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Quote List
And the Nonman King cried words that sting: ...for the sin of the idolater is not that he worships stone, but that he worships one stone over others. HISTORY Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view. COINCIDENCE You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on. Garroting Deep has sent Caer-Caveral to Morrinmoss. But he cannot claim you. Love and joy are incredibly habit-forming; often a single exposure is enough to cause permanent addiction. Less Lust through Less Protein, Eggs, Meat, Beans, Cheese, and Sitting. Sometimes when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you. Increate, it is known to us that those who will perish here are no more evil in your sight than we. Their hands run with blood. Ours also. He is the Shield Anvil. Fener knows grief, so much grief that it is beyond his capacity to withstand it. And so he chooses a human heart. Armoured. A mortal soul, to assume the sorrow of the world. The Shield Anvil. How many miles to Babylon? Nice Monkey! To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I'm going to be dead. Loss is written into the very earth. We are only its most dramatic reminder. The Filthy And Dangerous Vice of Smoking, which Offends the Nose, Deadens the Palate, Causes Ageing of the Skin, and Enforces a Progressive Decrepitude of the Body Entire. Tobacco will Slowly and Surely Kill You. Often I must speak otherwise than I think. This is called diplomacy. When the dead walk, señores, we must stop the killing... or lose the war. Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavor. What disguise? This is my lucky shirt. SACRIFICE ZONE: WARNING. The National Parks Service has declared this area to be a National Sacrifice Zone. The Sacrifice Zone Program was developed to manage parcels of land whose clean-up cost exceeds their total future economic value. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. It's a bad smell when sorcerors panic. Think we'd fight to save a piece of cloth on a pole? - Are you expecting someone to poison you? This heated discussion between a violinist and an invisible fairy would have drawn attention in some places. On a corner of East Fourth Street, no one took any notice. The impossible did not bother him unduly. If it could not possibly be done, then obviously it had been done impossibly. The question was how? The vastness of its mad-made architecture disobeyed not only rules of style but, it was said, of physics. It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn't care. Either of those who attacked a troll was making the last big mistake of its career in any case. Detritus carried a 2,000lb-draw crossbow as a hand weapon. Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. As much as I detest the doorways of Death, Hades' dark gates, so do I detest a man who says one thing with his mouth but hides another in his heart. Surrender now, and we'll spare your goddesses' lives so they can be our slaves and courtesans. No, time moves in one direction only, and it cannot be turned back. I am here and I am now, and tomorrow will be a new day in my life. Perhaps it is fortunate that most heroes who die for their people cannot come back to see what the people do with that hard-bought life and freedom. I knew why we feared this Jaghut Tyrant. Because he became human, he became like us; he enslaved, he destroyed, and he did it better than we could. - Do all Imass think about futility? We shall be our own witness, and that will be enough. It must be enough. It must ever be enough. When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend. Minions! FIND my information and deliver it, post haste Our prayer was simple - to raze Ilium's walls to its roots, kill its heroes, rape its women, enslave its people. Is that too much to ask? Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. Never send a human to do a machine's job. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure. Anyway, I have to admit I've never understood why people like the Pelerines always think ordinary people have to have their lust purified. In my experience, they control it well enough by themselves, and just about every day, too. You must forgive me, but I don't find it easy to talk of professional virgins to a man who's just seen me naked. Though under other circumstances it might be different. In our commercial society, one may set one's price as high as one wishes, but to refuse to sell at any price is treason. Save the universe! You should have thought of that before you started your vendetta against me! You may go, after I have killed you. This is my last body. My last life. This is my revenge body. My kill-Arthur-Dent body. My last chance. I had to fight to get it too. It is far better to outwit Truth than to apprehend it. See your enemies content and your lovers melancholy. All men are greater than dead men. Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing. Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human. The proposition "I am the centre" need never be uttered. It is the assumption upon which all certainty and all doubt turns. One can look into the future, or one can look at the future. The latter is by far the more instructive. The world is a circle that possesses as many centres as it does men. If it is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything. What is the meaning of a deluded life? Rain would be good, too. Rain made you feel blue, and it was feeling blue that brought the best songs. We make music to live, indeed, but we also make music because doing so is most truly to live. It is not work to play among friends, Rovigo. I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story. Father does not believe him, but purchased Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior for him nonetheless, because a Seeing Eye Bitch is not only for blind people but for people who pine for the negative of loneliness. I mount the autobus for an hour to work all day doing things I hate. ...To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield... Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life! Curiouser and curiouser! It sets such a bad precedent when you start letting the world come to an end every week or so. It seems to erode the confidence people have in their government for some reason. Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man. Should you ever outrun the guilt within your past, Sorceress, you will have outrun your soul. When it finds you again it will kill you. Raising the flag and singing the anthem, Hepplewhite, are, while somewhat suspicious, not themselves acts of treason. All beliefs are too subtle. Deceived men always think themselves certain, just as they always think themselves free. This is simply what it means to be deceived. Metaphor is the anchor of belief. Nonmen, Sranc and Men: Ignorance is trust. Hell is repetition. Welcome to maturity and experience. You don't feel older, you just know what you're doing this time. ...and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, "Who are you?" now I ask, "Who am I?" People think it's a failure to live alone, but it isn't. The failure is to live with someone because you can't face anything else. Hopes are such brittle things, and they can hurt you when they break. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Yes, depart a lot at this time and cut the approaching any more, or we fire arrows at the tops of your heads and make castanets out of your testicles already! Ha ha haaa ha! And now, remain gone, illegitimate-faced bugger-folk! There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail - should we fall - we will know that we have lived. Is an honourable cause worth anything these days? Does it matter that we've borrowed it? We fight as well as any man. We die alongside them. Mercenaries of the spirit. And even that is a coin we scarely value. The history is done, Baruk, and the Tiste Andii point of view is one of disinterest, stoicism, and quiet, empty despair. Are these gifts to the world worthy of preservation? I think not. A day with no noon, Good luck with the bloke in the metal cigar case, miss. How does one learn innocence? How does one teach ignorance? For to be them is to know them not. And yet they are the immovable point from which the compass of life swings, the measure of all crime and compassion,the rule of all wisdom and folly. All of us have to struggle, not just against the Darkness, but against the Light. Because sometimes it blinds us. Life consists of nothing but exceptions. But we don't believe in any gods, or in God. We are our own gods, and our own demons. - Crocodiles aren't so bad. At least you don't have to feed them. I've noticed that irony is something better appreciated from a great distance of either miles or years, or both, and best appreciated when it's happening to someone else. Yet there may be a light beyond the darkness; and if so, I would have you see and be glad. Poussiere, je rentre dans la poussiere. La vie est pleine d'humiliations et de douleurs; tous les fils qui la rattachent au bonheur se rompent tour a tour dans la main de l'homme, sourtout les fils d'or. The wonders latent in the tiniest of insects are beyond even my understanding, my son. Wait. You must be patient. Yes, you can conduct a war with goats. Always among the first questions of thy kind... what is it and how can I kill it? I'm so quotable. Western medicine is based on corpses, things that you discover by cutting up dead bodies and pulling them apart. Chinese medicine is based on living flesh, things observed from vital, moving humans. And now it seems I am to get another sword. From having no sword at all, suddenly I have two special ones! I don't see what all this has to do with being a king. Am I busy? Well, I've just got all these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my house down if I don't, but other than that ... well, no not especially, why? It must be a Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays. Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard. Look, I'm a bit upset about that. Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of. Ford, there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out. Look, would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now? It's uphill work. The only word they know is grunt and they can't spell it. Maybe, just maybe my boys can do it. Yeah, and maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot. Sure I could have stayed in the past. I could have even been king, but in my own way I am king. Hail to the king, baby. We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw... does that sound fine to you? Good... bad... I'm the guy with the gun. You intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out? Really, you amaze me. To know what would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever told that. The universe demands of us a sense of irony. There'll be no tomorrow! I have a presentiment of doom upon me. And I fear it shall come to us with barbecue sauce. People ain't like you think, Patera. Maybe you studied a long time, but there's a lot that you don't know. You're working for the gods, right? Let them get you out. Todo se sabe (Everything is known) You are a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought and love and act that matter. nossy is a girl?! Well, Brother William, have you already become accustomed to this den of madmen? How many are the miracles, which even the angels, which are limitless, cannot contain. I have loved human beings...their wonderment, their constant searching, their changes, contradictions. Curiosity. Even their failures, since from failure to failure they have learned to ascend to a higher plane. You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say. We're making progress. Is anyone gonna eat that last steak? I'm Bad Ash. And you're good Ash. You're a goody little two shoes. You're goody little two shoes...goody little two shoes... You can search and search, on a quest, and in the end you may never get there at all. Brilliant, Piter! I'm so glad I didn't