text:
The Colour of Magic

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

The Colour of Magic is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series.

Quotes

 * If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'.

 * What he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.

 * The Watch were always careful not to intervene too soon in any brawl where the odds were not heavily stacked in their favour. The job carried a pension, and attracted a cautious, thoughtful kind of man.

 * "It could be worse," he said by way of farewell. "It could be me."

 * That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.

 * At the back of his mind a bad feeling began to grow. He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep, moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.

 * Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenery that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the Discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant 'idiot'.

 * It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

 * 'You know, I never imagined there were he-dryads. Not even in an oak tree.'
 * One of the giants grinned at him.
 * Druellae snorted. 'Stupid! Where do you think acorns come from?'

 * What heroes like best is themselves.

 *  'We've strayed into a zone with a high magical index,' he said. 'Don't ask me how. Once upon a time a really powerful magic field must have been generated here, and we're feeling the after-effects.'
 *  'Precisely,' said a passing bush.

 * The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal his gold teeth.

 * 'It is forbidden to fight on the Killing Ground,' he said, and paused while he considered the sense of this. 'You know what I mean, anyway...'

 * Ripples of paradox spread out across the sea of causality.

 * He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided.

 * Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

 * It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.
 * But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.

 * I've seen excitement, and I've seen boredom. And boredom was best.

 * 'What's this wine—crushed octopus eyeballs?'
 * 'Sea grape,' said the old man.
 * 'Great,' said Rincewind, and swallowed a glassful. 'Not bad. A bit salty, maybe.'
 * 'Sea grape is a kind of small jellyfish,' explained the stranger. '[...] Why has your friend gone that strange colour?'
 * 'Culture shock, I imagine,' said Twoflower.

 * 'We don't have gods where I come from,' said Twoflower.
 * 'You do, you know,' said the Lady. 'Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.'

 * '[...] on the disc, the Gods are not so much worshipped as blamed.'

 * Don't ask me how I knew—I suppose it was because it was just about the worst possible thing that was likely to happen.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Colour of Magic


text:
The Light Fantastic

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

The Light Fantastic is a 1986 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the second of the Discworld series.

Quotes

 * A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.
 * Pratchett here draws upon the Greek thauma or "marvel" in creating the name of this basic unit.

 * The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort.

 * The pen is mightier than the sword ... if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

 * The disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailor who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

 * "I suppose you wouldn't happen to know the way out of the forest, possibly, by any chance?"
 * "No. I don't get about much," said the tree.
 * "Fairly boring life, I imagine," said Rincewind.
 * "I wouldn't know. I've never been anything else," said the tree.
 * Rincewind looked at it closely. It seemed pretty much like every other tree he'd seen.
 * "Are you magical?" he said.
 * "No one's ever said," said the tree, "I suppose so."
 * Rincewind thought: I can't be talking to a tree. If I was talking to a tree I'd be mad, and I'm not mad, so trees can't talk.
 * "Goodbye," he said firmly.
 * "Hey, don't go," the tree began, and then realized the hopelessness of it all. It watched him stagger off through the bushes, and settled down to feeling the sun on its leaves, the slurp and gurgle of the water in its roots, and the very ebb and flow of its sap in response to the natural tug of the sun and moon. Boring, it thought. What a strange thing to say. Trees can be bored, of course, beetles do it all the time, but I don't think that was what he was trying to mean. And: can you actually be anything else?
 * This seems to have produced a paraphrase of these statements which has been widely quoted on the internet as a direct quote from this book (including here, for some years): "Of course I'm sane, when trees start talking to me, I don't talk back." Conceivably this might be a paraphrase made by Pratchett himself, elsewhere, but any alternate sourcing for this variant apparently derived from this passage is welcome, but it seems to have arisen some time after 2000.

 * There had been an unseen observer of all this. It was of course entirely against the rules, but Trymon knew all about rules and had always considered they were for making, not obeying.

 * He wanted to say all this, and couldn't. For a man with an itch to see the whole of infinity, Twoflower never actually moved outside his own head. Telling him the truth would be like kicking a spaniel.

 * Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it.

 * Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.

 * 'Dead?' said Rincewind, In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.

 * Darkness isn't the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.

 * Ankh-Morpork!
 * Pearl of cities!
 * This is not a completely accurate description, of course—it was not round and shiny—but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.

 * The voice didn't believe in gods, which in Rincewind's book was fair enough, but it didn't believe in people either.

 * "Madmen," he said. "They say I should do no work because the star comes. I tell them stars have never hurt me, I wish I could say the same about people."

 * Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything.

 * "If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply.
 * "There is an alternative, then."
 * "Out with it, man."
 * "You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there," said Twoflower.

 * Radiating from the book was the light that lies on the far side of darkness, the light fantastic.
 * It was a rather disappointing purple colour.

title: The Light Fantastic


text:
Equal Rites

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Equal Rites is a 1987 comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the third novel in the Discworld series.

Quotes

 * This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions.
 * It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might.

 * A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course.

 * It wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.
 * It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynaecological probability, someone was born halfway up a wall.

 * Time passed, which, basically, is its job.

 * "They're both magic. If you can't learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse."
 * "What's an elephant?"
 * "A kind of badger," said Granny. She hadn't maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance.

 * "Do you think I used magic?"
 * Esk looked down at the queen bee. She looked up at the witch.
 * "No," she said, "I think you just know a lot about bees."
 * Granny grinned.
 * "Exactly correct. That's one form of magic, of course."
 * "What, just knowing things?"
 * "Knowing things that other people don't know," said Granny.

 * "Gods are all right," said Granny, as they ate their lunch and looked at the view. "You don't bother gods, and gods don't come bothering you."

 * I'm surely going to regret this, she told herself, displaying considerable foresight.

 * There would be a price. And Granny knew enough about wizardry to be certain that it would be a high one. But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop?

 * They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

 * "You mean it's my destiny?" she said at last.
 * Granny shrugged. "Something like that. Probably. Who knows?"

 * Although his body had been around quite a lot, his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head.

 * He had the kind of real deep tan that rich people spend ages trying to achieve with expensive holidays and bits of tinfoil, when really all you need to do to obtain one is work your arse off in the open air every day.

 * She liked it because it offered privacy, always appreciated by, as she put it, "my more discerning clients who prefer to make their very special purchases in an atmosphere of calm where discretion is ever the watchword."

 * A hint was to Esk what a mosquito bite was to the average rhino because she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

 * It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a halfbrick in the path of the bicycle of history.

 * One reason for the bustle was that over large parts of the continent other people preferred to make money without working at all, and since the Disc had yet to develop a music recording industry they were forced to fall back on older, more traditional forms of banditry.

 * Wizards parted with money slightly less readily than tigers parted with their teeth.

 * It had been a very long night, and the morning didn't seem to be an improvement.

 * The Shades, in brief, were an abode of discredited gods and unlicensed thieves, ladies of the night and peddlers in exotic goods, alchemists of the mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization's axle.

 * Granny had counted the temples with a thoughtful look in her eyes; gods were always demanding that their followers acted other than according to their true natures, and the human fallout this caused made plenty of work for witches.

 * Granny had nothing against fortune-telling provided it was done badly by people with no talent for it.

 * "Can't you read, Esk?"
 * The astonishment in his voice stung her.
 * "I expect so," she said defiantly. "I've never tried."

 * "Hmm. Granpone the White. He's going to be Granpone the Grey if he doesn't take better care of his laundry. Aye tell you, girl, a white magician is just a black magician with a good housekeeper."

 * "Million-to-one chances," she said, "crop up nine times out of ten."

 * "Who says that?" said Cutangle.
 * "Generally people who are wrong." said Granny. "I makes a note in my Almanack, see. I checks. Most things most people believe are wrong."

 * She told me that if magic gives people what they want, then not using magic can give them what they need.

 * It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted.

title: Equal Rites


text:
Mort

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Mort is a 1987 fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fourth Discworld novel.

Quotes

 * Publisher's excerpts online

 * This is the Death whose particular sphere of operations is, well, not a sphere at all, but the Discworld, which is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the enormous star turtle Great A'Tuin, and which is bounded by a waterfall that cascades endlessly into space.
 * Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

 * It wasn't that he was unhelpful, but he had the kind of vague, cheerful helpfulness that serious men soon learn to dread.

