The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,21
doing his best, however, standing in a sort of respectful heap at the end of the line and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four-foot arm.
*
‘Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?’ said Carrot.
*
‘Ah, pageantry’ said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. ‘Very important. Lots of spectacles.’
‘What, free?’ said Throat.
‘We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,’ said the monarchist.
*
Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky second-hand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. You stray into L-space at your peril.
*
The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned second-hand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and have more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
*
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.
Energy equals matter …
Matter equals mass.
And mass distorts space. It distorts it into polyfractal L-space.
So, while the Dewey system has its fine points, when you’re setting out to look something up in the multidimensional folds of L-space what you really need is a ball of string.
*
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
*
The Summoning of Dragons. Single copy, first edition, slightly foxed and extremely dragoned.
*
Vimes strolled along for breakfast at Harga’s House of Ribs. Normally the only decoration in there was on Sham Harga’s vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.
*
Time could bifurcate, like a pair of trousers. You could end up in the wrong leg, living a life that was actually happening in the other leg, talking to people who weren’t in your leg, walking into walls that weren’t there any more. Life could be horrible in the wrong trouser of Time.
*
‘Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself,’ said the Patrician.
*
Vimes landed in damp straw and also in pitch darkness.
Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his hearh4 isn’t in the job.
Eventually Great A ‘Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical rethinking of the nature of Time.
*
‘Oh, you think you’re so clever, so in-control, so swave, just because I’ve got a sword and you haven’t!’
*
The Patrician steepled his hands and looked at Vimes over the top of them.
‘Let me give you some advice, Captain,’ he said. ‘It may help you make some sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides’
He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window.
‘A great rolling sea of evil. Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing. Down there,’ he said, ‘are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of