say that we’ve always encouraged a good neighbour policy with respect to the community’ mumbled a wizard, trying to avoid Albert’s gimlet stare.
    ‘You spineless maggots! I didn’t found this university so you could lend people the bloody lawnmower!’
    *
    The Rite of AshkEnte, quite simply, summons and binds Death. Students of the occult will be aware that it can be performed with a simple incantation, three small bits of wood and 4cc of mouse blood, but no wizard worth his pointy hat would dream of doing anything so unimpressive; they knew in their hearts that if a spell didn’t involve big yellow candles, lots of rare incense, circles drawn on the floor with eight different colours of chalk and a few cauldrons around the place then it simply wasn’t worth contemplating.
    *
    The wizards have escaped unscathed from an encounter with their long-dead founder, whose statue had hitherto graced the campus.
    ‘I propose here and now we replace the statue [said the bursar]. And to make sure no students deface it in any way I suggest we then erect it in the deepest cellar.
    ‘And then lock the door,’ he added. Several wizards began to cheer up.
    ‘And throw away the key?’ said Rincewind.
    ‘And weld the door,’ the bursar said. ‘And then brick up the doorway’ There was a round of applause.
    ‘And throw away the bricklayer!’ chortled Rincewind, who felt he was getting the hang of this.
    The bursar scowled at him. ‘No need to get carried away’ he said.
    *
    The princess sprang to her feet and launched herself at her uncle, but Cutwell grabbed her.
    ‘No,’ he said, quietly. ‘This isn’t the kind of man who ties you up in a cellar with just enough time for the mice to eat your ropes before the flood-waters rise. This is the kind of man who just kills you here and now.’
    *
    ‘It’s not that I mind being a duke,’ said Mort. ‘It’s being married to a duchess that comes as a shock.’

    I WASN’T CUT OUT TO BE A FATHER, AND CERTAINLY NOT A GRANDAD . I HAVEN’T GOT THE RIGHT KIND OF KNEES .
    The Disc’s greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had