 * In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe... which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.

 * His father regarded him critically.
 * "Very nice," he said, "for the money."
 * "It itches," said Mort, "I think there's things in here with me."
 * "There's thousands of lads in the world'd be very thankful for a nice warm—" Lezek paused, and gave up—"garment like that, my lad."
 * "I could share it with them?" Mort said hopefully.

 * 'Uh,' said Mort. ‘Mortimer...sir. They call me Mort.'
 * said the skull.
 * said the skull.

 * "Where did you say your business was?" said Lezek. "Is it far?"
 * said Death.

 * [Death pays for something from a large bag of assorted copper coinage, most of it turned blue and green with age]
 * "How do you get all those coins?" asked Mort.

 * The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles—kingons, or possibly queons—that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

 * There were temples, their doors wide open, filling the streets with the sound of gongs, cymbals and, in the case of some of the more conservative fundamentalist religions, the brief screams of the victims.

 * said Death.

 * said Death.
 * "Yes," said Mort slowly. "I...I've watched people. They look at you but they don't see you, I think. You do something to their minds."
 * Death shook his head.
 * he said. He blew a smoke ring at the sky, and added,

 * Death was standing behind a lectern, poring over a map. He looked at Mort as if he wasn't entirely there.
 * he said.
 * "No, sir," said Mort.
 * "Was there?"
 * said Death,
 * said Death,

 * Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"
 * Mort thought for a moment.
 * "No," he said eventually, "what?"
 * There was silence.
 * Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right."

 * "I've never seen Death actually at work."
 * "Not many have," said Albert. "Not twice, at any rate."

 * "They can't see me either!" said Mort. "But I'm real!"
 * said Death.

 * Death continued.

 * "And he goes around killing people?" said Mort. He shook his head. "There's no justice."
 * Death sighed. he said,...

 * "My granny says that dying is like going to sleep," Mort added, a shade hopefully.

 * "Look, I'll be frank," he said. "I could point you in the direction of a great brothel."
 * "I've already had lunch," said Mort, vaguely.

 * "In a figurative sense," he said.
 * "What does that mean?
 * "Well, it means no," said Cutwell.

 * "He doesn't like wizards and witches much," Mort volunteered.
 * "Nobody likes a smartass," she said with some satisfaction. "We give him trouble, you see. Priests don't, so he likes priests."
 * "He's never said," said Mort.
 * "Ah. They're always telling folk how much better it's going to be when they're dead. We tell them it could be pretty good right here if only they'd put their minds to it."

 * "I've—we've got a special on Cutwell's Shield of Passion ointment," said the face, and winked in a startling fashion. "Provides your wild oats while guaranteeing a crop failure, if you know what I mean."
 * Keli bridled. "No," she lied coldly, "I do not."

 * "You're dead," he said.
 * Keli waited. She couldn't think of any suitable reply. "I'm not" lacked a certain style, while "Is it serious?" seemed somehow too frivolous.

 * (That was a cinematic trick adapted for print. Death wasn't talking to the princess. He was actually in his study, talking to Mort. But it was quite effective, wasn't it? It's probably called a fast dissolve, or a crosscut/zoom. Or something. An industry where the senior technician is called a Best Boy might call it anything.)

 * The thing between Death's triumphant digits was a fly from the dawn of time. It was the fly in the primordial soup. It had bred on mammoth turds. It wasn't a fly that bangs on window panes, it was a fly that drills through walls.

 * The world's greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents. However, the gods took pity on them, and turned her into an ironing board, and him into a small brass bollard.

 * When you're a god, you don't have to have reasons.

 * History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

 * "What do people like to drink here, then?" The landlord looked sideways at his customers, a clever trick given that they were directly in front of him.

 * "You like it?" he said to Mort, in pretty much the same tone of voice people used when they said to St George, "You killed a what?"

 * Go away, Mort thought. His subconscious was worrying him. It appeared to have a direct line to parts of his body that he wanted to ignore at the moment.

 * You know, people just don't see what their mind tells them isn't there.

 * Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

 * "I'm sure it's not wizardly to be alone in a lady's boudoir."
 * "Hmm? But I'm not alone, am I? You're here."
 * "That," she said, "is the point, isn't it?"

 * "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"
 * "Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?"

 * It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe.

 * "Sodomy non sapiens," said Albert under his breath.
 * "What does that mean?"
 * "Means I'm buggered if I know."

 * Resolution was good for the moral fiber; the only trouble was the fiber didn't appreciate the sacrifices he was making for it.

 * Truly, he thought, the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.

 * "As simple as that? You didn't use magic?"
 * "Only common sense. It's a lot more reliable in the long run."

 * Women's clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much—in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all—but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away.

 * "Pardon me for living, I'm sure."

 * Albert glared at him. "Shut up."
 * "Shutting up right away, sir."

 * Only one creature could have duplicated the expressions on their faces, and that would be a pigeon who has heard not only that Lord Nelson has got down off his column but has also been seen buying a 12-bore repeater and a box of cartridges.

 * What's the use of having the power if you don't wield it? Man doesn't show you respect, you don't leave enough of his damn inn to roast chestnuts on, understand?

 * He was suddenly aware that he had made some lifelong enemies, and it was no consolation to know that he probably wouldn't have them for very long.

 * There were more than nine hundred known gods on the Disc, and research theologians were discovering more every year.

 * "You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish—" He stopped talking.

 * What are you going to do when we get there?"
 * "I don't know," he said. "I was sort of hoping something would suggest itself at the time."

 * "Am I going to be crowned or not?" she said icily. "I've got to die a queen! It'd be terrible to be dead and common!"

 * Although the scythe isn't preeminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. Once its owner gets it weaving and spinning no one—including the wielder—is quite certain where the blade is now and where it will be next.

title: Mort


text:
Sourcery

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Sourcery is a 1988 fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fifth book in his Discworld series.

Quotes
A Love for the Arts by Delacorr.jpg?'
 * , said Death.]]

 *  'And what would humans be without love?'
 * , said Death.

 * He sighed again. People were always trying this sort of thing. On the other hand, it was quite interesting to watch, and at least this was a bit more original than the usual symbolic chess game, which Death always dreaded because he could never remember how the knight was supposed to move.

 * The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. 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.

 * These weren't the normal city watch, cautious and genially corrupt. These were walking slabs of muscle and they were absolutely unbribable, if only because the Patrician could outbid anyone else.

 * After that one thing sort of led to another and pretty soon everyone was fighting to get something—either away, out or even.

 *  Sourcerer, n. (mythical) A proto-wizard, a doorway through which new majik may enter the world, a wizard not limited by the physical capabilities of hys own bodie, not by Destinie, nor by Deathe. It is written that there once were sourcerers in the youth of the world but not may there by now and blessed be, for sourcery would mean the Ende of the World . . . If the Creator hadd meant menne to be bee as goddes, he would have given them wings.
 * SEE ALSO: thee Apocralypse, the legende of thee Ice Giants, and thee Teatime of the Goddes.
 * Definition in Casplock's Compleet Lexicon of Majik with Precepts for the Wise

 * The current Patrician ... He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens. †
 * † The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.

 * He had the unique opportunity to watch Conina fight. Not many men ever got to see it twice.
 * Her opponents started off grinning at the temerity of a slight young girl attacking them, and then rapidly passed through various stages of puzzlement, doubt, concern, and abject gibbering terror as they apparently became the center of a flashing, tightening circle of steel.

 * To Rincewind's annoyance the Luggage barrelled after her, cushioning its fall by dropping heavily onto a slaver, and adding to the sudden panic of the invaders because, while it was bad enough to be attacked with deadly and ferocious accuracy by a rather pretty girl in a white dress with flowers on it, it was even worse for the male ego to be tripped up and beaten by a travel accessory; it was pretty bad for all the rest of the male, too.

 * It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting.

 * Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure in any case. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

 * '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.'

