The Last Continent/Quotes

"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'."

"They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don't have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past."

"Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day?"

"Reading the invisible writings was a delicate and meticulous job, suited to the kind of temperament that follows Grand Prix Continental Drift and keeps bonsai mountains as a hobby or even drives a Volvo."

"'He called me in and asked me what I did, exactly. Have you ever heard of such a thing? What sort of question is that? This is auniversity!'"

"Don't go digging things up in case they won't let you bury them again."

"In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers."

"Any true wizard, faced with a sign like 'Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We're not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,' would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about."

"Rincewind's hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who'd had the hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it contained – and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate – he should have died long ago."

"Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot."

"This isn't magic. It is a simple universal law. People always expect to use a holiday in the sun as an opportunity to read those books they've always meant to read, but an alchemical combination of sun, quartz crystals and coconut oil will somehow metamorphose any improving book into a rather thicker one with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter (The Gamma Imperative, The Delta Season, The Alpha Project and, in the more extreme cases,even The Mu Kau Pi Caper). Sometimes a hammer and sickle turn up on the cover. This is probably caused by sunspot activity, since they are invariably the wrong way round. It's just as well for the Librarian that he sneezed when he did, or he might have ended up a thousand pages thick and crammed with weapons specifications."

"'I thought I was just naturally lucky,' said Rincewind. He thought about what he'd just said. 'I must have been crazy.'"

"'All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards.'"

"Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job."

"'Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?' 'Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that, too. That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.' 'Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.' 'Yes, but it's the important one.'"

"Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he'd ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book, who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing that they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten."

"Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could still see the God of Evolution beaming so happily as the cockroach stirred."

"Was it just possible that someone had invented a regional speciality you could eat?"

"'But my suspicions were first aroused when the Bursar developed planets.' There were two of them, orbiting his head at a height of a few inches. As was so often the case with magical phenomena, they possessed virtual unreality and passed unscathed through him and one another. They were slightly transparent."

"There are platonic burgers made of beef instead of cow lips and hooves. There are fish 'n' chips where the fish is more than just a white goo lurking at the bottom of a batter casing and you can't use the chips to shave with. There are hot dog fillings which have more in common with meat than mere pinkness, whose lucky consumers don't apply mustard because that would spoil the taste. It's just that people can be trained to prefer the other sort and seek it out. It's as if Machiavelli had written a cookery book. Even so, there is no excuse for putting pineapple on pizza."

"'Why did he have to go to prison?' 'We put all our politicians in prison as soon as they're elected. Don't you?' 'Why?' 'It saves time.'"

"It was obvious that some time after the brewery had been closed, but before people had got around to securely locking every entrance, the cellars had been employed by young people as such places are when you live with your parents, the house is too small, and no one has got around to inventing the motorcar."

"They cancelled the regatta. A river full of water made a mockery of the whole idea."