execute you all those times you were so annoying. According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Not only are there no happy endings - there aren't even any endings. It takes nearly a minute to fall from this height. And despite what you may have heard, you're likely to stay conscious all the way down. Thoughts like that keep me warm at night. It was tough work, carrying two hundred pounds of sociopath to the top of Gotham Towers - the highest spot in the city. The scream alone is worth it. When a warrior enters a city, all religion is irrelevant. I Baudolino son of Gagliaudo of the Aulari with a head that looks like a lion halleluia gratias to the Allmighty may he forgive me Good Lord Jesus, it's true: you're Ghini! Weren't you the one who could sell anything, even the dung of your goats, like that time when you passed some off on a pilgrim as the ashes of San Baudolino? Yes, I know it is not the truth, but in a great story you can change little truths to make the bigger truth reveal itself. Why? Because the supreme good is the freedom to do good or evil, and, to give his children the supreme good, God must accept the fact that some of them will make bad use of it. If the victorious army had to eat the fallen, war would become much less attractive. He's stupefying them with pomposity. You son of a pig. Make your enemies by choice, not by accident. I'm Bender baby, please insert liquor! Oh, so just cause a robot wants to kill humans, that makes him a radical. I'm a conscientious objector... In other words, a coward. Let's face it, comedy is a dead art form. Now tragedy, ha ha ha, that's funny. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them? You may need to metaphorically make a deal with the devil. By devil I mean robot devil and by metaphorically I mean get your coat. El miedo mata la mente. El miedo es la pequeña muerte que conduce a la destrucción total. Afrontaré mi miedo. Permitiré que pase sobre mí y a través de mí. Y cuando haya pasado, giraré mi ojo interior para escrutar su camino. Give black rabbit meat a good soaking, bring it to boil seven times, set it in the sun for a week or two, then steam it in the oven - and it won't kill you. The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists. The skeleton wears muscle, muscle wears skin, skin wears clothing. A face is a mask made of skin; an eye is a marble connected to the brain. I have eaten strange flesh, and I have borne strange fruit. You've never learned to obey orders, have you? It's me, me, me all the time. "Oh, I've got a funny feeling in my toe, so we must all go and stand on our heads!" Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire with the kettle just beginning to sing! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door... You step into the Road and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. What have I got in my pockets? I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Now, Kiddo, I'd like to believe that you're aware enough even now to know there's nothing sadistic in my actions, maybe towards those other jokers, but not you. Do you find me sadistic? This is me at my most masochistic. I'll never forget the night he arrived on horseback with a sword at his side and had me trace a missing compost heap for him. One bite will let you understand everything. Two bites would let you understand more than everything, and more than everything is too much. Who knows what the dead are wishing? Bhojujik mo qunquc, as my people say. 'If the bears do not eat you, it is home.' Financial acumen has been known to win the favours of many a sweet young body. I ain't got time to bleed. I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage. I feel that if we had wanted people to fly, we would have given them wings. - Never let it be said the gods are unjust. The willow knows what the storm does not: the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it. Compassion existed when and only when one could step outside oneself, to suddenly see the bars from inside the cage. Why, look at that. That hill is red. The evil force of doom trying to destroy me certainly has style. Black is so monotonous that you can forget about it, but red - you'd always be thinking, "Why, look at that. That hill is red. That evil force of doom trying to destroy me certainly has style." Gentlemen, something has broken holes in the structure of time... Why didn't you tell me your rates before you pulled me out of the river? I could have told you then that I can't afford them, and you could have gone on and looked for a more affluent person to rescue. Well, that particular expression you're wearing is almost alarming. I'd be intimidated. If I weren't, you know, incomparably more powerful than you. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise. You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. That girl deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die... but then again, so does she. Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer. Pleasure and freedom are ours! We despise the filthy materialists and their thinking machines who enslave us with their utopia! Where is true humanity in that? Where is pain and death and suffering? How dare you be so selfish, so self-repressed? Not everyone can stand up and be a hero, Princess. Some prefer to surrender to the inevitable and salve their consciences with the gift of survival. I'm the amazing Cain. If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends. If you didn't, I trust you'll all get throat cancer and die without ever again uttering another word. That's what stories are; ways of pretending that things happen for a reason. People used to say the best revenge is living well. Dying well is almost as good. If dying were anything special, they wouldn't let everybody do it. Your life only looks like fate when you see it in reverse. The rest of my plan went pretty much the way most of my plans do: just fine, right up to the point where it spectacularly exploded. He that lives by the sword shall die by my knife. That's prophecy, if