Moving Pictures

The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. (p. 193)

Supposing there was somewhere reality was a little thinner than usual? And supposing you did something there that weakened reality even more. Books wouldn't do it. Even ordinary theater wouldn't do it, because in your heart you knew it was just people in funny clothes on a stage. But Holy Wood went straight from the eye into the brain. In your heart you thought it was real. The clicks would do it. (p. 286)

He had not got where he was today by bothering how things worked. It was how people worked that intrigued him. (p. 282)

Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people. (p. 93)

"You know what the greatest tragedy in the whole world is?" said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. "It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out." (pp. 141-142)

The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it all out yourself from the clues.

According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles. (p. 216)

Fate doesn't like it when people take up more space than they ought to. Everybody knows that. (p. 178)

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. (p. 263)

Oh, I suppose if you're a powerful merchant it's nice to have a famous wife. It's like owning jewelry. (p. 330)

Being trampled almost to death by a preoccupied troll is almost the ideal cure for a person confused about what is real and what isn't. Reality is something walking heavily up your spine. (p. 319)

Probably only one person in the world had been interested in whether the old man lived or died, and he'd been the first to know. (p. 91)

It was totally confusing, just like real life. (p. 208)

His mind raced. What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn't exist if there weren't people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people's heads. And in front of him were hundreds of people really believing what they were seeing... (p. 286)

Magic wasn't difficult. That was the big secret that the whole baroque edifice of wizardry had been set up to conceal. Anyone with a bit of intelligence and a bit of perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointy-hat business. (pp. 178-179)

He'd looked at its ramshackle organisation, such as it was, with the eye of a lifelong salesman. There seemed nowhere in it for him, but this wasn't a problem. There was always room at the top. (p. 53)

A month went by quickly. It didn't want to hang around. (p. 21)

The Archchancellor's most important job, as the Bursar saw it, was to sign things, preferably, from the Bursar's point of view, without reading them first. (p. 11)

No-one with their sleeves rolled up who walks purposefully with a piece of paper held conspicuously in their hand is ever challenged. (pp. 47-48)

At the gate was a large, heavy-set man, who was eyeing the queue with the smug look of minor power-wielders everywhere. (p. 46)