 * 'My father always said that it was pointless to undertake a direct attack against an enemy extensively armed with efficient projectile weapons,' she said.
 * Rincewind, who knew Cohen's normal method of speech, gave her a look of disbelief.
 * 'Well, what he actually said,' she added, 'was never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine.'

 * The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

 * A popular spell at the time was Pelepel's Temporal Compressor, which on one occasion resulted in a race of giant reptiles being created, evolving, spreading, flourishing and then being destroyed in the space of about five minutes, leaving only its bones in the earth to mislead forthcoming generations completely.

 * The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find...

 * 'I don't trust this man,' said Nijel. 'I try not to judge from first impressions, but I definitely think he's up to no good.'
 * 'He had you thrown in a snake pit!'
 * 'Perhaps I should have taken the hint.'

 * Wizards didn't kill ordinary people because a) they seldom noticed them and b) it wasn't considered sporting and c) besides, who'd do all the cooking and growing food and things. And killing a brother wizard with magic was nigh-well impossible on account of the layers of protective spells that any cautious wizard maintained about his person at all times.*
 * * Of course, wizards often killed each other by ordinary, non-magical means, but this was perfectly allowable and death by assassination was considered natural causes for a wizard.

 * Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.

 * '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!'

 * There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away.

 * Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner's canary, and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.

 * 'This is fun,' said Creosote. 'Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.'
 * 'But you could throw yourself on your mercy,' said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.
 * 'Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.'

 * 'I can't hear anything,' said Nijel loudly. 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.

 * Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes.

 * They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

 * 'Poor I don't mind,' said the Seriph. 'It's sobriety that is giving me difficulties.'

 * Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour.

 * Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'.

 * 'Quick, you must come with me,' she said. 'You're in great danger!'
 * 'Why?'
 * 'Because I will kill you if you don't.'

 * 'I meant,' said Ipslore, bitterly, 'what is there in this world that makes living worth while?'
 * Death thought about it.
 * he said eventually,

 * The Luggage might be magical. It might be terrible. But in its enigmatic soul it was kin to every other piece of luggage throughout the multiverse, and preferred to spend its winters hibernating on top of a wardrobe.

 * Rincewind stared into the frothy remnants of his last beer, and then, with extreme care in case the top of his head fell off, leaned down and poured some into a saucer for the Luggage. It was lurking under the table, which was a relief. It usually embarrassed him in bars by sidling up to drinkers and terrorizing them into feeding it crisps.

 * The subject of wizards and sex is a complicated one, but as has already indicated it does, in essence, boil down to this: when it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like.

 * How can the effect be described with delicacy and taste? For most of the wizards, it was like being an elderly man who, suddenly faced by a beautiful young woman, finds to his horror and delight and astonishment that the flesh is suddenly as willing as the spirit.

 * And I didn't bother with chapter six, because I promised my mother I'd just stick with the looting and pillaging, until I find the right girl.

 * Death isn't cruel – merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

 * It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.
 * Rincewind

 * Rincewind sighed, and padded around the base of the tower toward the Library. Towards where the Library had been. There was the arch of the doorway, and most of the walls were still standing, but a lot of the roof had fallen in and everything was blackened by soot. Rincewind stood and stared for a long time. Then he dropped the carpet and ran, stumbling and sliding through the rubble that half-blocked the doorway. The stones were still warm underfoot. Here and there the wreckage of bookcase still smouldered. Anyone watching would have seen Rincewind dart backward and forward across the shimmering heaps, scrabbling desperately among them, throwing aside charred furniture, pulling aside lumps of fallen roof with less than superhuman strength. They would have seen him pause once or twice to get his breath back, then dive in again, cutting his hands on shards of half molten glass from the dome of the roof. They would have noticed that he seemed to be sobbing. Eventually his questing fingers touched something warm and soft. The frantic wizard heaved a charred roof beam aside, scrabbled through a drift of fallen tiles and peered down. There, half squashed by the beam and baked brown by the fire, was a large bunch of overripe, squashy bananas. He picked one up, very carefully, and sat and watched it for some time until the end fell off. Then he ate it.

title: Sourcery


text:
Wyrd Sisters

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Wyrd Sisters is a 1988 w;fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the sixth Discworld novel.

Quotes

 * A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past.
 * Exactly why this should be may never be known. Possibly the Creator of the universe got bored with all the usual business of axial inclination, albedos and rotational velocities, and decided to have a bit of fun for once.

 * No gods anywhere play chess. They haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

 * The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.

 * It was dawning on him that the pleasures of the flesh were pretty sparse without the flesh. Suddenly life wasn't worth living. The fact that he wasn't living it didn't cheer him up at all.

 * Granny Weatherwax didn't hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn't like its expression at all.

 * The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.

 * Demons were like genies or philosophy professors—if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

 * Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn't trust it. Often you couldn't even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence.

 * This was real. This was more real even than reality. This was history. It might not be true, but that had nothing to do with it.

 * This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That's why everything is exactly the wrong way round.

 * Greebo's grin gradually faded, until there was nothing left but the cat. This was nearly as spooky as the other way round.

 * "Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

 * The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.

 * "There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."

 * "I'd like to know if I could compare you to a summer's day. Because—well, June 12th was quite nice, and...Oh. You've gone."

 * "'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself."
 * Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.

 * The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and outgeneralled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man's brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles.

And much slower. That would have to be important. How fast did a forest's heart beat? Once a year, maybe. Yes, that sounded about right. Out there the forest was waiting for the brighter sun and the longer days that would pump a million gallons of sap several hundred feet into the sky in one great systolic thump too big and loud to be heard. And it was at this point that Granny bit her lip. She'd just thought the word 'systolic', and it certainly wasn't in her vocabulary.
 * It occurred to her that in addition to being a collection of other things, the forest was a thing in itself. Alive, only not alive in the way that, say, a shrew was alive.

title: Wyrd Sisters


text:
Guards! Guards!

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Guards! Guards! is a 1989 fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the eighth in the Discworld series.

Quotes

 * All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published in September 2008 by Harper, ISBN# 978-0-06-102064-3

 * They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men. (Dedication)

 * The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read. (p. 3)

 * To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height. (p. 5)

 * There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. (pp. 13-14)

 * It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are—who knows?
 * Best not to speculate.
 * Thunder rolled...
 * It rolled a six. (p. 21)

 * He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious circumstances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn't magical. It hasn't got a name. When you wield it you don't get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could believe it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn't got destiny written all over it.
 * It's practically unique, in fact. (p. 21)

 * Vimes opened his eyes. There was a moment of empty peace before memory hit him like a shovel. (p. 22)

 * "In a manner of speaking, yes," said his father. "In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no." (p. 23)

 * All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional. (p. 25)

 * "I don't think they have a king there," said Varneshi. "Just some man who tells them what to do."
 * The king of the dwarfs took this calmly. This seemed to be about ninety-seven percent of the definition of kingship, as far as he was concerned. (p. 28)

 * All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee. (p. 28)

 * People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else." (p. 32)

 * The guard gave him what could loosely be called an old-fashioned look. It was practically neolithic. (p. 32)

 * Thank you for coming to see me. Don't hesitate to leave. (p. 43)

 * The Watch hadn't liked it, but the plain fact was that the thieves were far better at controlling crime than the Watch had ever been. After all, the Watch had to work twice as hard to cut crime just a little, whereas all the Guild had to do was to work less. (p. 45)

 * "You remember?"
 * Vimes tried to. It wasn't easy. He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn't remember what it was he was forgetting anymore. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking. (p. 49)

 * His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old. (p. 55)

 * He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter.† (pp. 63-64)
 * † Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force

 * "'E's fighting in there!" he stuttered, grabbing the captain's arm.
 * "All by himself?" said the captain.
 * "No, with everyone!" shouted Nobby, hopping from one foot to the other. (pp. 67-68)

 * It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of. (p. 70)

 * "Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
 * "I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt. Colon," said Nobby. (p. 99)

 * He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving—anything with meat on it would have done. (p. 106)

 * "A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
 * The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?" (p. 108)

 * It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing. (p. 116)

 * "The females are always the worst," said another hunter gloomily. "I knew this cross-eyed gorgon once, oh, she was a terror. Kept turning her own nose to stone." (p. 123)