you like. To hell with the next world. Let's be immortal in this one. We're gonna die anyway. Let's do it right. That was so bad I think you gave me cancer. I've got a month or so in which to turn two ignorant straight-legged fumble-thumb landlubbers into something resembling phony sea-officers. All gods as my witness, sirs, I suspect this is all gonna end in screaming and drowning. They'll probably taste a bit like chicken. Everything does, if you're hungry enough. If you sow dragon's teeth, you should get dragons. Not fighting skeletons. What did it say on the packet? I have survived - I exist! - at least as a memory. At least as a nightmare. If your God is everywhere, if He is always watching, why should your people make houses to go to worship Him? Faced with an all-seeing, everywhere-being God, I would think what is needed is a place to hide. Your gift to me was words - a language. But it was a poison fruit, that naming of things, for with language I learned lies. Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead. When anyone tells you that habits die hard, Locke, they're lying - it seems they never die at all. I'm disinclined to aquiesce to your request. Means "no." The gods give us the fear of death so that we won't squander their gifts too lightly - so that we will use what is given us to the fullest. But... why is the rum gone?! I've got a jar of dirt! Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. Very funny Scotty, now beam down my clothes. Stop exploding, you cowards! Wow, one day a man has everything... Then the following day he blows up a $40 billion space station, and the next day he has nothing. It really makes you think. I am the man with no name, Zapp Brannigan at your service. In the game of chess you can never let your adversary see your pieces. - What the hell do you know? Do you know that when I first arrived here, I actually tried to arrest the head of the thieves guild for stealing? Maybe I'm just tall for my height. We can rebuild him. We have the pottery An appointment is an engagement to see someone, while a morningstar is a large lump of metal used for viciously crushing skulls. It is important not to confuse the two. The difference between the strong emperor and the weak is simply this: the former makes the world his arena, while the latter makes it his harem. How they loved to promise heads, these men who would be king. All your base are belong to us! I'm just sitting here, waiting to hear this man tell me he's an outer space alien. Meanwhile, everybody's talking about sandwiches! Sandwiches, for God's sake! The black-framed glasses remind her of emoticons, those snippets of playschool emotional code cobbled up from keyboard symbols to produce sideways cartoon faces. You could do his glasses with an eight, hyphen for his nose,the mouth a left slash. She's a design-free zone, a one-woman school of anti whose very austerity periodically threatens to spawn its own cult. The future is there, looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage. But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots Jacques Cousteau said that jet lag was his favorite drug. Some very basic computational module instantly had completed the simplest of equations: if boyfriend sleeps with gun, Cayce does not share bed, or bod, with (now abruptly former) boyfriend. Hotmail downloads four messages, none of which she feels like opening. Her mother, three spam. The penis enlarger is still after her, twice, and Increase Your Breast Size Dramatically. Damien's theory of Jet Lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. The sky is a bright gray bowl, crossed with raveled contrails, and as she presses the button to announce herself at Blue Ant, she wishes she'd brought her sunglasses. But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know. Love is a poison, Sansa. A sweet poison, but it will kill you all the same. In the game of thrones, you win or die. Do you have any notion what happens when a city is sacked, Sansa? No, you wouldn't, would you? All you know of life you learned from singers, and there's such a dearth of good sacking songs. People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the only ones worth having for your friends. Anything that must be done, can be done. Only about a kiloton each. Hardly big enough to set off decent crust waves, really. They were really only teeny little A-bombs, honest! Please if you get a chance put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard. Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it? Do not defy me, mortal! It is an honour to feed a god! There was no use denying it. Somehow, people could tell if you were a dwarf just by looking at you. I don't blow everything up, sir. Some just melts. Never give the idle gods anything to think about. To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived... The hors d'oeuvres were chived cremat - something like grass on a dog turd on a biscuit as hard as a dinner plate. I was sure he hadn't read Miscreants and Morons - A Philosophical Solution, since he had not yet committed suicide. Some events mark us so deeply that they find more force of presence in their aftermath than in their occurence....... Some events are not remembered - they are relived. You're wondering why I'm wearing all this armor. It's because Kruppe's in charge. When Kruppe's in charge I don't feel safe unless I'm prepared for war. Today's exercise is called "melt away into the countryside." It has already commenced, and you are already doing a miserable job of it, being bunched together in plain view! A reputation is ever the plaything of history. Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his. Kings never lie. They demand the world be mistaken. Ever the hard-hearted avoid the heat of desperate men. For the bonfires of the weak crack the most stone. The strongest walls will not hold if the hearts inside are weak. And now he realized that some journeys were not stories. On some journeys, nothing really happened. You just kept taking steps. The details were always different, in the lives of other people. The stories were always the same. Talk is cheap. Whiskey costs money. I think I see a monster off to port. If he has any brains, he'll aim for the bottom... He just did. Nobody steals books but your friends. I sometimes think of us as a gang of mean little old ladies in a combination rest home and obstacle course. I used her, yes, but she knew it not. Can the same be said for you? Tell me, is knowing you're being used better than not knowing? Etiquette is a set of rules people use so they can be rude to each other in public. I'm Thomas Covenant, for God's sake. I've saved the Land twice. And I sure as hell didn't get myself killed because I like being dead. This is fun. Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit. Let's kill him, if only to put him out of our misery. I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness to your eternal madness. - All the higher life forms scythed away, just like that. Magic's creepy. I'm going to bed. Stay. Rule. And be a Queen. Dragons die. But so do dragonslayers. My brothers have my measure when it comes to fighting and dancing and thinking and reading books, but none of them is half my equal at lying insensible in the mud. Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are. If you grow up with any kind of sense - which you sometimes make me doubt - you will very likely reach your own conclusions. They will probably be wrong... However, since they will be yours, you will feel a little more satisfied with them. Was there a category of insurance for having your boat stolen by an undead sorcerer while the owner was away attending a demon-inspired posse? If so, the rate must be interesting. Please explain to me the scientific nature of "the whammy." On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I've ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five. I have never been to Spain, Sir Richard, and so the only way I know that they burn books is because of the vast number of books that have been published on the subject. Truth! There is no such thing. There are only signals in your brain. Everything: sensations, memory, love, hate, abstract philosophy, gross physical lusts. It's nothing. I see your Schwartz is as big as mine. Now let's see how well you handle it. Keep firing, Assholes! I'm surrounded by Assholes! Get back here, you fat bearded bitch! No...I am your father. Once I was but a learner; now I am the master. And for yet another moment, he reflected on the fact that, to all intents and purposes, he lived in a cosmos where God's name was Honest John. I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE. Don't apples taste great? I mean the way they taste. And the texture. And the way when you chew them they kind of crunch and the juice runs out into your mouth. DON'T PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH. EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, STAYS HAPPENED. Is the chemical aftertaste the reason why people eat hot dogs, or is it some kind of bonus? You get what anyone gets - you get a lifetime. You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plane! RUINED? MY HARVEST? BUGGER THAT. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society's usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level. All true stories end in death. I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it. I'm cold. I hate being nowhere. Let's go somewhere instead. You know the best thing about airplanes? Apart from the peanuts in the little silver bags, I mean. It's looking out of the windows at the clouds, and thinking, maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay I think you're very nice. I think twinkle's a nice word. So's viridian. I met a lady once who had an imaginary fish. Umm... Sometimes I forget what I was going to say. Sometimes I remember things everyone else has forgotten for ever and ever. Does that ever happen to you? I like the way colors taste. Except I don't like crimsons...or turquoises...especially when they put their heads into their shells and won't play and when you break their shells to let them out they die... Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one’s ever eaten before? Like chicken and telephone ice cream? What's a false move? Is it very different from a real one? When you say words a lot they don't mean anything. Or maybe they don't mean anything anyway, and we just think they do. I have lost a finger. But not an important one. If I had! If you had! Such words and ifs are vain. It has gone into the Shadow, and only time will show what doom awaits it, and us. I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away! Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system! You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! Help! Help! I'm being repressed! Soon they'll be breeding us like cattle! You've got to warn everyone and tell them! Soylent green is made of people! You've got to tell them! Soylent green is people! Dis is der Riot Act. You know what dat means? It means if'n I reads it out and youse don't disb... disp... go away, der Watch can use deadly force, you unnerstand? Now we sing dis stupid song! She had not wanted to hear that; anything like that. Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross. Wicked wicked Zoot. She is a bad person and she must pay the penalty. And here in Castle Anthrax, we have but one punishment. You must tie her down on a bed, and spank her. Come! Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible. No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection. OK, I don't like to disturb you at what I know must be a difficult and distressing time for you, but I need to know first of all if you actually realize that this is a difficult and distressing time for you. Luckily you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as "impossible" in my dictionary. In fact, everything between "herring" and "marmalade" appears to be missing. Wonderful. I never did like to do anything simple when I could do it ass-backwards. It's our genes, not our names, that make us whatever we are. They say time is the fire in which we burn. Nothing ever goes missing that they don't look at me, ever since that time I lost my horse. As if that could be helped. He was white and it was snowing, what did they expect? Do you know the difference between a wildling who's a friend to the Watch and one who's not? Our enemies leave our bodies for the crows and the wolves. Our friends bury us in secret graves. The years play a sort of alchemical trick, transmuting one's mutterings to a state of respectability. Give advice at forty and you're a nag. Give it at seventy and you're a sage. