Terry Pratchett

“All right!” he snapped. “What do you want, demon boy?”

“The truth,” said Mau.

The priest pointed a finger at him. “No you don’t! You want a special truth. You want the truth to be a truth that you like. You want it to be a pretty little truth that fits what you already believe! But I will tell you a truth you will not like. People want their gods, demon boy. They want to make holy places, whatever you say.”

It was just some kind of a knack, Cahle had said, or at least had partly said and partly gestured, and that being able to make beer so well meant she would be able to get a very fine husband. Her getting married still seem to be the big topic of discussion in the Place. It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

I want to know why. Why everything. I don’t know the answers, but a few days ago I didn’t know there were questions.

Her father had said that if you knew where to look, you could find Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island, and loaned her a large magnifying glass. She spent long Sunday afternoons lying on her stomach, minutely examining every necklace of dots, and concluded that Mrs. Ethel J. Bundy’s Birthday Island was a Father Joke, i.e., not very funny but sort of lovable in its silliness.

And then his mind caught alight.

That’s what the gods are! An answer that will do! Because there’s food to be caught and babies to be born and life to be lived and so there is no time for big, complicated, and worrying answers! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don’t have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don’t fit the way we want the world to be.

He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty that dismissed all opposition.

She was always superstitious about remembering useful things she had been told, at least outside lessons. You would be bound to need it one day. It was a test the world did to make sure you were paying attention.

There had been a great wave before, everyone said. It turned up in the stories of the Time When Things Were Otherwise and the Moon Was Different. Old men said it was because people had been bad, but old men always said that kind of thing. Waves happened, people died, and the gods did not care.

She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing. (p. 283)

She wasn't certain what the future held, but coffee would be involved if she had any say in the matter. (p. 310)

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)

His brow furrowed, as if he'd just been listening to his own voice and hadn't understood it. (p. 176)