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EVERY THING THAT HAPPENS STAYS HAPPENED
Death waxes philosophical...


The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity. Genocide, for example.


And two trolls had taken up positions just inside the door. Their dark glasses and huge ill-fitting black suits put them down as people who put people down.


An edge witch is one who makes her living on the edges, in that moment when boundary conditions apply -- between life and death, light and dark, good and evil, and, most dangerously of all, today and tomorrow.


He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staffroom, these began with an exorcism.
Every school has its own Jason.


WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death. THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.


There was a sound rather like a cabbage being sliced in half, and then a head rolled into the basket to cheers and cries of 'Oh, I say, well done!' from the crowd. The city of Quirm was a nice, peaceful, law-abiding place and the city council kept it that way with a penal policy that combined the maximium of deterrence with the minimum of re-offending.
George Dubbya would, no doubt, approve...


"Speaking as War," said War, "I'd hate to tell you what happens to very small armies that have Right on their side."


"Sometimes I really think people should have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean."
Susan has her own way of looking at the world.


"Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?"
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said, "A fish!"
And Clodpole went away, satisfied.


If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-Of-The-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.


The Auditors might hate the untidiness caused by the emergence of life, but the Rules did not allow them to do anything about it. The ascent of mankind must have been a boon to them. At last there was a species that could be persuaded to shoot itself in the foot.


"I've got a new commission, but I'm not sure how ... anyway I'm not insane!"
"That'th not compulthory, thur."
"I've actually got a piece of paper that says I'm not, you know."
"Well done, thur."
Jeremy finds the perfect helper for his ... errr ... special needs.


Decisions made by everyone were decisions made by no one, which therefore precluded any possibility of blame.


"Algebra? But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!"
"Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out," said Susan.
Susan has her own ideas on education ...


"It makes you wonder if there is anything to astrology after all."
"Oh, there is," said Susan. "Delusion, wishful thinking and gullibility."
... and popular superstitions ...


Caution. That was it. That was the word! Auditors loved that word. Always put off until tomorrow something that, tomorrow, you could put off until, let's say, next year.


"The maths is easy," said Chaos.
AH? WELL, MATHS, said Death, dismissively. GENERALLY I NEVER GET MUCH FURTHER THAN SUBTRACTION.


Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.


The yeti of the Ramtops, are one of the few creatures to utilize control of personal time for a genetic advantage. The result is a kind of physical premonition -- you find out what is going to happen next by allowing it to happen. Faced with danger, or any kind of task that involves risk of death, a yeti will save its life up to that point and then proceed with all due caution. Yet in the comfortable knowledge that, should everything go pancake-shaped, it will wake up at the point where it saved itself with, and this is the important part, knowledge of the events which have just happened but which will not happen now because it's not going to be such a damn fool next time.


Humans had created Famine, too. Oh, there had always been droughts and locusts, but for a really good famine, for fertile land to be turned into a dustbowl by stupidity and avarice, you needed humans.


A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking contained no calories.



WE R IGORS

'A spare hand when needed.'

The Old Rathaus,
Bad Schuschein,
c-mail: Yethmarthter Uberwald


The concept of 'orders' was yet another new and intensely unfamiliar one for any Auditor. They were used to decisions by committee, reached only when the possibilities of doing nothing whatsoever about the matter in question had been exhausted.


"And the sound of one hand clapping is a 'cl'," he said.


"Dojo! What is Rule One?"
Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus: "Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!"


When you look into the abyss, it's not supposed to wave back.


If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient.


"I'll tell you, the day someone pulls the plug out of the bottom of the universe, the chain will lead all the way to Ankh-Morpork and some bugger saying, 'I just wanted to see what would happen.'"


"The thing is, I mean, there's times when you look at the universe and you think, 'What about me?' and you can just hear the universe saying, 'Well, what about you?'"
Susan ponders the meaning of life....


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