 * "What exactly is it that they do eat?"
 * The thief shrugged. "I seem to recall stories about virgins chained to huge rocks," he volunteered.
 * "It'll starve around here, then," said the assassin. "We're on loam." (p. 126)

 * By and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. (p. 136)

 * Disgusting, really, her livin' in a room like this. She's got pots of money, sarge says, she's got no call livin' in ordinary rooms. What's the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go around livin' in ordinary rooms? Should be marble. (p. 139)

 * It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he'd decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby. (p. 141)

 * "Anyway, we found we've got a lot in common. It's an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering."
 * That must make them practically family, Vimes thought. (p. 142)

 * The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. (p. 146)

 * Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire. (p. 147)

 * Going Up in the World is a metaphor, which I am learning about, it is like Lying but more decorative. (p. 153)

 * It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing. (p. 165)

 * This seemed absolutely right, to Vimes's way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn't any better. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years. (p. 173)

 * People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library. (p. 183)

 * Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive. (p. 188)

 * "I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back in submission and that's an end of it," said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon.
 * "Wouldn't work with dragons," said Lady Ramkin. "Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That's how they look at it. Almost human, really." (pp. 194-195)

 * "What're them fat saggy things on that shield?"
 * "Those are the royal hippos of Ankh," said the man proudly. "Reminders of our noble heritage." (p. 195)

 * "Disgusting, this sort of thing, really," mused Sergeant Colon. "People goin' around in coaches like this when there's people with no roof to their heads."
 * "It's Lady Ramkin's coach," said Nobby. "She's all right."
 * "Well, yes, but what about her ancestors, eh? You don't get big houses and carriages without grindin' the faces of the poor a bit." (p. 198)

 * The last rats of Brother Watchtower's self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage. (p. 201)

 * He looked up at the hooded figure beside him.
 * "We never intended this," he said weakly. "Honestly. No offense. We just wanted what was due to us."
 * A skeletal hand patted him on the shoulder, not unkindly.
 * And Death said,
 * (p. 202)

 * The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality. (p. 223)

 * If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life. (p. 242)
 * He felt the sensation of the dragon rummaging around in his mind, trying to find a clue to understanding. He half-saw, half-sensed the flicker of random images, of dragons, of the mythical age of reptiles and—and here he felt the dragon's genuine astonishment—of some of the less commendable areas of human history, which were most of it. And after the astonishment came the baffled anger. There was practically nothing the dragon could do to people that they had not, sooner or later, tried on one another, often with enthusiasm.
 * You have the effrontery to be squeamish, it thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless, and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape – the great face pressed even closer, so that Wonse was staring into the pitiless depths of his eyes - we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality. (p. 253)

 * A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it. (p. 265)

 * Possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human. (pp. 267-268)

 * "You can't give me my job back," repeated Vimes. "It was never yours to take away. I was never an officer of this city, or an officer of the king, or an officer of the Patrician. I was an officer of the law. It might have been corrupted and bent, but it was law, of a sort. There isn't any law now except: "You'll get burned alive if you don't watch out". Where's the place in there for me?"

 * It must be something about high office. The altitude sends people mad. (p. 286)

 * "When you really need them the most," he said, "million-to-one chances always crop up. Well-known fact." (p. 292)

 * Now the air was gray with old smoke and mist shreds, but on a clear day it was possible to see Cor Celesti, home of the gods. Site of the home of the gods, anyway. They lived in Dunmanifestin, the stuccoed Valhalla, where the gods faced eternity with the kind of minds that were at a loss to know what to do to pass a wet afternoon. They played games with the fates of men, it was said. Exactly what game they thought they were playing at the moment was anyone's guess.
 * But of course there were rules. Everyone knew there were rules. They just had to hope like Hell that the gods knew the rules, too. (p. 292)

 * "What's up, Sarge? Do you want to live forever?"
 * "Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years." (p. 293)

 * "What if it's just a thousand-to-one chance?" said Colon agonizedly.
 * "What?"
 * "Anyone ever heard of a thousand-to-one shot coming up?"
 * Carrot looked up. "Don't be daft, Sergeant," he said. "No one ever saw a thousand-to-one chance come up. The odds against it are—" his lips moved—"millions to one." (pp. 295-296)

 * Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography— (p. 302)

 * "... a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offenses of generalized abetting to be more specifically ascertained later. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to be summarily thrown into a piranha tank. You have the right to trial by ordeal." (p. 332)

 * This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren't careful you'd go down the wrong leg—(p. 335)

 * Something was very wrong. "Is that you, Brother Doorkeeper?" he ventured.
 * The figure reached out.
 * it said. (p. 335)

 * "I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man [Vetinari]. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides." (p. 337)

 * "Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no." (p. 337)

 * That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything. (p. 348)

 * Up in the gloom the heads of dead animals haunted the walls. The Ramkins seemed to have endangered more species than an ice age. (p. 349)

 * Perhaps the magic would last. Perhaps it wouldn't. But then, what does? (p. 355; closing words)

To be placed:
 * 'No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they'd knew anything, they'd be sergeants.'

 * Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not as stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard… But no one said anything. The cowards, each man thought.

title: Guards! Guards!


text:
Reaper Man

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Reaper Man is a 1991 fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 11th Discworld novel.

Quotes

 * All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published in August 2002 by Harper, ISBN# 0-06-102062-1

 * One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people?
 * One said, Got a crush on them, sort of thing? (p. 3)

 * In a general sort of way everyone knew they were going to die, even the common people. No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched. (pp. 11-12)

 * Every day took an age to go by, which was odd, because days plural went past like a stampede. (p. 13)

 * In the hall of the house of Death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present. (There was, of course, a present before the present now, but that was also the present. It was just an older one.) (p. 14)

 * Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organized universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying, "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. (p. 28)

 * The Archchancellor was the first one to recover.
 * "Windle!" he said. 'We thought you were dead!'
 * He had to admit that it wasn't a very good line. You didn't put people on a slab with candles and lilies all round them because you think they've got a bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour. (p. 32)

 * "It's not old Windle. Old Windle was a lot older!"
 * "Older? Older than dead?" (p. 34)

 * Was that justice? Was that a proper reward for being a firm believer in reincarnation for almost 130 years? You come back as a corpse?
 * No wonder the undead were traditionally considered to be very angry. (p. 35)

 * Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place. (p. 38)

 * Something wonderful, if you took the long view, was about to happen.
 * If you took the short or medium view, something horrible was about to happen.
 * It's like the difference between seeing a beautiful new star in the winter sky and actually being close to the supernova. It's the difference between the beauty of morning dew on a cobweb and actually being a fly. (p. 35)

 * "Oh. Hallo, Modo."
 * "I ‘eard you was took dead, Mr. Poons."
 * "Er. Yes. I was."
 * "See you got over it, then." (p. 39)

 * "Seems to me...seems to me...look, death must be going on, right? Death has to happen. That's what bein' alive is all about. You're alive, and then you're dead. It can't just stop happening." (p. 43)

 * Everything that exists, yearns to live. That's what the cycle of life is all about. That's the engine that drives the great biological pumps of evolution. Everything tries to inch its way up the tree, clawing or tentacling or sliming its way up to the next niche until it gets to the very top—which, on the whole, never seems to have been worth all that effort. (p. 81)

 * "I suppose there's not some kind of magic you don't know about?"
 * "If there is, we don't know about it." (p. 93)

 * Then there was a silence. It was the particularly wary silence of something making no noise. (p. 124)

 * "Huh! Priests!" said Mr. Shoe. "They're all the same. Always telling you that you're going to live again after you're dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!" (p. 131)

 * Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason. (p. 159)

 * He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn't happen to you every year. (p. 182)

 * The senior wizards know that the proper purpose of magic is to form a social pyramid with the wizards on top of it, eating big dinners. (p. 189)

 * "It can't be intelligent, can it?" said the Bursar.
 * "All it's doing is moving around slowly and eating things," said the Dean.
 * "Put a pointy hat on it and it'd be a faculty member," said the Archchancellor. (p. 195)

 * William Spigot was the one that sang when he worked, breaking into that long nasal whine which meant that folk song was about to be perpetrated. (p. 203)