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breath a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to. I suppose you could call them men, yes. Two legs, two arms, a head each. If we could have our way, no man would have to go roving or draw blood. But women did not make the world. All of you are torturers in one way or another. The world is filled half with evil and half with good. We can tilt it forward so that more good runs into our minds, or back, so that more runs into this. But the quantities are the same, we change only their proportion here or there. She's the sort of woman who's good at making puzzles for other people, but not at solving ones she didn't make herself. I love deadlines. I love the "whoosh" sound they make as they go past. Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. All we common people have the common sense to realize that genius, like the clap, is a social disease, and we take action accordingly. We put all our geniuses in one kind or another of isolation ward, to escape being infected. A sound magician is a mighty god. It's just an eyeball - plenty more where that one came from. It hasn't got a soul - it's only got an eyeball. But captain, to obey - just like that - for obedience's sake... without questioning... That's something only people like you do. The Mamba du Mal is safe in its cage. It must have gotten out, bitten Dr. Montgomery, and locked itself up again. We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us... All we ever see of stars is their old photographs. He's worse than dead! Simon, there are more things you don't know than there are things I do know. I despair of the imbalance. . . . And you would certainly not say: 'Rachel, I can't do my chores because Morgenes and I are plotting treason,' - would you? A new day, Baldanders! Still alive! Time to eat and defecate and make love - all that! Up now, or we'll never get home. The gift of death? Oh, no! No, my dear, you've had that all your life. So has he. We wouldn't pretend to give you what is already yours. The gift we offer is beauty, with the fame and wealth that derive from it. There are few advantages, I'll tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will clam a mob or reassure a nursery school. Humor will get you on and get you off, and pull in asimis like a magnet. I love reading novels. You can understand them without thinking too much. I simply wish to know, for practical reasons, whether you are being stalked by any more giant murderous harpooneers. Upon my word, there is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what every body does all the time. Confident, cocky, lazy, dead. The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted. It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit and the emperor remains an emperor. Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all. For Men, no circle is ever closed. We walk ever in spirals. Perhaps victory is not achieved by overcoming that enemy, but by joining it, becoming one with it. Who needs temples and priests to chain and guide the expression of loss and dismay - when all is sacred? We totter on edges seen and unseen. We are reduced, yet defiant. We've lost the meaning of time. Endless motion broken only by its dulled absence The lesson of history is that no-one learns. Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand here still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living. A spirit's game is a man's nightmare. Well, let's hope they take their play seriously. Victory tastes sweetest in the absence of haunting memories. It's bad form to spoil a man's surprise, just because your spies are efficient. Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? The way I think of it is this: when you've done all the things worth doing, you're forced to start on the things that aren't. If there's one thing idiots understand, it's injustice to them. I don't mean to hurt your feelings by asking, but is Assistant Pig-Keeper the kind of work that calls for a great deal of intelligence? What defines man is not that he reasons, but that he prays. Duty measures the distance between the animal and the divine. Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Ni los piratas chinos, ni el barco pintado de blanco del Instituto Rockefeller la tocan (Neither the Chinese pirates, nor the spotted white Rockefeller Institute target ship touch it) You know, people are notoriously bad at discerning what it is they really want. We never know what we mean. We act it out, moment to moment. We never know what we mean until it's too late. In memory of Travis Bohannon, a county boy from Florence, Texas, who gave his life to save his family from fire. Not all heroes are in books. - Think of the Shroud of Turin! Where would be if they had cremated Jesus? Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. History comforts the dull-witted. Remember, the enemy's gate is down. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. We never wanted to rule the world. Really, now, all we want is to be left alone. Still, with all their years of conquest, perhaps these Nabban folks have forgotten sometimes you have to fight for that, too. Death! Ride to ruin and the world's ending! To health? It may be so. At least while there is an empty saddle of some fallen Rider that I can fill, and there are deeds to do. But to hope? I do not know. I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, and behold! the Shadow has departed! Do you think darkness is coming? Darkness Unescapable? That bastard! I wouldn't trust him to empty chamber pots. One day I'd find a piranha in mine. You have lived in your dreams so long you've lost sight of the world. