The Light Fantastic: (Discworld Novel 2) (Discworld series)

It had a very long pendulum, and the pendulum swung with a slow tick-tock that set his teeth on edge, because it was the kind of deliberate, annoying ticking that wanted to make it abundantly clear that every tick and every tock was stripping another second off your life. It was the kind of sound that suggested very pointedly that in some hypotheti

He may be deaf and a little hard of thinking, but elderly wizards have very well-trained survival instincts, and they know that when a tall figure in a black robe and the latest in agricultural handtools starts looking thoughtfully at you it is time to act fast.

Rincewind had been generally reckoned by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers.

Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it . . .

‘Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.’

The Luggage said nothing, but louder this time.

He read that its height plus its length divided by half its width equalled exactly 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange.

Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a

‘He’sh mad?’ ‘Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.’ ‘Ah, then he can’t be mad. I’ve been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he’sh just ecshentric.’

For a man with an itch to see the whole of infinity, Twoflower never actually moved outside his own head.