The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

explaining in sign language that life as an orang-utan was considerably better than life as a human being, because all the big philosophical questions resolved themselves intowondering where the next banana was coming from. Anyway, long arms and prehensile feet were ideal for dealing with high shelves.
    *
    ‘You’re wizards!’ Esk screamed. ‘Bloody well wizz!’
    *
    Cutangle stood with legs planted wide apart, arms akimbo and stomach giving an impression of a beginners’ ski slope, the whole of him therefore adopting a pose usually associated with Henry VIII but with an option on Henry IX and X as well.
    *
    ‘Million-to-one chances,’ Granny said, ‘crop up nine times out often.’
    *
    She hit one, which had a face like a small family of squid, and it deflated into a pile of twitching bones and bits of fur and odd ends of tentacle, very much like a Greek meal.
    *
    But this was a storm of the Circle Sea plains, and its main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land.
    *
    ‘I was born up in the mountains. I get seasick on damp grass, if you must know.’
    *
    ‘You can’t cross the same river twice, I always say,’ [said Granny.]
    Cutangle gave this some thought.
    ‘I think you’re wrong there,’ he said. ‘I must have crossed the same river, oh, thousands of times.’
    ‘Ah, but it wasn’t the same river.’
    ‘It wasn’t?’
    ‘No.’
    Cutangle shrugged. ‘It looked like the same bloody river.’
    *
    … the endless rooftops of the University, which by comparison made Gormenghast look like a tool-shed on a railway allotment…
    *
    One thing the water couldn’t do was gurgle out of the ornamental gargoyles ranged around the roofs. This was because the gargoyles wandered off and sheltered in the attics at the first sign of rain. They held that just because you were ugly it didn’t mean you were stupid.
    *
    ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a lady wizard before,’ said Cutangle. ‘I rather think it might be against the lore.’

 
    D EATH comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job. After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found out that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death’s apprentice…
    Reannuals are plants that grow backwards in time. You sow the seeds this year and they grow last year.
    A farmer who neglects to sow ordinary seeds only loses the crop, whereas anyone who forgets to sow seeds of a crop that has already been harvested twelve months before risks disturbing the entire fabric of causality, not to mention acute embarrassment.
    *
    Then there was the puzzle of why the sun came out during the day, instead of at night when the light would come in useful.
    *
    T HANK YOU, BOY, said the skull. W HAT IS YOUR NAME?
    ‘Uh,’ said Mort, ‘Mortimer … sir. They call me Mort.’
    W HAT A COINCIDENCE.
    *
    ‘I suppose we were all young once.’
    Death considered this.
    No, he said, I DON’T THINK SO.
    *
    Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.
    I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY .
    *
    ‘Sir?’
    Y ES ?
    ‘What’s a curry?’
    The blue fires flared deep in the eyes of Death.
    H AVE YOU EVER BITTEN A RED-HOT ICE CUBE ?
    ‘No, sir,’ said Mort.
    C URRY’S LIKE THAT.
    *
    Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.
    *
    ‘What are we going to do now?’
    B UY YOU SOME NEW CLOTHES.
    ‘These were new today’
    R EALLY ? I T CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY.
    *
    They turned into a wider street leading into a more affluent part of the city (the torches were closer together and the middens further apart).
    *
    Although the Death of the Discworld is, in his own words, an ANTHROPOMORPHIC personification, he long ago gave up using the traditional skeletal horses, because of the bother of having to stop all the time to wire bits back on.
    *
    Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map.
    Y OU HAVEN’T HEARD OF THE B AY OF M ANTE, HAVE YOU ? he