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end. Some people admire them, and some people nearly worship them; but nobody likes them, and from what I've seen of them today, they don't even like each other. Captain, look over here... AAAAAGH!!! You are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence. Over hill, over dale, Is all the world a war of good and evil? Have you not thought it might be something more? There is only one thing worse than arguing with a drunk, and that's arguing with a drunk who's right. "Then farewell!" said Faramir. "But if I should return, think better of me!" No one gives a shit about a fat man named Antoyne. "You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could. Get out! And take your sunshine, your Jacuzzi, and your bedroom with you! Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don't believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more. One of the few benefits of the fall of civilization as we know it is that there are private cellars with fine vintages everywhere you dig. It is not theft. It is archaeology. Makes no difference. Not now. We're still dancing in the corner of a god's eye, but it's only for show. We're dead, for all our twitching about. To speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet's calling these days Anybody want a peanut? Two things never mix: one is enchantments and the other is meddling with them. Ah, the truth of it is, the woman makes me shudder. Since the day she threw me into her dungeon, I've noticed something unfriendly about her. Planting mines ain't gonna be easy, so we do it in front of everyone's nose. Road repair. So long, and thanks for all the fish. I have been and always shall be your friend. Live long and prosper. The man who becomes most efficiently vicious first is most likely to be the man left standing. I had learned to be that man. Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes. Some speak of the savagery of beasts. I will ever prefer that to the thoughtless contempt some men have toward animals. It was a weapon similar to - no, it wasn't. Actually it was - no, it wasn't that either. It was closer to ... almost a ... rather it was, sort of a - lance, that's it! A lance! And it was quite good against dragons. No, he was not dying, but teeth lengthen The child is a Groan. An authentic male Groan. Challenge to Change! No Change, Rottcodd. no Change! Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving the universe. Come and join us, I'm Ford, this is Arthur. We were just about to do nothing at all for a while but it can wait. We would love to stay and help, only we're not going to. We have to go and save the Universe, you see, and if that sounds like a pretty lame excuse, then you may be right. - It's unpleasantly like being drunk. Sounds like a bad time, with luck I'll be drunk enough not to notice. What the hell... you're only young once. You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear. Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways. I suffer from attention surplus disorder. It is what you don't expect that most needs looking for. What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly? It's a certainy, but it just might work. War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for? That's what I tell myself. I say, "Fred, whatever happens, you're brighter than Detritus." But then I say, "Fred - so's yeast." How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back. There are some things that time can not mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold. They cannot conquer forever! Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no. Dear Horse God, I know I don't usually pray to you. Sometimes I doubt you even exist, but if you're willing to grant me luck... please... stamp your hoof once. All of life can be broken down into moments of transition and moments of revelation. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. They (fairy tales) make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. A king will have his way in his own hall, be it folly or wisdom. Well, here at last... comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. The Darkness has come. There will be no dawn. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. "What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off!" What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on? Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Fool of a Took! This is a serious journey, not a hobbit walking-party. Throw yourself in next time, and then you will be no further nuisance. Now be quiet! You cannot pass! Death and dying makes us into children once again, in truth,one last time,there in our final wailing cries. More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children,far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armor of adulthood. But you miss a more subtle truth. I can examine myself, my every feeling, until the Abyss swallows the world, yet come no closer to mastery of those emotions within me. For they are not static things; nor are they immune to the outside world. Hood's breath, man, can't you find another colour of cloth? This perverse love of green must surely be curable. I've got so many dog diseases I'm only alive 'cos the little buggers are too busy fighting among 'emselves. I mean, I've even got Licky End, and you only get that if you're a pregnant sheep. Sometimes you men are like lizards, sunning on the stones of a crumbling house, thinking: "what a nice basking spot someone build for me." Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape! Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers. He had this small bit of architecture that he wanted to get rid of. Nothing major, nothing dangerous. Just a bottomless shaft that he didn't want to deal with. His undead minions kept falling in. We always arise from our own ashes. Always. I can't quite swing the omniscience business, and I'm still working on omnipotence. You believed then that you were hated, and did not know how much you were loved. The seas of the whole world shook with our mourning for you, and the waves wept salt tears and threw themselves despairing upon the rocks. All that live cling to life. Council is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Things involving the computer fill me with a childlike terror. Now, if it were a nice ogre or some such, I'd be more in my element. And I assure you there was a mark on this door... Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward, that's how it is usually read. I'd put a curse of stupidity on you if I could improve on nature. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it forever! Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn't operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they really let you have it. It is the difference in knowledge that commands respect. This is why the true test of every student lies in the humiliation of his master. Dragons play no games. Come in, then, you and your two Others. I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea. Tar and Canker spread like legs / City wonders where her Lover went / Cos now she's being Ravished blind / by the Prick that is the Government! I ATEN'T DEAD Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact. Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and...was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing "The Hedgehog Cannot Be Buggered" Mothers do that, you know, when you steal their eggs. They take it personally. Especially when the mother is a monster-sized brain with yellow eyes and dozens of hands. Well, I'm just as happy. It would have been the end of the Eighteenth; in another watch we'd have been killing each other for the money. Dear man, I am a toad. While you are an artist. And for my fortune in the distinction, I daily thank every god that is and every god that ever was. - Why a spoon, cousin, why not an axe? You describe people as crazy - you say, that Jack, he's crazy - and it doesn't mean anything until you see them really, truly, going crazy. I believe the mindset which demands sacrifice is essentially tragic in its type of nobility. Tragedy finds glory in losing bravely, but loss is still the outcome. Comedy finds glory in a happy victory. I prefer comedy. Have you seen a split cranium, growing flowers like a window box? I saw that mere hours ago. Elm, she's a woman. I'm just the male of the species. I couldn't convince her that the sun rises in the east if she preferred it to rise in the west. The old bulldog pursues me as ardently as ever. He's made me worth a fortune. If only one could buy shares in oneself, I could be a rich man. We hate to be caught without contingency plans. I plan to ripen into an old rake. My pastimes will consist of getting schoolgirls into trouble, fighting duels with irate fathers and brothers, and giving witty oratories in the courthouse. But if we're to talk of reason, no doubt you can explain why your god has given us great powers of reasoning with which to fail to comprehend him. It seems either perverse or very careless on his part. If I were at all inclined towards religion, I'd say it's less important that we believe in any god than that somewhere there's a god who believes in us. I doubt I'd really enjoy paradise, anyway. And as for you, you'd hate it. So much of your god's breast, but so little of any others, if your literature is to be believed. Music brings me pleasure, but so does strangling the breath out of an opponent, or putting my sword through him. If one joy is sacred, why not the other? Priest, you wish to corrupt my heart; to violate and ruin my essential nature. In certain ways I'm still a dutiful son of my land. Hate? Nothing in the world. I'm quite fond of it. And were I to believe in god, I'd admire his cruel beasts, his earthquakes and villainy, as much as I'd admire him for his haphazard gentleness. But I would not love him. I begin to see how you sell your cult to the gullible. A life without design? A heart lacking hope, love or honour? Take on deity, apply according to directions and leave to set. Guaranteed to fill any gap with cheap yet resilient lies. Four times you sinned with her? That's hardly a sin; more like a miracle, for a man of your age. I only hope such sins will warm the nights of my autumn years. I have no ambition to be anything more than what I am. You can decide whether that's a sign of vanity. Whatever the case, you'll have to lure me with something more attractive than the opportunity to become a simpleton. I might be willing to believe that a god is indeed at work, carrying out a divine plan of destroying the meek. I might even approve of him, although I wouldn't care to meet him alone in a dark alley. Interesting. But, as I think you're mad, I can't believe you. But I can't very well let you go unpunished, can I? I am a very moral man, you see. My own crimes have sharpened my sense of ethics to a quite unprecedented degree. I am not cruel. Not in the sense you mean. But cruelty is a useful tool if one can only recognise the precise moment when it must be used. Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen. Ah, well, people can be a bit stupid abou' their pets. No villain comes in black, screaming obscenities. All evil has children, homes, regard for self, fear of enemies. You know that I have the greatest possible enthusiasm for this mission. What is a government but an institutionalized method of making sure somebody else does all the work? What vengeance is this? That he should slumber while I endure? Blood douses no hatred, cleanses no sin. Like seed, it spills of its own volition, and leaves naught but sorrow in its wake. I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, Never tell me the odds. You know, the Millenium Falcon has reclining seats. *wink* I thought... they smelled bad on the outside. Then I'll see you in hell. |
