The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we’re feeling the after-effects.’
    ‘Precisely’ said a passing bush.
    *
    ‘You don’t understand!’ screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. ‘All my life I’ve wanted to see dragons!’
    ‘From the inside?’ shouted Rincewind.
    *
    ‘You’re your own worst enemy, Rincewind,’ said the sword.
    Rincewind looked up at grinning men.
    ‘Bet?’ he said wearily.
    *
    ‘Well,’ said the voice. ‘You see, one of the disadvantages of being dead is that one is released as it were from the bonds of time and therefore I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time except that of course I now know that Time does not, for all practical purposes, exist.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound like a disadvantage,’ said Twoflower.
    You don’t think so? Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you’ll see what I mean.’

    I’d rather be a slave than a corpse.

    Plants on the Disc, while including the categories known commonly as annuals, … and perennials, … also included a few rare reannuals which, because of an unusual four-dimensional twist in their genes, could be planted this year to come up last year. The vul nut vine was particularly exceptional in that it could flourish as many as eight years prior to its seed actually being sown. Vul nut wine was reputed to give certain drinkers an insight into the future which was, from the nut’s point of view, the past. Strange but true.
    *
    ‘We know all about you, Rincewind the magician. You are a man of great cunning and artifice. You laugh inhouse collapsed in flames, she herself died in a freak landslide in the Morpork Mountains, proves that Death, too, has a sense of humour.
    *
    The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork smiled, but with his mouth only.
    *
    ‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city …’
    ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’
    ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’
    *
    ‘Ah, Gorphal,’ said the Patrician pleasantly. ‘Come in. Sit down. Can I press you to a candied starfish?’
    ‘I am yours to command, master,’ said the old man calmly. ‘Save, perhaps, in the matter of preserved echinoderms.’
    *
    There are said to be some mystic rivers - one drop of which can steal a man’s life away. After its turbid passage through the twin cities the Ankh could have been one of them.
    *
    That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing … You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next.
    *
    Death, on Discworld, is a character in his own right, and throughout the series is recognizable by always speaking IN BLOCK CAPITALS .
    Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised. R LNCEWLND ? … W HY ARE YOU HERE ?
    ‘Um, why not?’ said Rincewind.
    I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME , R INCEWIND . F OR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT .
    ‘Oh no, not—’
    O F COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN p SEUDOPOLIS .
    ‘But that’s five hundred miles away!’
    Y OU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM’S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN . I CAN SEE THAT .
    *
    I’ LL GET YOU YET , C ULLY , said Death, in a voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids.
    *
    Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs.

 
    A S it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld has only one possible saviour. Unfortunately, this happens to be the singularly inept and cowardly wizard called Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world …
    It is said that someone at a party once asked the famous philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle ‘Why are you here?’ and the reply took three years.
    *
    Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a