Ridcully sighed.'All right, you fellows,' he said. 'No magic at Table, you know the rules. Who's playing silly buggers?'The other senior wizards stared at him.'I, I, I don't think we can play it any more,' said the Bursar, who at the moment was only occasionally bouncing off the sides of sanity, 'I, I, I think we lost some of the pieces...

We haven’t heard any stories like these, Beti!’ Bana gasped.‘Really? Oh, I’ve got a thousand and one of ’em.

Olé,” said Windle.“Oook?”“No, Not ‘with milk’,” said Windle.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

What shall we do?” said Twoflower.“Panic?” said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry saber-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying “What a magnificent brute!” and “Here, pussy.

But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.

There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.

Daft Wullie had raised a finger.'Point o' order, Rob,' he said, 'but it was a wee bittie hurtful there for you to say I dinna hae the brains of a beetle...'Rob hesitated, but only for a moment. 'Aye, Daft Wullie, ye are right in whut ye say. It was unricht o' me to say that. It was the heat o' the moment, an' I am full sorry for it. As I stand here before ye now, I will say: Daft Wullie, ye DO hae the brains o' a beetle, an' I'll fight any scunner who says different!

There was a party of well-dressed people with Gilt, and as they progressed accoss the room the whole place began to revolve around the big man, gold being very dense and having a gravity all of its own.