The Wit & Wisdom of Discworld - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,3

on Discworld, is a character in his own right, and throughout the series is recognizable by always speaking IN BLOCK CAPITALS.

Death, insofar as it was possible in a face with no movable features, looked surprised. RLNCEWLND? … WHY ARE YOU HERE?

‘Um, why not?’ said Rincewind.

I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOSTLED ME, RINCEWIND. FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT.

‘Oh no, not—’

OF COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN pSEUDOPOLIS.

‘But that’s five hundred miles away!’

YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME, THE WHOLE SYSTEM’S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN. I CAN SEE THAT.

*

I’LL GET YOU YET, CULLY, said Death, in a voice like the slamming of leaden coffin lids.

*

Death sat in His garden, running a whetstone along the edge of His scythe. It was already so sharp that any passing breeze that blew across it was sliced smoothly into two puzzled zephyrs.

AS it moves towards a seemingly inevitable collision with a malevolent red star, the Discworld has only one possible saviour. Unfortunately, this happens to be the singularly inept and cowardly wizard called Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world …

It is said that someone at a party once asked the famous philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle ‘Why are you here?’ and the reply took three years.

*

Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in a palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suites they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin. It was always a considerable annoyance to any Disc citizen with pretensions to culture that they were ruled by gods whose idea of an uplifting artistic experience was a musical doorbell.

*

Trymon didn’t smile often enough, and he liked figures and the sort of organization charts that show lots of squares with arrows pointing to other squares. In short, he was the sort of man who could use the word ‘personnel’ and mean it.

*

‘Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?’

‘Yes,’ said the wizard bitterly, ‘us.’

*

‘[There are] some big mushrooms … Can you eat them?’

Rincewind looked at them cautiously. ‘No, no good to eat at all.’

‘Why?’ called Twoflower. ‘Are the gills the wrong shade of yellow?’

‘No, not really …’

‘I expect the stems haven’t got the right kind of fluting, then.’

‘They look okay, actually.’

‘The cap, then, I expect the cap is the wrong colour,’ said Twoflower.

‘Not sure about that.’

‘Well then, why can’t you eat them?’

Rincewind coughed. ‘It’s the little doors and windows,’ he said wretchedly, ‘it’s a dead giveaway’

*

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.

*

‘I said I hope it is a good party,’ said Galder, loudly.

AT THE MOMENT IT IS, said Death levelly. I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT.

‘Why?’

THAT’S WHEN THEY THINK I’LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF.

He vanished, leaving only a cocktail stick and a short paper streamer behind.

*

When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalized in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

*

Cohen the Barbarian enters the Discworld canon:

The barbarian chieftain said: ‘What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?’

The man on his right spoke thus: ‘The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.’

The man on his left said: ‘The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.’

The chieftain nodded, and said: ‘Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.’

Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, and said: ‘But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’

The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing.

The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: ‘Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.’

*

[He was] a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called ‘spry’, with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which