 * That was the bloody trouble, every time. Whenever someone was trying to do a bit of sensible thinking, there was always some pointless distraction. (p. 212)

 * "But how can a city be alive? It's only made up of dead parts!" said Ludmilla.
 * "So're people. Take it from me. I know." (p. 226)

 * (p. 236)

 * "No, right's right and wrong's wrong," said Miss Flitworth. "I was brought up to tell the difference."
 * "A what?"
 * "There's nothing wrong with smuggling!"
 * "They don't count!" (p. 237)
 * "There's nothing wrong with smuggling!"
 * "They don't count!" (p. 237)
 * "They don't count!" (p. 237)
 * "They don't count!" (p. 237)

 * The Dean himself didn't know when he'd been happier. For sixty years he'd been obeying all the self-regulating rules of wizardry, and suddenly he was having the time of his life. He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat. (p. 242)

 * Windle shook his head sadly. Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind. (p. 262)

 * It was, as he was wonderfully well placed to know, merely putting off the inevitable. But wasn't that what living was all about? (p. 277)

 * His voice shook with rage.
 * You never wanted to rule. (p. 281)

 * Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn't mean stupid. It just means that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges. (p. 297)

 * No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only hemorrhoids but frostbitten hemorrhoids. (p. 301)

 * What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up? (p. 305)

 * He lay back and smiled. It was never too late to have a good life. (p. 311)

 * Mothers like her exist everywhere, and apparently nothing can be done about them. (p. 313)

 * In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away—until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence. (pp. 316-317)

 * With any luck, they'd have best of both worlds. Not just feeling...but knowing.
 * Always best to have both worlds. (p. 317)

 * There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another—language was just there to hide their thoughts. (p. 319)

 * Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. (p. 321)

 * (p. 322)

 * "Huh! Yeah? Really? That's the kind of stupid thing people always say. They always say, My word, you're looking well. They say, There's life in the old dog yet. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle. That kind of stuff. It's all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad about! As if being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows how to think young, but my knees aren't that good at it. Or my back. Or my teeth. Try telling my knees they're as old as they think and see what good it does you. Or them. (p. 336)
 * "Huh! Yeah? Really? That's the kind of stupid thing people always say. They always say, My word, you're looking well. They say, There's life in the old dog yet. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle. That kind of stuff. It's all stupid. As if being old was some kind of thing you should be glad about! As if being philosophical about it will earn you marks! My head knows how to think young, but my knees aren't that good at it. Or my back. Or my teeth. Try telling my knees they're as old as they think and see what good it does you. Or them. (p. 336)

 * Death said nothing. He helped her up onto the horse.
 * "When I see what life does to people, you know, you don't seem so bad," she said nervously. (p. 342)

 * In the village in the Ramtops where they understand what the Morris dance is all about, they dance it just once, at dawn, on the first day of spring. They don't dance it after that, all through the summer. After all, what would be the point? What use would it be?
 * But on a certain day when the nights are drawing in, the dancers leave work early and take, from attics and cupboards, the other costume, the black one, and the other bells. And they go by separate ways to a valley among the leafless trees. They don't speak. There is no music. It's very hard to imagine what kind there could be....
 * And in the cold afternoon, as the light drains from the sky, among the frosty leaves and in the damp air, they dance the other Morris. Because of the balance of things.
 * You've got to dance both, they say. Otherwise you can't dance either. (pp. 344-345)

title: Reaper Man


text:
Witches Abroad

 * Books: The Colour of Magic | The Light Fantastic | Equal Rites | Mort | Sourcery | Wyrd Sisters | Pyramids | Guards! Guards! |  Faust Eric | Moving Pictures | Reaper Man | Witches Abroad | Main

Witches Abroad is a 1991 fantasy novel by the British writer Terry Pratchett, the 12th novel of the Discworld series.

Quotes

 * All page numbers from the mass market paperback edition published in August 2002 by Harper Torch, ISBN# 0-06-102061-3

 * But then...it used to be so simple, once upon a time.
 * Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. (p. 1)

 * Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy seraph of Al-Ybi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered. (p. 6)

 * It's a big responsibility, fairy godmothering. Knowing when to stop, I mean. People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people. So should you give them what—or what they need? (p. 10).

 * If you wanted to get anywhere in this world—and she'd decided, right at the start, that she wanted to get as far as it was possible to go—you wore names lightly, and you took power anywhere you found it. She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had already been dead. (p. 14)

 * You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you're told. (p. 20)

 * Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short. (p. 27)

 * It's a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they'll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is. (p. 32)

 * "Look," said Magrat desperately, "why don't I go by myself?"
 * "'Cos you ain't experienced at fairy godmothering," said Granny Weatherwax.
 * This was too much even for Magrat's generous soul.
 * "Well, nor are you," she said.
 * "That's true," Granny conceded. "But the point is...the point is...the point is we've not been experienced for a lot longer than you."
 * "We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience," said Nanny Ogg happily.
 * "That's what counts every time," said Granny. (p. 41)

 * Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don't like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr. (p. 48)

 * She heard Nanny say: "Beats me why they're always putting invisible runes on their doors. I mean, you pays some wizard to put invisible runes on your door, and how do you know you've got value for money?"
 * She heard Granny say: "No problem there. If you can't see 'em, you know you've got proper invisible runes." (p. 63)

 * In the dim light she could see Granny's face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wit's end, it was a short stroll. (p. 64)

 * "I hate mirrors," muttered the Duc.
 * "That's because they tell you the truth, my lad."
 * "It's cruel magic, then." (p. 71)

 * People are riddled by Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model airplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up until it knots. Early morning is the worst time—there's that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking. (p. 93)

 * Nanny's mouth spread in an evil grin.
 * "You know what this river's called?" she said.
 * "No."
 * "'S called the Vieux River."
 * "Yes?"
 * "Know what that means?"
 * "No."
 * "The Old (Masculine) River," said Nanny.
 * "Yes?"
 * "Words have sex in foreign parts," said Nanny hopefully. (p. 110)

 * All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout.
 * Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle.
 * For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says "How do you play this game, then?", someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out. (p. 119)

 * The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people. (p. 125)

 * "Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy," said Granny, glaring at the sky. "But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say ‘I do', yes? You can't make happiness..."
 * Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city.
 * "All you can do," she said, "is make an ending." (p. 139)

 * 'Tell me,' said Magrat, 'you said your mummy knows about the big bad wolf in the woods, didn't you?'
 * 'That's right.'
 * 'But nonetheless she sent you out by yourself to take those goodies to your granny?' (p. 146)

 * The only way housework could be done in this place was with a shovel or, for preference, a match. (p. 147)

 * "I wondered about that," said Nanny. "Then I thought maybe I was imagining things."
 * "No point in imagining anything," said Granny. "Things are bad enough as they are." (p. 150)

 * Magrat plunged on with the brave desperation of someone dancing in the light of their burning bridges. (p. 161)

 * Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble. (p. 162)

 * "Haven't you got any romance in your soul?" said Magrat plaintively.
 * "No," said Granny. "I ain't. And stars don't care what you wish, and magic don't make things better, and no one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrat Garlick, you got to learn three things. What's real, what's not real, and what's the difference—" (p. 163)

 * Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government. (p. 176)

 * "Baths is unhygienic," Granny declared. "You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that." (p. 184)

 * Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green. (p. 201)

 * Nanny Ogg quite liked cooking, provided there were other people around to do things like chop up the vegetables and wash the dishes afterwards. (pp. 203-204)

 * "This is Greebo. Between you and me, he's a fiend from hell."
 * "Well, he's a cat," said Mrs. Gogol, generously. "It's only to be expected." (p. 210)

 * Emberella, thought Magrat. I'm fairy godmothering a girl who sounds like something you put up in the rain. (p. 213)

 * Magrat was annoyed. She was also frightened, which made her even more annoyed. It was hard for people when Magrat was annoyed. It was like being attacked by damp tissue. (p. 229)

 * "I ain't against adventure, in moderation," said Granny, "but not when I'm eatin'." (p. 247)

 * "Anyway, it'll be int'resting to see if it works."
 * "Yes, but it's wrong," said Granny.
 * "Not for these parts, it seems," said Nanny.
 * "Besides," said Magrat virtuously, "it can't be bad if we're doing it. We're the good ones."
 * "Oh yes, so we is," said Granny, "and there was me forgetting it for a minute there." (p. 252)

 * The footman, recognizing instantly the boundless bad manners of the well-bred, backed away quickly. (p. 262)

 * This one was quite likely looting towns when he should have been learning to read. (p. 267)

 * For wolves and pigs and bears, thinking that they're human is a tragedy. For a cat, it's an experience. (p. 268).

