Fantasy is like alcohol -- too much is bad for you, but a little makes the world a better place.

There are plenty of people who believe that Elvis is alive, or that aliens occasionally land here and do highly personal things to people, or that the whole idea of evolution is a conspiracy of godless scientists. Almost all of these people can vote and some of them have got guns. When you look at it like that, the Discworld seems positively harmless.

After eight million words, I still like the place. You can't help having a soft spot for something that stands between you and real work.
Pterry on Discworld...

The current head of the [Alchemists'] Guild is Thomas Silverfish, although in the nature of things there is a regular turn-over -- and, indeed, rise and fall -- of senior Guild members.

Abrim, Grand Vizier of Al Khali [...] He was once refused entry to Unseen University because they said he was mentally unstable. Given the apparent mental equilibrium of many of UU's faculty, one can only wonder at this exclusion.

In Al-Ybi, it is said, the Klatchians invented the concept of zero. That tells history everything it needs to know about what there was to do in Al-Ybi of an evening.

Alfonz himself is a mere walking canvas for so many instructive tattoos of a carnal nature that, strictly speaking, he should be dressed in a plain brown wrapper.

This was an amazing creation using small squares of compressed vegetable matter on which letters were made by means of small carbon particles from a stylus, giving an effect similar to the traditional word-processor screen. It seemed amazingly portable and I never once saw him have to change the batteries.

Even before it enters Ankh-Morpork it is slow and heavy with the silt of the plains; by the time it gets to the seaward side of the city, even an agnostic could walk across it.
The mighty river Ankh...

Classes of beggars in the city now include: Twitchers, Droolers, Dribblers, Mumblers, Mutterers, Walking-Along-Shouters, Demanders of a Chip, People who call other people Jimmy, People who need Tuppence for a Cup of Tea, People who need Eightpence for a Meal, People with placards saying 'Why lie? I need a beer' and Foul Ole Ron, agreed by his fellow beggars to be in a class by himself if only because no one will share it with him.
Ankh-Morpork's Beggars Guild.

Blind Io - this taciturn god is all the Disc's thunder gods, using false noses, different voices and seventy different hammers when he needs to appear to the various different believers.

.303 Bookworm - the fastest insect on the Discworld. It evolved in magical libraries, where it is necessary to eat extremely quickly to avoid being affected by thaumic radiations. An adult .303 bookworm can eat through a shelf of books so fast that it ricochets off the wall.

Students should in any case be wary of references to the 'civil war'; there have been at least seven in the city's recorded history, as well as a large number of uncivil or even down-right impolite ones.

Few civilizations can survive long under an honest, just and strong leader, which is why they generally take care never to elect them.

Chimera - a desert creature, with the legs of a mermaid, the hair of a tortoise, the teeth of a fowl, the wings of a snake, the breath of a furnace and the temperament of a rubber balloon in a hurricane.
And you thought you had problems...

Being dimly aware that human beings learned to tell the age of a tree by counting the rings, the original counting pines decided that this was why humans cut trees down. Overnight every counting pine readjusted its genetic code to produce, at about eye-level on its trunk, in pale letters, its precise age. Within a year, they were felled almost to extinction by the ornamental house number plate industry...
Obviously too smart for their own good...

In fact fishing is like being dead, but with the additional disadvantage of being alive to experience it.
It seems that Pterry is not an advocate of the piscatorial art.

The Discworld creates an extremely deep well in Reality in much the same way as an incontinent Black Hole creates a huge gravity well in the notorious rubber sheet of the universe.

On Discworld, metaphor has a disturbing tendency to take itself seriously.
Hence Anthropomorphic Personifications...

In the lexicon of dragon breeders a female dragon is a hen, and a male dragon is a pewmet (up to eight months), a cock (eight to fourteen months), a snood (fourteen months to two years) and then a cob (two years to death). After death a swamp dragon is known as a crater.

Druids - believe in the essential unity of all life, the healing power of plants, the natural rhythm of the seasons and the burning alive of anyone who doesn't approach all this in the right frame of mind.
And all with a song in their hearts...

It is impossible to throw a brick in Ephebe without hitting a philosopher and, owing to the heightened level of philosophical debate that rages in the city, this often happens.

Even trolls look down on golems, who tend to be (physically) larger and more shapeless even than computer programmers and (mentally) withdrawn and rather sad yet very alert creatures doomed to do the jobs that men disdain and trolls don't want; not for nothing are they called 'horny-handed tons of soil'.

His genius consisted of realising that, if there has to be a war, the aim should be to defeat the enemy as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible -- a concept so breathtaking in its originality that few other military minds have been able to grasp it, and it shows what happens when you take the conduct of a war away from skilled soldiers.
Lavaeolus -- putative ancestor of Rincewind, despite his undoubted competence.

It is simply that 'seamstress' is considered a more polite term than otherwise might be used for young women whose affection is, not to put too fine a point on it, negotiable.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

The few stories that filtered back [ about XXXX ], telling of giant leaping rats, ducks with fur, no wings and four feet, and huge flightless chickens, suggest that the place may be entirely mythical.
Well, would YOU believe ridiculous yarns like that ?

The long-held principle is very clear -- the more money you have, the more likely you are to be innocent. This is considered right and proper by the Guild [of Lawyers] because rich people are an asset to society and there are far too many poor people around in any case, and they're probably all criminals.
It doesn't seem to matter to a lawyer what shape the world is -- to them, of course, it always appears bent.

The death penalty is usually reserved for treachery to the city, continuing to commit murder after being told not to, irredeemable stupidity while not being a troll, and persistent street theatre.
Ankh-Morpork has an unusually enlightened policy on capital punishment.

She is a traditionalist; she believes that progress is an excuse for making bad things happen faster.
Yes, they're talking about Granny Weatherwax again -- though quietly, of course.

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