There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof. ‘What’d it do? What’d it do?’ screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own shoulderblades. ‘It says, Kick Me,’ said Conina. A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then the whole thing snapped at the knee. The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, ‘We’re dealing here with a warped brain, I can tell.’
‘I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!’ he hissed. ‘I’m afraid of grounds!’ ‘You mean heights,’ said Conina. ‘And stop being silly.’ ‘I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!’
Nijel was one of those people who, if you say ‘don’t look now’, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable.
Sourcerers never become part of the world. They merely wear it for a while.
it probably wouldn’t make him feel better, but it would at least make feeling awful more enjoyable.
‘Ah, yes. The carpet. Push the nose of the statue behind you, peach-buttocked jewel of the desert dawn.’
sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.
There was a chorus of vague murmurs. They were all in awe of Sconner, who was rumoured to do positive-thinking exercises.
‘Listen,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘I get vertigo just listening to tall stories.’
‘If we get a chance,’ whispered Rincewind to Nijel, ‘we run, right?’ ‘Where to?’ ‘From,’ said Rincewind, ‘the important word is from.’
Conina dragged her admiring gaze away from Nijel’s rapt face and turned it on to Rincewind, where it grew slightly cooler.
‘How far do we have to go to be safe?’ said Conina. Rincewind risked a look around the wall. ‘Interesting philosophical question,’ he said. ‘I’ve been a long way, and I’ve never been safe.’
He was called Benado Sconner, but there is something in the air tonight that suggests that it is not worth committing his name to memory.
‘My father always said that death is but a sleep,’ said Conina. ‘Yes, the hat told me that,’ said Rincewind, as they turned down a narrow, crowded street between white adobe walls. ‘But the way I see it, it’s a lot harder to get up in the morning.’
The landscape rose and fell like a honeymoon duvet,
After a few false starts it walked to the top of a nearby sand dune, which gave it an unrivalled view of hundreds of other dunes.
‘Danger has stared me in the back of the head, oh, hundreds of times!’
He looked sideways into the leering faces of men who would kill him sooner than think, and in fact would find it a great deal easier.
you could say this about Cohen, he crammed every hour full of minutes.
Down these mean streets a man must walk, he thought. And along some of them he will break into a run.
He was red with anger, except where he was white with rage.
By the way, the thing on the pole isn’t a sign. When they decided to call the place the Troll’s Head, they didn’t mess about.
He looked the kind of person who, when they blink, you mark it off on the calendar.
‘Oh, there’s plenty of reasons. I just don’t know which one. Are you coming?’
Since her skin was tanned golden the general effect was calculated to hit the male libido like a lead pipe.
Despite looking like a hairy rubber sack full of water, the orang-utan had the weight and reach of any man in the room and was currently sitting on a guard’s shoulders and trying, with reasonable success, to unscrew his head.
It was a voice that could make ‘Good morning’ sound like an invitation to bed.
The bursar disliked him intensely. He had considerable doubt about the man’s intelligence. He suspected it might be quite high, and that behind those vein-crazed jowls was a mind full of brightly polished little wheels, spinning like mad.
Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History.
History would have been totally changed, and in fact would also have been considerably shorter,
Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it.
This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.
‘Quick, you must come with me,’ she said. ‘You’re in great danger!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I will kill you if you don’t.’
Rincewind quit the University with all the other insects and small frightened rodents and decided that if a few quiet beers wouldn’t allow him to see things in a different light, then a few more probably would.
There are artists that will paint an entire chapel ceiling; this was the kind of thief that could steal it.
Should have ended . . . But against the Lore of Magic and certainly against all reason – except the reasons of the heart, which are warm and messy and, well, unreasonable – he fled the halls of magic and fell in love and got married, not necessarily in that order. And he had seven sons, each one from the cradle at least as powerful as any wizard in the world. And then he had an eighth son . . . A wizard squared. A source of magic. A sourcerer.
‘It’s just a symbol,’ said Carding. ‘It’s nothing special. If he wants it, he can have it. It’s a small enough thing. Just a symbol, nothing more. A figurehat.’ ‘Figurehat?’ ‘Worn by a figurehead.’
‘I meant,’ said Ipslore, bitterly, ‘what is there in this world that makes living worth while?’ Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE
Then the girl spun around and with surgical precision planted a small foot in the groin of the first guard through the door. Twenty pairs of eyes watered in sympathy.
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