 * Apart from being as well-adapted a parasite as the oak bracket fungus, Lady Volentia D'Arrangement was, by and large, a blameless sort of person. (p. 272)

 * Nanny Ogg looked him up and down or, at least, down and further down.
 * "You're a dwarf," she said. (p. 278)

 * The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. (p. 282)

 * She hated everything that predestined people, that fooled them, that made them slightly less than human. (p. 291)

 * He'd never told people they ought to be happy, and imposed a kind of happiness on them. The invisible people knew that happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in. (p. 293)

 * Greebo wasn't a happy cat. People had made a fuss just because he'd dragged a roast turkey off the table. (p. 294)

 * You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage. (p. 305)

 * Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster. (p. 305)

 * Greebo's technique was unscientific and wouldn't have stood a chance against any decent swordsmanship, but on his side was the fact that it is almost impossible to develop decent swordsmanship when you seem to have run into a food mixer that is biting your ear off. (p. 312)

 * Magic's far too important to be used for rulin' people. (p. 316)

 * "We're her godmothers," said Granny.
 * "That's right," said Nanny Ogg.
 * "We've got a wand, too," said Magrat.
 * "But you hate godmothers, Mistress Weatherwax," said Mrs. Gogol.
 * "We're the other kind," said Granny. "We're the kind that gives people what they know they really need, not what we think they ought to want." (p. 317)

 * "I don't want to hurt you, Mistress Weatherwax," said Mrs. Gogol.
 * "That's good," said Granny. "I don't want you to hurt me either." (p. 319)

 * The nobles of Genua had enough experience to know what it means when a ruler says something is not compulsory. (p. 325).

 * Death put down his drink and stepped forward.
 * Baron Saturday straightened up.
 * "I am ready to go with you," he said.
 * Death shrugged. Ready or not, he seemed to indicate, was all the same to him. (p. 325)

 * Granny stepped forward, her eyes two sapphires of bitterness. "I'm goin' to give you the hidin' our Mam never gave you, Lily Weatherwax. Not with magic, not with headology, not with a stick like our Dad had, aye, and he used a fair bit as I recall—but with skin. And not because you was the bad one. Not because you meddled with stories. Everyone has a path they got to tread. But because, and I wants you to understand this prop'ly, after you went I had to be the good one. You had all the fun. An' there's no way I can make you pay for that, Lily, but I'm surely goin' to give it a try..."
 * "But…I…I… I'm the good one," Lily murmured, her face pale with shock. "I'm the good one. I can't lose. I'm the godmother. You're the wicked witch…"
 * "Good? Good? Feeding people to stories? Twisting people's lives? That's good, is it?" said Granny. "You mean you didn't even have fun? If I'd been as bad as you, I'd have been a whole lot worse. Better at it than you've ever dreamed of." (pp. 337-338)

 * "I could make some new gods and get everyone to believe in 'em real good. How about that?" said Mrs. Gogol. Nanny shook her head.
 * "I shouldn't think Esme'd want that. She's not keen on gods. She thinks they're a waste of space." (p. 343)

 * "Good and bad is tricky," she said. "I ain't too certain about where people stand. P'raps what matters is which way you face." (pp. 348-349)

 * It was no longer the full-nosed roaring of a forty-winks catnapper, but the well-paced growling of someone who wanted to make a night of it.

title: Witches Abroad


text:
Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues.

Quotes

 * Soul music … arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying.
 * Otis Redding biography at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

 * Soul is truth, … no matter where it comes from, no matter how it is presented.
 * Lou Rawls, Pop Chronicles: Show 52 - The Soul Reformation: Phase three, soul music at the summit. [Part 8], interview recorded 10.12.1967.

 * God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. …  When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul.
 * Little Richard, Pop Chronicles: Show 15 - The Soul Reformation I: A symposium on soul, interview recorded 1.2.1968.

 * There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [rhythm & blues artists] at all. …  They do now, which is very groovy.
 * Mick Jagger, Pop Chronicles: Show 30 - The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!: The U.S.A. is invaded by a wave of long-haired English rockers. (Part 4), recorded 2.6.1968.

 * But now if I can wrap myself up in that song, and when that song gets to be a part of me, and affects me emotionally, then the emotions that I go through, chances are I’ll be able to communicate to you. Make the people out there become a part of the life of this song that you’re singing about. That’s soul when you can do that.
 * Ray Charles on the Pop Chronicles: the Soul Reformation, interview recorded 3.8.1968.

 * Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. … This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.
 * Ray Charles, Pop Chronicles: Show 55 - Crammer: A lively cram course on the history of rock and some other things, interview recorded 3.8.1968.

 * When I think of soul, I think of grease 'cause ain't nothin' no good without the grease.
 * Tina Turner, spoken interlude during Respect, live at Basin Street West, San Francisco, 22 February 1969, Video on YouTube

 * What they call rock and roll now is rhythm and blues: I've been playing for 15 years in New Orleans.
 * Fats Domino, The History of Rock and Roll, 1978, Hour 1: "The Birth of Rock & Roll".

title: Soul music


text:
User:Parvati~enwikiquote/monobook.css

body, #globalWrapper {font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; font-size: "large";}

title: User:Parvati~enwikiquote/monobook.css


text:
Blade II

Blade II is a 2002 film about the contining story of the half-man, half-vampire Blade as he forms an uneasy alliance with the vampire council in order to combat the Reapers who feed on vampires.
 * Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written by David S. Goyer

Know The Mark. taglines

Blade

 * Forget what you think you know. Vampires exist. My name is Blade. I was born half human, half vampire. They call me, The Daywalker. I have all their strengths, none of their weaknesses, execpt for the thirst. 20 years ago, I met a man that changed that. Whistler. He taught me how to hold the thirst at bay. Taught me the rules. Gave me the weapons to hunt with: Silver, garlic, sunlight. Two years ago, he was attacked. They took him, and turned him into the thing I hate most. I should have finished him off. Now, I'm hunting him. I will find him. And nothing will stand in my way.
 * There's an old saying: Keep your friends close, your enemies keep closer.
 * You obviously do not know who you are FUCKING WITH!
 * [To Rush] Take me to him, and I'll consider you a loose end.
 * [When he sees the vampire nightclub, which is packed with several hundred vampires] You've got to be kidding me.
 * [After Scud asks about what Blade thought about his betrayal] Two things: One, I've been onto you since they turned you. And two... [About the "dud" explosive Scud is holding] it's not a dud.
 * [To Reinhardt] Can you blush?
 * [to Rush] You didn't think I forgot about you, did you?

Whistler

 * [after being scolded for turning on the ultraviolet light] Yeah well some of us can't see in the dark ya fuckin' nipple head, what am I supposed to do?
 * They tortured me almost to death, and then let me heal in a vat of blood so they could go at it again. Sorry sons of bitches could have at least fixed my damn leg while they were at it.
 * [After Scud punches him] Why, you little shit.
 * [after Scud has just been blown up by a bomb] I was just startin' to like him.
 * [To Chupa] I love it when you talk dirty, sweetheart.
 * Hey, kid! [Throws Blade his sunglasses]
 * (deleted scene) Never underestimate the power of the pussy, boys. One cunt hair off that thing can drag a freight train a mile uphill.

Jared Nomak

 * [In Vampire tongue] Vampires. I hate vampires.
 * Blade. Is the enemy of my enemy my friend... or my enemy?
 * You want me, Blade? Here I am. Why kill me? We want the same thing.
 * We need the same thing, Blade.
 * Father!
 * After all, it looks like I've finished my father's job!
 * [Last words] It's... strange. It hurts... it hurts no more.

Asad

 * Nyssa! Put your sword away! Your people shot first.
 * We represent the ruling body of the vampire nation.
 * [Blade explains his plan to wipe out the Reapers] In broad daylight?

Reinhardt

 * [while being overrun by Reapers] You want a bite of me? Well, come on! Come on, motherfucker!
 * [while Blade is trying to activate the bomb] By the way, Blade, did I ever mention the bomb lever is stuck?
 * They want us to to spray on some suckpuppy's nut juice?
 * Well, like my daddy said right before he killed my mom, "You want anything done right, you gotta do it yourself."
 * [To Blade] Hey me & the gang where wondering: Can you blush?
 * Thought you had me on a short leash, didn't you jefe?
 * [Discovering a large group of Reapers] Eat shit, YOU UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS!!

Chupa

 * [Before shooting Priest; in Vampire tongue] A man without fear.
 * [To Whistler] We lost a man. Priest. You want me to carve his fucking name into your chest, old man?
 * We lose a partner, and Blade loses one!
 * [Last words] What are you trying to do? Stink me to death old man?

Priest

 * Look at them. Half of these bastards. They're not even pure bloods. I tell you what, why don't we fucking kill everyone just to make sure.
 * [Last words] Kill me now, Chupa!

Others

 * Scud: Lock up your daughters boys and girls, the dark knight returns.
 * Damaskinos: Who do you think God really favors in the web? The spider, or the fly?
 * Rush: Fuck! It's not silver, but it still hurts like hell!
 * Vampire: [After realizing he is several floors above the ground] Fuck this shit!
 * Vampire: [to Jared Nomak] This is a good news, bad news scenario, Jared: Good news for us, bad news for you.

Dialogue

 * Scud: [Hands Blade a cigarette] Need a toke of the smoke, B?
 * Blade: Later.

 * Blade: How do you feel?
 * Whistler: Like hammered shit.

 * Scud: What the fuck's your problem, poppy?
 * Whistler: My problem is I've been sucking blood clots for two years. I get out to find some jerkoff fuckin' with my life's work.
 * Scud: We jeopardized our whole operation to save your puckered old ass.
 * Whistler: Our operation?!
 * Scud: Yeah.
 * Whistler: Our operation?! I built this operation, you ass-wipe!

 * Scud: What's so funny?
 * Nyssa: They tell stories about Blade as the boogieman. Frankly, I'm disappointed.
 * Scud: You hear that, B? She's disappointed.
 * Nyssa: He agreed to come along so easily.
 * Scud: Come on, B, show her. Pretty please?
 * Blade: [Opens his coat to reveal several rows of tubes strapped to the inside of it] Semtex.
 * Scud: Enough explosives to level a city block. You still disappointed?

 * Damaskinos: It has been said, "Be proud of your enemy and enjoy his success." In that regard, I should thank you.
 * Blade: For what?
 * Karel Kounen: Eliminating Deacon Frost. You did us a favor. Karel Kounen.
 * Blade: [noticing vampire tattoo] You're human.
 * Karel: Barely. I'm a lawyer. European Health Consortium.
 * Damaskinos: As you may know, Vampirism is... a horrible virus, carried in the saliva of predators. In 72 hours, it spreads through the human bloodstream, creating new, parasitic organs.
 * Blade: Like cancer.
 * Damaskinos: Cancer with a purpose.
 * Karel: Unfortunately, viruses evolve, too. We've encountered a new one. We dubbed it the Reaper Strain. And like any good pathogen, it appears to have found a carrier.
 * [Karel places a disk into a computer. Nomak's first attack plays via a recording]
 * Karel: There. [Points to an image of Nomak] Jared Nomak.
 * Damaskinos: Born a vampire, but an anomaly like you. Unlike the rest of us, however, he feeds on not just humans, but Vampires as well.
 * Blade: Looks like he was doing me a favor.
 * Nyssa: You're missing the point. Their vampire victims don't die. They turn. They become carriers.
 * Asad: You've got to understand. These things are like crack addicts. They need to feed daily. Nomak's been up for 72 hours. By our estimates, there are already a dozen Reapers. There'll be hundreds before the week is out. Thousands within a matter of months. Do the math.
 * Blade: Wait. Let me get this right. You want me... to hunt them... for you?
 * Damaskinos: Once they are finished with us, who do you think they'll turn against next? Your precious humans. Not one of them will be left.
 * Karel: We spent two years training a small tactical unit: the Bloodpack. We want you to lead them.
 * Blade: Two years?
 * Nyssa: We've been training to hunt you.

 * Drug Dealer: Looking to get hooked up?
 * Nomak: Maybe. What do you have?
 * Drug Dealer: No problem. Horse, Hawaiian Ice. Whatever you need.
 * Nomak: Whatever I need. I like that. What if I need you?
 * [Nomak attacks him]

 * Scud: So B-man, what do you think?
 * Blade: Sounds like a plan.
 * Whistler: What do you really think?
 * Blade: They're gonna fuck us the first chance they get.
 * Scud: So, we ain't gonna do this, right?
 * Blade: We'll play along for now. They'll take us in deeper than we've ever been. To show us how their world really ticks.
 * Whistler: I've had enough of their world. They're shittin' bricks just because they're no longer on the top of the fuckin' food chain.

 * Reinhardt: Hey, me and the guys were wondering... [Whispers]
 * Blade: What?
 * Reinhardt: Can you blush?
 * Blade: Oh, I get it. I see now. You've been training for two years to take me out. And now, here I am. Ooh, it's so exciting, isn't it? Okay. Here's your chance. [Takes out a stake] Come on, what are you waiting for? [Points it at himself] Here I am. Right here in front of you. Adolf here gets the first shot. Come on. [Reinhardt looks at Nyssa] Come on, what are looking at her for? You need permission? Maybe you need a little bit of incentive. Okay, I can help with that. [Swirls the stake then hits Reinhardt with it, visibly agitating him] What's the matter, you miss that? It's okay, I can do it again. [Does the same thing again]
 * Verlaine: [In Vampire language] Do it, Reinhardt! Do it!
 * Blade: Come on. What, do you need a manual? [Hands him the stake] Do it!
 * Chupa: [in Vampire language] Kill him now!
 * [Reinhardt gives in and attacks Blade, who places a small device onto his head]
 * Blade: Now you got an explosive device stuck to the back of your head. Silver nitrate. Rigged to go off if anybody tampers with it. I'll have the detonator with me. And you. If you so much as look at me wrong...

 * Blade: [Standing outside a vampire safe house] Where's the entrance? I don't see any signs. No vampire glyphs.
 * Nyssa: No, because of you we've had to rethink our habits. Tighten our security. [Hands Blade a pair of binoculars] Take a closer look.
 * Blade: [Looks through the binoculars and sees a hidden glyph] Nice.

 * Whistler: Let's go.
 * Chupa: You won't pass for one of us.
 * Whistler: Like I give a shit.
 * Blade: No. He's right. Why don't you post up on the roof over there? Cover our backs.
 * Whistler: So the Bloodpack's calling the shots now, huh? Great. [Walks away]
 * Reinhardt: Better curb that dog of yours or we'll do it for you.
 * Blade: [Almost activates the explosive] Keep pushing, asshole.

 * Scud: Hey, tell me somethin'. How's the weather up there, sweetheart?
 * Whistler: Walkin' on sunshine, toad-boy.

 * (deleted scene)
 * Karel: This is a dangerous game you're playing, Damaskinos. Blade is too volatile.  You won't be able to control him for long.
 * Damaskinos: You worry too much.
 * Karel: How many others are you willing to sacrifice?
 * Damaskinos: All of them.
 * Karel: Even your own daughter?
 * Damaskinos: My dear Karel... that jar? It contains what was once my human heart. Only a fool would appeal to it now.

 * Whistler: Better wear your sunblock, Buttercup.
 * Chupa: Listen, shit kicker! You're about one cunt hair away from hillbilly heaven.
 * Whistler: I love it when you talk dirty.

 * Scud: Maybe I can make some sort of UV flash-bang grenade or something.
 * Whistler: Been tried already.
 * Scud: Yeah, but you didn't have the Scudster working on it then, now did ya?

 * Chupa: Let me ask one question: how the hell we going to find these Reapers?
 * Blade: We won't have to. They'll come to us.
 * Chupa: [Coughs] What is this shit?
 * Nyssa: Pheromones, harvested from the Reapers adrenal glands. They're going to key to it.
 * Reinhardt: They want us to spray on some suckpuppy's nut juice?

 * Nyssa: [after Scud explains how to use a UV bomb] You're not coming?
 * Scud: No, I'm a lover, not a fighter.

 * Whistler: [Entering the vampire lair to negotiate with them] You sure about this?
 * Blade: Well, if I'm not... [Pats his coat, which is filled with explosives]

 * Reinhardt: God, it would be so easy. [Pulls out his gun and aims it at Blade]
 * Chupa: He's got you.
 * [Reinhardt looks down to see a red dot of laser light on her chest, emanating from Blade's gun. Blade grins at him.]
 * Reinhardt: [Mouths] Fuck you.

 * Whistler: Someone's been keeping tabs on us from inside.
 * Blade: Where are we?
 * Whistler: Some kind of chamber deep in their lair.
 * Scud: They smashed up everything. The workshop, all of it.
 * Whistler: They've been lying to us from day one. The Reaper strain didn't evolve. It was designed.
 * Blade: What?
 * Whistler: Designed. Nomak told me. I saw him back in the sewers. He let me live.
 * Damaskinos: Did he? How generous of him. I brought you here to see the fruits of our labor. [A large canister opens next to him, revealing hundreds of vampire fetuses] For years, I've struggled to rid our kind of any hereditary weaknesses. And so... [Takes one of the fetuses] recombining DNA was simply the next logical step. Nomak was the first, a failure. But, in time, there will be a new, pure race, begotten from my own flesh, immune to silver, soon even sunlight.
 * Whistler: I got a question for you, you lying son of a bitch. You want to explain how Nomak got ahold of this ring? [Tosses a ring in front of him]
 * [Nyssa picks up the ring, then looks at Damaskinos]
 * Damaskinos: I would have thought that was obvious by this point. I gave it to him, of course. A gift from father... to son.
 * [Nyssa, disgusted, leaves, followed by Damaskinos and Karel]

 * Reinhardt: I thought he'd never leave. [Shoots Blade in the knee, then whacks Whistler with the back of his rifle] The wolf has lain with the sheep long enough.
 * Blade: [Takes out the detonator] Reinhardt, you can kiss your ass goodbye.
 * [Blade activates the detonator, but the bomb doesn't go off]
 * Scud: [Laughs] I'm sorry, man. B, you're wasting your time, man. The bomb's a dud. It was never supposed to explode. It was just supposed to make you feel in control.
 * Reinhardt: Thought you had me on a short leash, didn't you, jefe? [Removes the bomb and tosses it to Scud] Much better.
 * Scud: See this? [Exposes a vampire glyph on the inside of his lower lip] I'm one of Damaskinos's familiars. They needed my help to bring you here to control Nomak. The old fuck, he was always just bait. I mean, look at him. He's your only real weakness, man. You may be fast, you may be strong, and all that other bullshit. But in the end, B, you're just too human! [Punches Whistler in the face]
 * Whistler: Why, you little shit.
 * Scud: [Punches Whistler again] You think they scoped out my security system? I let them in, asshole! I practically handed them the keys! [To Blade] You heard cue-ball, right. Pretty soon, they're gonna all be daywalkers, man. And when that happens, I'd rather be a pet than cattle. You got me, B? What do you think about that, man?
 * Blade: Two things: One, I've been onto you since they turned you. And, two, it's not a dud. [Activates the detonator]
 * Scud: Oh, great.
 * [The detonator explodes, killing Scud and showering the area around it with his remains]
 * Whistler: I was just startin' to like him.

 * Reinhardt: [Examining Blade's sword] I wonder how many vampires he's killed with this thing.
 * Whistler: Not nearly enough, son.
 * Reinhardt: [Pulls out his pistol] Keep talking, honky-tonk. It just makes my sending you into the next world all the sweeter.
 * Whistler: Been there, done that. Do your worst, chickenshit. We'll settle up after.

 * [Bladehas killed an entire legion of Damaskinos's security guards]
 * Reinhardt: Well...[Sets down his shotgun] like my daddy said right before he killed my mom, "If ya want somethin' done right, ya gotta do it yourself". [Unsheathes Blade's sword] He also said...
 * [Reinhardt attempts to kill Blade with his own sword, only for Blade to grab it]
 * Blade: Can you blush?
 * [Blade knocks the sword out of Reinhardt's hands, catches it in mid-air, then bisects him]

 * [Nyssa closes security doors, preventing Damaskinos from escaping]
 * Nyssa: I changed the security code. We're locked in.
 * Damaskinos: Are you INSANE?! He'll kill us both!
 * Nyssa: Yes. Isn't it sad... that you die not by the hand of your enemy, but by that of your own children?

Taglines

 * Know The Mark.
 * Last time he fought against his sworn enemies... This time he will fight with them.
 * One Man Still Has The Edge.
 * Faster. Sharper. Deadlier.

Cast

 * Wesley Snipes - Eric Brooks / Blade/'The Daywalker'
 * Norman Reedus - Scud
 * Kris Kristofferson - Abraham Whistler
 * Leonor Varela - Nyssa Damaskinos
 * Ron Perlman - Reinhardt
 * Thomas Kretschmann - Eli Damaskinos
 * Luke Goss - Jared Nomak
 * Matt Schulze - Chupa
 * Karel Roden - Karel Kounen

About Blade II

 * Well, first we wanted to enhance Blade's romantic life, and get him laid! Also we wanted to make it a different environment. Initially it was going to be Vegas but Prague came up, for various reasons, and that's where we went. Also we wanted to make Blade feel more at ease with what he is.
 * Wesley Snipes "From Ballet to Blade" Paul Fischer, Inside Out Film, 19 March 2002.
 * In Cronos the Vampire was more about the meditation about time and immortality and here in Blade 2 it's the vampire at a basic level, vampires that are just animals that are greedy for blood, I created a new kind of vampires: the reapers that are designed genetically to be even stronger than the normal vampires. But we tried also to find some moments of empathy with these creatures, and there are moments when the reapers look pathetic, like junkies, and at moments when they have a broken arm or a dislocated head you almost feel sorry for them. So we tried to find beauty in these monsters and that's really horrific because it's almost real.
 * The first erotic component is in feeding and sucking and I tried not to deal too much with it because it's always the direction that Vampire films take, so I was interested in taking another direction, to explore another side of vampirism. I wanted to make this film more of a dark fantasy, whether through the colours, the camera movement, the design, and the locations. The first Blade was very stylish and hip and yuppyish but in this one I wanted to show the dark side, the decadent side of their world, almost the despair of the vampire universe. I wanted to have of a wicked sense of humour and a graphic approach like a comic book. I wanted to go crazier and to have a better understanding of Blade's psychology and to understand why he is acting the way he does.
 * Guillermo Del Toro "Guillermo Del Toro for “Blade II” Paul Fischer, Dark Horizons, March 22nd 2002.

title: Blade II


text:
Talk:Cecil Taylor

The following quote has been moved here because the source has no wp or wq page. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

 * "That man is capable of playing ten different notes with ten different fingers, ten different dynamics, ten different attacks and ten different tempi. There is no musician I've ever met, including Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez, who come anywhere near having the abilities that Cecil Taylor has." - Buell Neidlinger

Unsourced quotations about Cecil Taylor

 * Who's that motherfucker? He can't play shit!
 * Miles Davis

 * The most formidable pianism these ears have heard: This is the great divide of American piano playing.
 * Glenn Gould

 * That man is capable of playing ten different notes with ten different fingers, ten different dynamics, ten different attacks and ten different tempi. There is no musician I've ever met, including Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez, who come anywhere near having the abilities that Cecil Taylor has.
 * Buell Neidlinger

title: Talk:Cecil Taylor


text:
User talk:213.201.189.234

Please see Talk:Cecil Taylor ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:213.201.189.234